Jerry Yang, the soft-spoken chief executive of Yahoo, rarely becomes animated, at least in public. But ask him about his company's lackluster performance over the past year, and he pounds the table -- albeit ever so lightly -- punctuating his answer with a dose of impatience.
"We have a plan," Yang said during an interview at Yahoo's headquarters. "We want to grow the business over a three-to five-year period. We are executing against that plan. And we are still doing that despite all the stuff that's happened to us."
All the stuff that's happened, of course, refers to the turbulence since Jan. 31, when Microsoft made an unsolicited takeover bid. The conventional wisdom was that Microsoft and its hard-charging chief executive, Steven Ballmer, would quickly swallow the company.
But Yang has emerged as an unlikely survivor -- at least for now. He beat back Ballmer, whose offers to buy all or part of Yahoo were considered inadequate by Yang and his board. And he rebuffed Carl Icahn, the billionaire shareholder, who tried to seize control of Yahoo but settled for three seats on an expanded board.
Even so, the question remains whether Yang is the right man for the job. Many shareholders are furious with him. With the stock trading at about $20, far below the $33 a share Microsoft offered in May, the failed merger negotiations have cost Yahoo investors nearly $20 billion.
"I think they had an opportunity to get something done in the palm of their hand, and they bungled it," one investor, Eric Jackson, said after the company's annual shareholder meeting Friday.
On Friday, investors controlling about 15 percent of the shares represented at the meeting voted against Yang's re-election to the board -- signifying lingering concerns about his leadership.
Yang says he understands shareholders' frustrations. But he says Yahoo was willing...

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