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The chief executive of internet search firm Yahoo, Terry Semel, has stepped down from his position. In the post since 2001, Semel has been replaced by co-founder Jerry Yang. The move comes as a surprise to many, as most will expect Semel to announce retirement plans and name his successor.

Yahoo, one of the early pioneers of the Internet, is steadily losing ground for Internet search and its lucrative advertising dollars to its Silicon Valley neighbor and rival, Google. In fact, Yahoo has been struggling and losing market share in recent years. It currently accounts for about 26% of all online searches in the US, well behind Google which has a market share above 49%.

Semel's departure news has also sparkled Yahoo's shares to rise nearly 3% upon revelation as the market expects Yang to help breathe new life into the company that has been losing momentum.

Yang, who as a Stanford University graduate student helped created one of the first indexes of Internet sites and then took the company public in 1996. He is seen as a new leader to save Yahoo from it's "no-focus business development" as Semel only focus on content development yet forgetting the company's key focus is on search engines.

Yahoo's unsteady stand in the Internet search market is not something new. Just last year, there has been wide-spread news about an internal memo code-named "peanut butter" discussing about Yahoo's problems.

The memo said Yahoo lacked "a focused, cohesive vision" and was using a strategy "described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular."