While gearing up for a proxy fight to win Yahoo! Inc. [YHOO], Microsoft Corp. [MSFT] CEO Steve Ballmer might be looking for some last-minute insight into the making of the man whose company he is trying to acquire. Recommended reading for Ballmer includes Friday's San Jose Mercury News, which ran a well-timed, detailed profile of Jerry Yang, reaching back to when he emigrated from Taiwan in 1978 when he was 10.

With his widowed mother and younger brother, Yang moved into a modest one-story house in San Jose, Calif. Despite initially knowing only a single word of English ("shoe"), he quickly became a star student, playing on the tennis team, getting elected president of the student council and eventually winning scholarships to top universities, including Stanford, which he accepted.

At Stanford, he met fellow electrical engineer David Filo, and the pair created "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web," eventually turning a hobby into a hugely successful Internet company.

When Yahoo! went public in 1996, Yang became an instant millionaire. Today, he is 39 and worth about $2.3 billion, and his wife is expecting their second child. While admired as an Internet icon, Yang is widely blamed for not acting more quickly and more decisively since re-taking the CEO job last June. Among other issues, some argue that Yahoo! should have been much more aggressive about social networking.

Until now, Yang's life has certainly been the stuff that American dreams are made of. Yet it's unlikely that Yahoo! is about to come to Microsoft's table and negotiate a deal amicably by tomorrow. Many view a hostile -- and eventually successful -- bid by Microsoft as the most likely outcome. So much for fairy-tale endings.  -- Mary Kathleen Flynn

See April 25 story on Yang from The San Jose Mercury News
See April 25 post on Yahoo! and social networking from Tech Confidential
See April 24 post on Microsoft's bid fro Yahoo! from from Tech Confidential
See March 14 post on Yang's negotiating skills from Tech Confidential