jerry yang is the founder of yahoo .com .
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Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel stepped down on Monday and handed
the reins of the struggling search company to co-founder Jerry Yang
after six years on the job.
Susan Decker, former chief financial officer and head of the
advertiser group, has been named president. Semel, meanwhile, will
assume the position of nonexecutive chairman and serve as an
adviser to the management team and board of directors.
"This is the right thing to do for Yahoo and the right time to do
it," Semel said in a conference call with analysts and media.
The shakeup comes nearly one week after a somewhat contentious
shareholder meeting in which stockholders criticized Semel's pay in
light of the company's lackluster stock price and failure to mount
any serious challenge to Google on search and search advertising.
Shareholders re-elected the board members with only 66 percent
approval, which is low compared with the 80 or even 90 percent
approval that is usual. In addition, 34 percent of shareholders
voted in favor of a proposal to link Semel's pay with the financial
performance of the company.
Related perspective
Yahoo blows its chance
News.com's Charles Cooper
on Yang's second coming.With the personnel changes, the company is
undoing some of the reorganization it initiated six months ago in
which it formed three business units: Technology, Audience and
Advertising. Now, Decker will oversee Audience, which she
previously headed up, and Advertising, whose head had not been
named. The Technology group, which has been searching for a unit
head since the departure of Chief Technology Officer Farzad Nazem
several weeks ago, will report to Yang. Co-founder David Filo will
oversee the technology organization until a replacement for Nazem
is named.
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