Yahoo’s already crushed stock price has fallen further today – its down 8.36% since this morning, bringing it to a nearly five year low of $17.75. Yahoo has been as high as $34 in the last year (thanks to that Microsoft takeover bid), which means nearly $23 billion has been taken out of shareholder pockets in that period.

How long can Jerry weather this storm? Is he willing to drive the company into the ground to prove how much he hates Microsoft?

Plans must be in place at the board level to name a successor soon. In fact, I’m guessing some arrangement was made with Carl Icahn when he agreed to back off his proxy fight before the Yahoo shareholder meeting last month. If the stock price continues to fall, Yang will be forced to step down sooner (at least, any sane public company would remove him, Yahoo has not shown much sanity this year).

We’re still betting on Dan Rosensweig, who left Yahoo in December 2006, to come back. In June we named him as a possible successor should Yang bail out. Our guess is he’d take the job if asked.