Yang issued the following statement in a press release this evening:
"Terry Semel has been a great partner and true friend, and has played a key role in helping to grow Yahoo!'s business - and industry-leading audience - over the past seven years. He also has been a tremendously valuable resource in recent months, as our new management team developed and began to execute our strategic growth plans. On behalf of the entire Board, I want to thank Terry for his many contributions to Yahoo! over the years - and for helping to lay a firm foundation for future success and improved financial performance."
Roy Bostock, who has been on Yahoo's board since 2003, will be taking Semel's spot. As to be expected, the release is praise-worthy of Semel, citing his accomplishments of "growing revenue nearly nine-fold as well as creating $30 billion in shareholder value." Personally, I think one of Semel's most overlooked achievements is making some fairly savvy acquisitions early in the Web 2.0 boom, such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, and more recently MyBlogLog.
That said, the company hasn't done much to integrate those buys into the rest of the company, and Yahoo hit a big slide in the last couple years of Semel's tenure, with the plans to lay off 1,000 employees earlier this week putting an exclamation point on the weakness.