While Yahoo's shares are plunging back and are expected to return to values recorded before Microsoft announced its unsolicited bid, its executives are in the hot seat for apparently ruining the chance for the shareholders to get a significant premium over the market value of their stock.

But how this has come to pass? Well, some appear to think that Jerry Yang is more or less a fool and he "ruined" the company's short-lived high value. ThinkPanmure analyst William Morrison wrote over the weekend that the Yahoo decision to dismiss Microsoft's bid “may likely go down as one of the more destructive decisions for shareholder value in the history of Internet stocks.”

Most analysts think the same way. But their logic is flawed in that they assume that, well, Yahoo's executives are a bunch of fools and they didn't see this coming. Also, it's pretty amazing how little credit they give to a high-profile executive and co-founder such as Yang. The only explanation is that they know more than the public and analysts know at this point, and the company is almost certainly preparing to announce another deal. Most likely, it will be some kind of collaboration, probably with Google.

Also, Yahoo has not entirely ditched Microsoft offer, it just wants more money. "If they have anything new to say, we would be open," said Jerry Yang, the CEO and 39-year-old co-founder of the pioneering Internet company to Reuters in an interview late Monday. "We were negotiating a way to find common ground, and then on Saturday they chose to walk away," Yang said.

So did Yahoo overvaluate itself and Yang and his fellow executives are a pack of fools who threw a great opportunity away? Well, no, Yang knows very well there are estimates, such as the one from JP Morgan, which puts the Yahoo stock up 70 percent in 2009 following a lucrative deal with, let's say, Google. This means that shareholders could get more value than the Microsoft offer, without selling off to the Redmond giant and ruining Yahoo's different corporate culture.

Now the greedy shareholders are expecting to see whether Yahoo will go ahead to strike a deal with Google or another advertising company. Such a deal will relieve most of the pressure from shareholders, who are angry that they lost an opportunity to make a quick buck by selling off to Microsoft at a significant premium over market value.