• GigaOm, Thursday, November 6, 2008 10:45 AM

"In hindsight, we are all geniuses and simpletons," says Om Malik at GigaOm, it's just a matter of how history passes judgment on us, he says, adding that it doesn't look like history will be all that kind to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang. Yang may have inherited "the unenviable job of rescuing the company he co-founded," but in the year-and-a-half since reclaiming the role as CEO, he hasn't exactly steered the sinking ship back on course.

Refusing to accept Microsoft's $33 per share offer earlier this year ranks highest on the list of Yang's high-profile blunders. Since then, the company's share price has plummeted to less than $14. Nevertheless, in an interview yesterday with search guru John Battelle, Yang insisted, "At the right price, we were willing to sell the company ... we believe that they walked away." Does anybody really believe that? As Malik says, "we all know he didn't really want to sell (to Microsoft)."

On watching yesterday's interview at the Web 2.0 Summit, Malik said, "There is a sense of tragic self-delusion emanating from the comments of this nice man," that was noticeable even in the way Yang expressed disappointment at the failed search partnership with Google -- he pinned it on the government not understanding the Internet business. Asked what makes him the right guy to lead Yahoo, Yang defensively replied: "Six months into it we had the events with Microsoft and now we have this economy. I don't regret any minute of what happened even though it's not the most fun thing. It's a part of me."

Read the whole story at GigaOm »