Remember back in 2000 when AOL bought Time Warner? There was a lot of speculation at the time regarding the wisdom of AOL. Remember also that AOL, Amazon.com and Yahoo! were the titans of Wall Street at that time. They were worth billions and billions of dollars. Well, eight years later, AOL proves to be the smartest of the bunch. Amazon.com attached themselves to traditional stores like Target. It was Yahoo! that thought they were smart enough to keep the good times rolling.

Yahoo stock traded above $400 per share in 2000. Currently Yahoo is trading at $12 per share. This is well below the $33 per share that Microsoft offered Yahoo! earlier this year. Founder and CEO Jerry Yang has offered to step down. Which, in my opinion, is too little, too late. Mr. Yang missed multiple golden opportunities. He could have invested in a cable company as they were developing broadband access. He could have invested in Dell computers or Hewlett Packard. He could’ve invested in just about anything with the exception of AIG and Bear Stearns… (oh, or the auto industry), and come out ahead of where he is now.

This is a video from a few months ago. An investor and friend of Jerry Yang sing the praises of Yang.