According to tech journalist Kara Swisher, some members of Yahoo’s board of directors have renewed discussions with Microsoft about a possible sale of the company to Microsoft.

Such talks appear to be the result of the AOL-Yahoo merger talks making little progress, and fears that the Justice Department will block Yahoo’s proposed advertising deal with Google.

Source: Kara Swisher, “The Deal Dance: AOL and Yahoo (and Even Google and Microsoft) Continue to Waltz”, All Things Digital, October 28, 2008

Just days after Yahoo announced that it had ended merger talks with Microsoft and intended to sign a search advertising partnership with its chief search competitor, Google, a number of senior staff have left the company.

Three executive vice presidents, three senior vice presidents and number of other senior staff have all resigned from Yahoo over the last week or so. Among the departures are:

• Usama Fayyad, chief data officer and executive vice president overseeing Yahoo’s research organization.
• Qi Lu, executive vice president for the search and advertising technology group, overseeing Yahoo’s search engine and search advertising technology.
• Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo’s network division.
• Brad Garlinghouse, senior vice president for communications and communities, responsible Yahoo’s e-mail and messaging services, Yahoo Groups and photo sharing site Flickr.
• Vish Makhijani, senior vice president of Yahoo’s search group.
• Chris Bolte, senior vice president of strategic alliances.
• Jeremy D. Zawodny, a Yahoo staffer since 1999 who helped start its developer network.
• Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, the husband-and-wife founders of Flickr (sold to Yahoo in 2005).

Unsurprisingly, the departures place further pressure on a company that is coming under increasing criticism from shareholders and analysts alike. Billionaire activist investor, Carl Icahn, supported the sale of Yahoo to Microsoft, and is continuing efforts to seize control of the board. Mr Icahn has already vowed that, should he get board control, he will remove Yahoo founder Jerry Yang from his current role as chief executive of the company.

None of this is good news for Yahoo and detracts from advertiser confidence. Let’s face it, what good can be said about a company that walked away from an opportunity to team up with Microsoft and legitimately compete against Google and is now preoccupied with internal strife?

Sources: Miguel Helft, “At Yahoo, the Exodus Continues”, The New York Times, June 20, 2008, Michael Arrington, “Which SVP At Yahoo Quit Today?”, TechCrunch, June 20, 2008