Jerry Yang, Yahoo co-founder, resigns

Jerry Yang, the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo, has resigned from the company's board of directors and will no longer be a part of the company, Yahoo announced on Tuesday.

According to a press release, Yahoo said that Yang would resign from all positions within the company, as well as all of the company's subsidiaries in Asia, reported San Jose Mercury News.

"My time at Yahoo, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo," Yang said in the news release.

Yang helped start Yahoo in 1995 with David Filo, but the company has been struggling to compete with Facebook and Google for online advertising in the last few years. He was the "chief Yahoo," or CEO, from 2007 to 2009, during when Yahoo rejected an offer from Microsoft for $47.5 billion, Bloomberg news reported.

Yang was replaced by Carol Bartz, who became CEO in 2009. Bartz was fired by the company in September 2011.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The timing of Yang’s resignation is more than interesting. Yahoo recently appointed a new CEO, ex-PayPal boss Scott Thompson, to take over from fired CEO Carol Bartz. And coming up this spring is Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting, where Yahoo directors are likely to face criticism or pressure over how they handled an ongoing strategic review of the company, and how they handled a sale offer from Microsoft in 2008.