Jerry Yang, Co-Founder of Yahoo is exiting the Yahoo! Inc (YHOO). board and its management team. Jerry Yang also left the boards of Yahoo Japan Corp. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Asian Web companies Yahoo partly owns.
Yang started Yahoo in 1995 with David Filo. While Yang studied in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, he co-created in April 1994 with David Filo an Internet website called “Jerry and Dave’s Guide to the World Wide Web” consisting of a directory of other websites. It was renamed “Yahoo!”. Yahoo! became very popular, and Yang and Filo realized the business potential and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in April 1995.
Jerry Yang was criticized for a statement regarding the role of Yahoo! in the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao by Chinese authorities. Yang was also criticized by shareholders for rejecting an offer of $33 a share from Microsoft in May 2008.
According to Forbes magazine, Yang is the 938th richest person in the world with a fortune estimated at $1.1 billion. He still owns around 3.6 percent of Yahoo!’s shares.
Few months back Yahoo fired chief executive Carol Bartz. Scott Thompson, former president of EBay’s PayPal unit, was named CEO on Jan. 4 after a four-month search.
