I was well-positioned to ignore this event until I saw Fred Wilson's post: "Is Jerry Yang the next Steve Jobs"?
Answer: No.
There are similarities between the two rudder-less ships -- Apple of the mid-90s and the Yahoo of today --- but Jobs and Jerry are are like Chalk and Cheese.
Love him or hate him, Jobs has always been an uncompromising bastard visionary that had no intention of sharing the reigns at Apple. His refusal to yield to others ultimately cost him his role in Apple's operations. It wasn't until many years later that the board had to beg him to come back and rescue the company. In the face of almost certain destruction, Jobs was the Winston Churchill that Apple desperately needed for a turn-around. And he did so on his terms.
Meanwhile, Jerry Yang may be a really nice guy, but I can't imagine how someone with the leadership chops and vision needed to turn Yahoo around could have also been so complicit in the slow demise of Yahoo as it has sputtered about under Semel's leadership. (And a founder no less!) No lions here. Smells more like Neville Chamberlain or Vichy France.
And it's not just Jerry. Look in the comments of Fred's post. The first one is Brad Horowitz praising the Semel's contributions. Jesus, what's with the PC kid-gloves? It's a blog post, not a PR release. You can condemn Semel, or say nothing at all, but praising such an unmitigated disaster reeks of cronyism and the corporate politics that probably played a large part in leading Yahoo into its current malaise.
Yahoo doesn't need a nice guy right now. Yahoo needs a corporate messiah to come in, set things straight, and kick ass.
Good luck with that.