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Tough Day For Jerry Yang

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by Kevin Maney
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Feb 08 2008 12:00am EDT

Tough Day for Jerry Yang

Yahoo today may decide whether to say yes or no to Microsoft, as its board meets and its options run out.

This has to be tough for Yang, for more than business reasons. He and co-founder David Filo truly feel an emotional attachment to the company they started while at Stanford. Following the wrong-headed tenure of former CEO Terry Semel, Yang and Filo felt like they were ready to run the company and take it in new directions.

The first time I met them, in the mid-1990s, Yahoo had eight employees in a little space in one of the crappiest office parks in Silicon Valley. The roof leaked, the indoor-outdoor carpet smelled, and the site was being served off a few computers in a closet. It's pretty astounding to think that a dozen years later it's worth $45 billion.

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