With Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang stepping down, announced Nov. 17, industry experts disagree on the course of action the new CEO will have to take to put Yahoo back on the path of a productive, innovative Internet company.

Some analysts believe Yahoo should take pages from the playbooks of Google, Amazon.com and Salesforce.com to raise its Internet portal from the murky depths to which it has sunk. Others feel Yahoo should remain rooted in its consumer and media Web ways.

One thing seems certain: After 18 months of trying to restore Yahoo to glory, Yang has left the new CEO an almost untenable position. Yahoo's stock price is mired around $12, down from over $30 a year ago. Yahoo has laid off over a thousand workers and lost hundreds more executives and engineers to a broad lack of confidence in Yang's leadership. 

One promising action Yang did oversee was the rewiring—some would call the modernization—of Yahoo to be a friendlier, more open portal that lets programmers have a hand in improving search results and communications for Yahoo's millions of users.

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