San Francisco: June 19, 2007 (Tuesday)  - Yahoo has confirmed on Monday that Semel, a former Warner Brothers Executive, has resigned and Jerry Yang, a co-founder of the company in 1994 with David Filo would succeed.

The decision follows 18 months of confusion for Yahoo, as the company is accused to have been disappointing both Wall Street and many others.

 One of the original Internet success stories, it found itself unable to compete effectively against Google, and faced growing pressure from a crop of young rivals like MySpace and Facebook.

In a December shake-up, Semel sought to reinvigorate the company, but nothing concrete happened.

According to media reports the experts believe that Yahoo is now being eclipsed by the success of Google's modernization, the company, long the No. 1 Internet portal, is going back to its technology roots. 

Last week, disgruntled investors called for a management overhaul at the annual shareholders' meeting, and ballots representing a third of investors casting ballots opposed re-electing one or more directors, ratcheting up the pressure on Yahoo's board for drastic changes.

Some analysts maintain that the shake-up may be only a prelude to a more substantial corporate overhaul, which could include a merger or a sale.

"This had to happen or things would have gotten nasty in a hurry, with people taking positions and pushing for change," said Paul Kedrosky, executive director of the William J. von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at the University of California, San Diego. "I'm not convinced it's enough, but it had to happen."

Yang and Semel said they had been considering the changes for some time, after Semel notified the board that he wanted to step down sooner rather than later. "I saw myself much more as a coach than a player going forward," Semel said in a conference call.

Yang said in an interview Monday that some of his primary functions would be to reinvigorate the company and attract top talent, not to overhaul its strategy. "We have a very clear strategy in place and we are executing on it," he said.