• D: All Things Digital/GigaOm, Tuesday, November 18, 2008 1:17 PM

The general consensus in the blogosphere is that Yahoo needs to find a replacement for departing CEO Jerry Yang FAST. There can be none of the dithering that Yahoo's board and management have been prone to in the past. This also needs to be a sound decision; neither Yang nor Terry Semel before him was the right person to lead the company. During their reign, Yahoo lost a lot of time and market share to competitors like Google in search and Fox Interactive Media in display.

Speaking of Fox Interactive Media, Kara Swisher, who broke the news of Yang's departure yesterday, thinks Peter Chernin, president and COO of parent News Corp., tops the list of possible replacements. With little chance of being Rupert Murdoch's successor at News Corp., Chernin is looking elsewhere for the chance to run a major company. Swisher's sources claims he is the current frontrunner both inside and outside Yahoo. Other execs on her shortlist include former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig, former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, former FIM CEO Ross Levinsohn, Tim Armstrong, Google's top ad exec, and Kevin Johnson, the former head of Microsoft's online division.

Most Yahoo watchers agree that the company should not look internally for Yang's replacement. Many think President Sue Decker, for example, would bring more of the same to a company that desperately needs change. Om Malik thinks that not only should Yahoo not hire from within, but the new CEO shouldn't sell to Microsoft, either, nor should it cobble together an AOL merger. He thinks the best thing for the flagging Web giant would be to fire the entire senior team and let the new blood focus on making Yahoo's products great again.

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