Investors became incensed at what they perceived as Yang's attempts to derail the Microsoft negotiations out of pride or self-interest but, in their view, never to protect their money. Leading the charge was Carl Icahn, who railed at Yang and his fellow board members and mounted a proxy battle before being appeased with a board seat for himself and two of his backers.

Finally, a deal was struck with Google, calling for Yahoo to run search ads from its competitor, which would give Yahoo a much-needed cash influx. But the deal was never implemented. It imploded when the U.S. government made clear it would challenge it on antitrust grounds and Google opted to walk away.

Talks about a merger with AOL have been popping up regularly since February, but evidently the companies haven't been able to agree to one.

In early November, a week before announcing his intention to give up the CEO role and shortly after the Google deal collapsed, Yang took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and declared: "To this day I would say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo."

Recently, to settle a shareholder lawsuit, Yahoo agreed to dilute a severance plan it adopted days after Microsoft made its initial bid and which critics called a poison pill designed to discourage Steve Ballmer and company. "Yahoo has been retrenching, to make it easier for the company to be sold," said industry analyst Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group. But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been saying for months that his company is no longer interested in buying all of Yahoo.