For Yahoo, Question Is: Who's Yang's Yin?

Yahoo’s successor to CEO Jerry Yang could come from outside the Internet industry, as long as he has a strong operations background and the decisiveness to break the company’s culture of indecision, reports the Wall Street Journal. But even before hiring a CEO, the company needs to decide whether it wants to remain independent or go with a partner, reports the New York Times.

If they want to sell the search biz to Microsoft, they'll need a chief exec adept at deal-making and able to run the online media properties left behind. If not, someone with a strong tech background who can stabilize the company. On the short list to follow Yang’s 18-month tenure as CEO:

• Peter Chernin, News Corp. president
• Tim Armstrong, a Google VP
• Jonathan Miller, AOL ex-CEO
• John Chapple, a Yahoo boardmember and ex-CEO at Nextel
• Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape
• Jeff Jordan, one-time eBay exec
• Susan Decker, Yahoo’s president

(More Yahoo stories.)