The board of web giant Yahoo is set to discuss the company's future, and that of high-profile chief executive Marissa Mayer, when it meets this week, according to US media reports.

People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal the board was expected to discuss during meetings starting Wednesday whether to proceed with a plan to spin off more than $US30 billion ($41 billion) in shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Holding Group or find a buyer for its core business of web properties, or both.

The company's shares were up more than 6 per cent in extended trading in New York.

Yahoo's core business, which includes popular services like Yahoo Mail and its news and sports sites, could attract private equity firms, media and telecom companies or firms, analysts have said in the past.

Yahoo declined to comment on the report.

The news comes as Mayer faces growing pressure over the company's performance and her pay package, which jumped 69 per cent to $US42.1 million last year despite struggling to overhaul the business

In a scathing attack two months ago, Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, called her the "most overpaid CEO in history," and alluded she was only still in her job because she was pregnant with twins.

Mayer came to Yahoo after a long stint at Google.

Her arrival kicked off heightened expectations of a quick turnaround at Yahoo, which had struggled to grow its advertising business to compete with market leaders Google and Facebook.

Hopes of a comeback crumbled as Yahoo's plan to push mobile, video, native and social media ads - a strategy Mayer introduced in 2014 under the acronym Mavens - failed to increase revenues as desktop search ads continued to decline.

A $US1.1 billion deal in 2013 to acquire social blogging site Tumblr also hit snags, with investors arguing that Mayer overpaid for an unprofitable product. The deal lifted Yahoo's user base to about 1 billion but did not bring in advertisers.

In September, Yahoo's plans for the spinoff of its stake in Alibaba hit a roadblock when the US Internal Revenue Service denied a request to bless the transaction as a tax-free deal.

Yahoo said it planned to proceed with the spinoff despite the tax office's announcement, but has not yet done so.

In November, activist investor Starboard Value asked Yahoo to drop plans to spin off its stake in Alibaba and urged the company to sell its core search and display advertising businesses instead.

During Mayer's 13-year tenure at Google, she led the Google Earth, Gmail and Google News teams and is credited with helping create the company's celebrated search page.

Reuters with BusinessDay