Was Yang's decision the worst ever?

Jerry Yang has hit a bit of a rough patch. Let's just get that out there.

He's had to surrender the chief executive spot in the company he co-founded. He's had to listen to Steve Ballmer (again) say Microsoft was finished with any plans to rescue Yahoo with an outright purchase.

And no doubt Yang himself now realizes he really blew it. Because he really did.

In February, Ballmer offered Yang and company $44.6 billion for their wheezing operation. That's $33 a share. Now Yahoo is trading for about $9.

Let's see. Couple of lattes or a share of Yahoo? Lattes? Yahoo? Definitely the worst business decision ever.

Says who? Says me.

Look, it was way worse than New Coke. Even worse than the sale of Manhattan. That one first looked like a bad deal for the Native Americans who took $24 for the island. But now, what with Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and all, it looks like the tribe that sold it got the better end.

Maybe you think I'm crazy. Maybe you think Yang's "Doh!" moment was a blunder, but nowhere near the biggest ever. I'd like to hear what you've got. Send your nominee for worst business decision ever to mcassidy@mercurynews.com.

Meantime, I'll share with you some of the boneheaded decisions I think are worthy of a greatest hits list. Feel free to vote for one of these or send a favorite not listed here.

Excite@Home failing to scrounge up $1 million to buy Google back in the day. Hell, the Google chef alone would have been worth a million. Anyway, it wasn't the end of the world for Excite. Oh wait.

Yes it was.

Digital Research missing the chance in 1980 to become Microsoft.

The story goes that Digital founder Gary Kildall was off flying when the big suits from Big Blue came asking to buy an operating system.

Kildall's wife and business partner balked at signing a non-disclosure agreement and IBM turned to then little-known Bill Gates.

Be thankful you weren't at the Kildall dinner table that night.

In a bit of bonehead karma, IBM then went on to forget to get exclusive rights to Gates' DOS. Gates licensed the software to IBM for $80,000 and then turned around and sold his operating system to everyone with a pulse for something like a kajillion dollars.

Hewlett Packard firing Carly Fiorina. Or Hewlett Packard paying Fiorina $21 million when it fired her. Take your pick. Either Fiorina was no good at what she did and deserved to be canned or she was worth $21 million, in which case she sounds like someone you'd want to keep around.

Pets.com. Didn't anybody stop to think about how they were going to mail those 50-pound bags of dog food? OK, the real reason it's on my list? Two words: sock puppet.

Hewlett Packard's decision in 2006 to hire spies to sift through the phone records of reporters and its own board members. Stupid to do. Stupider to get caught. And everybody knows it's cheaper just to order a hit.

Kozmo.com. Hey! I've got an idea! Let's offer a Web service in which we'll deliver a pack of gum to someone's apartment within an hour for free, free, free! Can't miss, right?

The mortgage meltdown of 2008. Wall Street bankers bundle up bad home loans that were made to anyone drawing a breath and sell them as financial instruments that no one quite understands, prompting the collapse of the world economy. Reached for comment, Wall Street said: My bad.

So yeah, rough patch for Jerry Yang, but look at it this way: Maybe he's given us all one more lesson to learn from. Or not.

Mike Cassidy is a technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News.