What’s Next For Yahoo?

Now that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is out, GigaOM‘s Om Malik has a piece on what the portal should and shouldn’t do next.

“Yang’s decision to move on isn’t a surprise—it was clear from his talk at a recent industry conference that he was tired and perhaps a little out of his depth,” Malik writes. “His choice to head the company that was looking down a deep abyss a while back was an ineffectual one, and a total and absolute failure on the part of Yahoo’s board of directors.”

Malik writes that Yahoo shouldn’t sell out to Microsoft at today’s prices, although $20 per share would be more reasonable. He also thinks they should hire a CEO from another company instead of promoting from within, since it’s pretty clear that they need some new blood after all this.

More significantly, he writes that the company should focus on Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Flickr, Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Search, as well as Yahoo’s e-commerce platform and particularly its mobile offerings, “for this is one area where its independence can help it win friends amongst [wireless carriers] who are worried about Google, Microsoft and Apple,” he said.

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