Yahoo chair Semel's departure, Microsoft bid just hours apart. H-m-m

Terry Semel

left the CEO position at Yahoo! back in June, 2007. But he was still non-executive Yahoo! board chairman until yesterday.

Therein lies the tale.

At the time of the departure, it was widely surmised that Semel's exit was hastened by a Yahoo! stock slide caused at least in part by a perception that he was too slow to pull the trigger on acquisition opportunities that could have kept up Yahoo!s cachet as an innovator as well as sustained the value of Yahoo! stock. Opportunities to acquire businesses such as YouTube and Facebook before they became too big a gulp.

But what not everyone realized was that Semel stayed with Yahoo! as non-executive chairman up until yesterday.

Now today the news comes of Microsoft's rather strong intent to buy Yahoo!

Mere supposition, mind you. But still, I am wondering whether:

Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and others have been hearing rumors of the Microsoft bid/demand all week, and when it became definite this bid would be delivered, decided that the guy whose indecisiveness got Yahoo!'s market value so low that a hostile bid would be tenable had to be fully excised from the company.

Kind of a mindset that "if Terry had been more decisive, we wouldn't be in this mess."