A week ago, Jerry Yang was trying to sound buoyant about the prospects for an independent Yahoo and insisting he was in it for the long haul. “This is not something I got into lightly last year,” he told the Financial Times, referring to his assumption of the chief executive’s title. “It’s too great a company for anyone who does not intend to be here long-term to do this job.”

For Mr Yang personally, the long term looks like it just got shortened considerably. Having spent much of the year fending off Microsoft ’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, who had strived to stay scrupulously polite despite his mounting personal frustrations, the Yahoo boss on Thursday came under the far more caustic fire of Carl Icahn.