The Smartest Thing Yang Has Done So Far

As excited as I was about the potential buyout of Yahoo! by someone, even I became a little bored of all the back and forth between Yahoo! and Microsoft. In injection of Google into the mix certainly added some spice to the story, but I honestly thought that Carl Icahn's battle to replace the board at Yahoo! would be the critical next milestone to move the story forward. With Steve Ballmer's outright statement that he would speak with Yahoo!, but only after a new board was installed, that seemed to be the obvious conclusions. Today's announcement, however, that Carl Icahn, himself, will join Jerry Yang on the existing board leaves me scratching my head again.

I'm not along in my head-scratching, of course. In the morning batter on CNBC, everyone seems to be wondering how this ultimately works to the advantage of Yahoo! All can agree, however, that this is the smartest thing that Yang has done thus far and I would have to concur. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em ...or in this case, invite them to join you.

Over the weekend I spotted an article that announced that Legg Mason, a major shareholder in Yahoo!, would support the existing board along with Jerry Yang. There were previous reports that there were meetings between Yahoo and Legg Mason at the Sun Valley lodge and that's likely where the seeds were planted for the announcements made over the past few days. While I'm certainly a little more confident it Jerry Yang's ability to strategize, I'm still wondering where this leaves Yahoo!'s independence or lack thereof.