"Purple" Problems at Yahoo

It's pretty obvious that whoever takes the reins from Jerry Yang as C.E.O. of Yahoo, a deal with Microsoft will be a big issue on the table again. But so will several other items, including talks with AOL over the potential acquisition of its portal business; revising a Google ad deal that meets with Department of Justice approval; and, of course, personnel matters in the wake of 18 months that saw a series of high-level departures.

Yahoo's board has retained Heidrick & Struggles to recruit the next top exec, and speculation has emerged on who the candidates will be, with names raised such as Jon Miller, the former head of AOL; David Rosenblatt, C.E.O. of DoubleClick; Jeff Jordan, a former eBay exec and Facebook-C.O.O. contender; and Tom Freston, former head of Viacom; and many others.

First things first, a new C.E.O. will need to be named. But with a still-weak stock price and diminishing search and ad market share, that individual will need to hit the ground running.

What should the new C.E.O. tackle first? We asked you in a poll, and most of you say Yahoo should re-open talks Microsoft above all (51 percent), followed by removing Sue Decker (17 percent) and revising the Google ad deal (15 percent). The two remaining agenda items we listed were "ditch the purple" (a thematic Yahoo-culture color--Yang's stepping-down memo noted that he "will always bleed purple") and "acquire AOL's portal business." Oddly, twice as many voters (12 percent) saw the purple as a problem than did those (6 percent) who thought the new C.E.O.'s best bet would be to go after AOL.

Here are the poll results: