Koogle announced last week that he will step down as chief executive but remain as chairman when his replacement is found. His successor will be joining a foundering company whose stock price and advertising revenues have been battered recently. All of this must be done amid a corporate culture that doesn't take kindly to outsiders. The company is expected to keep its list of candidates a closely guarded secret, and is probably still too busy refining a detailed job description to have settled on a preliminary list of suitors. Yahoo is likely to look toward mature companies that are flush with experienced executives.
Serious candidates are likely to have lost control at their companies through no fault of their own.
Take Terry McGuirk, who was chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting. The new CEO must be someone who has not only weathered past economic slowdowns, but also turned around other faltering companies. That means making tough decisions, such as lopping off divisions so the business as a whole could survive. Co-founders are frequently too emotionally attached to their company to make such drastic moves. Yahoo's crippling dependence on advertising for 90 percent of its revenues is one major problem the new CEO will have to quickly tackle.