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Now it's nasty. Sayonara, Jerry?

Icahn is stepping up his campaign to take over Yahoo's board and shake up the company's leadership with tough talk.  DailyTech has closely followed the ongoing drama between Icahn and board, which have significant ramifications on the possibility of a possible Microsoft merger.

This week Icahn delivered his hardest-hitting comments yet.  In them he says that if his takeover is successful, he will seek to depose Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang, whom he sees a roadblock to a merger.  While Icahn was delivering his comments, Yahoo's board was busily meeting to discuss possible limited partnerships with Microsoft or the possibility of outsourcing its search functions to Google Inc.

In an interview Icahn laid on the criticism thickly for what he believes are disingenuous actions on the part of the board and Yang in their willingness to consider an offer.  He also accuses them of intentionally setting [up] an artificially costly employee-retention plan to deter a potential deal.  Icahn comments, "I am amazed at the lengths that Jerry Yang and the board went to entrench themselves in this situation."

Icahn Tells Yahoo CEO Yang That His Days With The Company Are Numbered

...and more. Flickr Founders, Executives Jumping Off Yahoo Ship

Only a year after creating Flickr, the pair sold it in 2005 to Yahoo for a reported $35 million.  Because of their site's loyal following, Butterfield and Fake were included in the 2006 list of Time magazine's list of the world's most important people.  The move was not a major surprise as Fake had already moved to another Yahoo division and Butterfield was taking a lengthy paternity leave.  With the departures, Kakul Srivastava who became general manager of the Flickr team in April will continue his leadership position.

While the departure of Butterfield and Fake might not be particularly alarming, three other recent departures came as a bit more of a surprise.  Two Yahoo executive vice presidents, Jeff Weiner and Dr. Usama Fayyad put in their resignations in the last month.  Yahoo has kept relatively silent about these resignations, which has lead to whispering in the internet community over whether the failure of the Microsoft deal could have been their motivation to leave.

Weiner headed Yahoo's search engine and e-mail services.  He is now an "executive in residence" at two venture capital businesses, Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.  Dr. Fayyad was the head of Yahoo's data mining and user data analysis efforts, which aided ad targeting.  Dr. Fayyad has not announced his official plans.

To top it off, Jeremy Zawodny another Yahoo veteran executive who helped found the Yahoo developer network and push Yahoo towards open source, is leaving.  He posted the news on his blog.  He asserted that he was leaving to pursue another opportunity, not because of Yahoo's struggles.