It’s been building for months, but it finally happened. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel stepped down. To some people’s surprise, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped up to take his place. Susan Decker, meanwhile, was promoted to president. What do all these changes mean?
You'd almost have to be blind to not see this coming. Back in January, some Yahoo shareholders were trying to come up with a "plan B" for the company, which I reported on in mid-March. The very first point of this nine-point plan called for the immediate replacement of Terry Semel. Presumably, Semel and Yahoo could have weathered this, but the company's lackluster performance in the first quarter of this year only caused the clamor to reach a fever pitch.
Semel and Yahoo's Board of Directors managed the transition gracefully, with Semel writing in a statement that "I was clear in telling you of my desire to take a step back sooner rather than later." Make no mistake: he's not actually leaving the company; he will remain as chairman in a non-executive role, and presumably in some sort of advisory capacity. In short, he's no longer in a position where he's responsible for the company's every move - so he can't be blamed for any missteps in the future.
He has certainly earned his share of blame for previous missteps. Shareholders and analysts have taken Semel to task for failing to purchase Google in 2002, MySpace in 2005, YouTube in 2006, and probably DoubleClick in 2007. They have also complained about the direction he tried to take with the company in his efforts to move it more toward content production, and the fact that it didn't move toward streamlining after making certain purchases - for example, Yahoo had its own picture sharing site when it purchased Flickr, and didn't close it until fairly recently.
The amount of blame Semel has received isn't entirely fair, however. It fails to take into account the state of the world in general and the technology sector in particular when he came on board. Most of all, it does little to point up some of the good things he's done for Yahoo. It probably is time - and past time - for him to step down. But let's not be too hasty in our condemnation.
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