Jerry Yang

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the struggling Internet company, as it tries to revive its revenue growth and win over disgruntled shareholders under a new leader.

The departure, announced Tuesday, punctuates the end of an era at Yahoo, an Internet icon that has spent much of the last decade scrambling to catch up to Internet search leader Google Inc. — a company that got early encouragement and advice from Yang. It comes just two weeks after Yahoo Inc. hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its CEO.

Thompson is the fourth CEO in less than five years to try to turn around Yahoo. It's a daunting assignment that Yang was unable to pull off during his own tumultuous 18-month reign as the company's CEO in 2007 and 2008.

Yang, 43, endorsed Thompson in his resignation from Yahoo's board of directors. “My time at Yahoo, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life,” Yang wrote in a letter to Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock. “However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo.”