Say what you will about Jerry Yang's management capabilities, the guy is a sheer visionary, when it comes to the internet. Yahoo! Inc. just upped the proxy fight with Ichan/Microsoft by putting an ad on the Yahoo home page (see image or visit http://www.yahoo.com/)

And in an internal video to Yahoo! employees, posted on Yahoo's intranet site, Yang said that "Today, I’m excited to tell you that we’re launching an advertising campaign online on our homepage as a way to continue to make our case to stockholders. With one of the largest audiences on the Internet, we’re taking full advantage of the power of our network to remind our stockholders why voting for Carl Icahn’s board of directors is a bad choice."

According to comscore, as of April 2008, Yahoo's audience was at 140.6 million unique monthly visitors. Google had 141.1 million and Microsoft came in third at 121 million. Nothing would make me happier than to see this proxy fight splashed on the front pages of both Yahoo 'and' Microsoft. Question is, will Microsoft respond in kind? Not likely.. Sadly.

In addition to fawning pieces like this one from the tech media admiring his use of Yahoo's reach to turn public opinion in Yahoo's favor, it could actually work, as more and more people read and comment on the things mentioned in the online ad, which in turn, could drive more media covergae. The ad is headlined in bold by a quote from Carl Icahn given to the WSJ in Oct 2007 - "It’s hard to understand these technology companies."

What Yang and Yahoo are betting on is that people will not make the connection that Icahn is just a figurehead, while the actual decisions will be made by Microsoft. I mean, they can't possibly say that Microsoft won't know how to handle Yahoo. So in reality, the question that Yahoo shareholders will have to vote on is whether the current Yahoo Board is better than Microsoft management, or a breakup. In the short term, its a no-brainer, since if Icahn wins the fight, the stock will hit the roof. And conversely, if Yang remains in charge, it'll crash to below $20.

In the long term, well.. Like I said, Yang is way better at working on the internet than in the board room. Given the time, he could, now that he's had the bezzezus scared out of him, shake off the lethargy and possibly turn Yahoo around. Not anytime soon, though. And once this fight is over, and provided he prevails, Yang might voluntarily step aside and hand over the CEO post to a professional, someone who can objectively determine the best course of action for the company.