It seems unlikely. Having failed to seal a deal with Microsoft, Yahoo co-founder and chief executive Jerry Yang could face a shareholder revolt led by multi-billionaire investor Carl Icahn. The New York Times has publicly harangued him for failing his fiduciary duty, and the Wall Street Journal has drawn up a list of potential successors. Your online bookie could soon be calling the odds.

Meanwhile, Yang looks out of his depth. He co-founded Yahoo with David Filo when they were Stanford University graduate students, but in 1995, the two friends immediately hired an experienced chief executive officer in the form of Tim Koogle. He'd been president of Intermec Corporation in Seattle and spent nine years at Motorola. Over the next half-dozen years, until May 2001, it was Koogle, not Yang, who turned Yahoo into a leading internet company.

Terry Semel, a 24-year veteran from Warner Brothers, then took over and took Yahoo further into the content business he knew well. But (incredibly) he missed the opportunity to buy Google, and shareholders became fractious as the price of Google's shares rocketed ahead while, during his six-year tenure, Yahoo's climbed only 5% per year. He resigned in June 2007.

Replacing Semel with Yang was supposed to make the shareholders feel reassured. They didn't know he was walking into a Microsoft-fanned firestorm. In fact, being Yahoo's co-founder put Yang in a worse position than if he'd been a hired gun from Wal-Mart or Warner Brothers.

It enabled New York Times writer Joe Nocera to castigate him for failing to secure a deal. "It doesn't matter that you would like Yahoo to remain independent, or that you can't stand Microsoft," Nocera thundered. "Your feelings aren't supposed to get in the way of your fiduciary duty."

But finding a replacement for Yang could be tricky. Yahoo may have avoided being swallowed up by Microsoft, but Google is already eating its lunch. Yahoo's last meal - its strength in display advertising - could soon come under threat. The company needs a turnaround specialist who can capitalise on the good things Yahoo has bought (Flickr, Delicious, Upcoming) while doing something about the ones for which it paid billions (GeoCities, eGroups, Broadcast.com etc).

Kara Swisher has put up a list of potential candidates at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital, but none fit the turnaround bill. Sue Decker? She's Yahoo's president, and the crowd is baying for fresh blood, not just Yang's. Meg Whitman of eBay fame? She's a star, but why would she accept the poisoned chalice? Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape? Sorry, we haven't forgotten what happened to them.

Suddenly, getting taken over by Microsoft might not sound such a bad idea...