Jerry Yang, Yahoo's oft-criticized co-founder and former CEO, resigned from the board and will no longer be a part of the Internet pioneer, Yahoo said late Tuesday.  Yang, 43, also gave up "all other positions with the company," in addition to leadership positions within the company's subsidiaries in Asia, Yahoo said.
"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 a statement.

Yahoo shares jumped 3%, to $15.93, in after-hours trading following the news. "This is the passing of an era, whatever one thinks about Jerry Yang and the mixed success of Yahoo over the years," Citi analyst Mark Mahaney says. Yang leaves a mixed legacy. Shortly after he founded Yahoo in 1995 with fellow Stanford University student David Filo, the company became one of the greatest success stories in the early days of the Internet. "Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, but Jerry Yang made it discoverable," analyst Jonathan Yarmis says.

But as CEO, he arguably committed a huge blunder when he repeatedly spurned Microsoft  $47 billion buyout of Yahoo. Today, Yahoo is worth $19 billion. Yang's exit comes less than two weeks after former PayPal executive Scott Thompson was named Yahoo CEO, succeeding Carol Bartz, fired in September.
Yahoo has 700 million online visitors a month and may ring up more than $1 billion in profit for 2011. Yet, Facebook has stormed past it in online display ads in the U.S. for the first time, says eMarketer, and Google is closing in.