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Former Yahoo chief Semel leaves board of directors

Dethroned Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel left the struggling Internet firm's board of directors on Thursday.

Semel's departure comes just two days after Yahoo revealed plans to lay off 1,000 employees as part of an effort to revitalize a company that analysts say strayed from its profitable strengths while Semel was at the helm.

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang (楊致遠) replaced Semel as chief executive in June to shore up the California firm's profits and stock price.

Semel was relegated to a post as non-executive chairman of the Yahoo board.

Yahoo announced that Thursday would be Semel's last day on the board of directors.

Semel told Yahoo executives several months ago that he wanted to leave the board and worked with Yang and others to find a replacement.

Board member Roy Bostock is replacing Semel as non-executive chairman.

Semel was a veteran Warner Brothers studio executive when he was hired as Yahoo chief executive in 2001.

"Terry was brought on to lead Yahoo to the promised land of TV shows and relationships with TV studios, which never materialized and took them off their core game," Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said.

"Meanwhile, the nature of being an Internet portal was changing. They kind of got caught with their virtual pants down," he said.

Yang says his mission is to streamline Yahoo and refocus resources on Web search, advertising and the shift to accessing the Internet on the go.

Yahoo has been vexed by sluggish revenue growth despite launching a new online advertising platform a year ago and having hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Yahoo reported its profits dipped to US$206 million in the final three months of last year but still topped expectations by Wall Street analysts.

Yahoo said it earned US$0.15 per share in its final fiscal quarter of last year as compared with US$0.19 per share, or US$269 million, in the same period a year earlier.

Yahoo reported its revenues for last year climbed eight percent to US$1.8 billion as compared to revenues in the prior year.

However, Yahoo's net income for last year was US$660 million, or US$0.47 per share, compared to US$751 million, or US$0.52 per share, in 2006.
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