Would it surprise you to know that BoomTown doesn’t really care anymore if TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington sidelines as a blogger while he makes investments in tech companies his tech news site covers?

In a post yesterday, titled “An Update to My Investment Policy,” Arrington made his seemingly cogent arguments that plenty of disclosure made it all “fine,” took one of his typical look-at-me swipes at anyone who dared to question this logic (apparently, we’re crappy “direct” competitors, so we haters have no standing to comment!) and presumably went on his merry investing way.

While I was first irked–because it was an appalling show to many of us cranky standards-insisting whiners–I soon realized Arrington had made a good argument about who he is and, frankly, who he has always been.

In other words, it’s a kind of there-he-goes-again thing, vaguely icky but hardly surprising and completely genuine.

Meanwhile, his new boss, AOL content head Arianna Huffington, pointed me to his post in an email.

When I asked her for an on-the-record comment, as usual, she politely and quickly complied, writing in support of Arrington:

“TechCrunch is committed to transparency. Michael has written about the guidelines he follows–that he rarely writes about companies in which he is an investor, and that, when he does, he clearly discloses this information. The same rules apply when TechCrunch’s writers cover these companies.”

Hold the phone.

Because while I kind of understand where Arrington is coming from, what I don’t understand is how this kind of convenient and on-the-fly rule-making can govern a much larger company whose strongly and repeatedly stated goal by Huffington herself is to create quality journalism.

Since I believed Huffington–whom I like very much as an Internet figure and as a friend–I was confused at what the rules for the whole of AOL content were now.

That’s why I sent her a long new list of questions to answer, which are:

1) What are, if any, the ethical guidelines about making investments for the editorial staff at HuffPo media group properties?

2) Since Arrington now seems to have permission to do so from you, can other editors at AOL properties do the same–that is, make very adjacent investments to what their site covers, as long as they disclose it? For example, can an editor who runs the entertainment site make investments in entertainment companies she/he has coverage responsibility over? (By the way, did you give him permission to make these investments? Did he ask?)

3) Is there anyone who polices what is fair coverage of competitors–i.e. companies competing with companies your editors invest in?

4) If an editor makes investments in a company and someone who works for them writes about that company, does that editor have to recuse himself from the story? Is that even possible?

5) Since you just fired someone for what you called an ethical breach–asking freelancers to work for free and also seemingly defending an attempt to curry favor with an advertiser/client–why is this not an ethical breach?

I had a lot more questions, still unanswered by Huffington, but you can see where this is going.

Simply put, does AOL, which is touting itself as a 21st-century media company, need to have 21st-century rules of the road? Or perhaps not so much?

UPDATE: Now, it is a real clown circus at AOL, with the company declaring that editorial personnel cannot make investments, except Arrington!

“As a rule, in order to avoid conflicts of interests, AOL Huffington Post Media Group editors, writers, and reporters may not have a financial interest in a company or industry that they regularly cover,” AOL said in a statement to Business Insider today, even though I nicely asked for a comment on the issue yesterday. “Arrington operates from a unique position.”

And how! Where do I get such a faboo ethical hall pass from Content Principal Huffington?

I suppose I should go all slouching-towards-Bethlehem here, and wring my hands over this unusual ruling, but what’s the use?

As you might have read: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

How did this all start, especially since I feel like this ridiculous tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot over Arrington’s investment-making might actually be my fault a little bit?

Here’s why:

On Tuesday night around 10 pm (just when I start getting revved up), I wrote a testy email to Arrington’s bosses at AOL–Huffington and CEO Tim Armstrong–as well as the Internet portal’s sharp PR head, asking for a response about what seemed to me to be a glaring conflict of interest at TechCrunch related to new investment activity by Arrington and the site’s coverage of those particular companies he had invested in.

It was all disclosed, of course, but it still felt, as I said, icky.

And, given the recent and loudly stated goal of promoting quality journalism by Huffington–including the recent dismissal of AOL’s Moviefone site editor over what the company considered ethical lapses–it seemed pertinent to ask.

Mostly because I don’t think they actually knew much–if at all–about Arrington’s increasing investing action. Armstrong said as much in an email to me, and Huffington assured me they were going to check it out tout de suite.

But rather than the answer I was waiting on, up popped Arrington’s missive yesterday, which I assume came after his bosses asked for some info on this.

In it, he explained his controversial decision to go back into investing again, in what is clearly a more significant manner.

It was a practice he had abandoned years earlier, apparently after being pecked by detractors for it.

But, dear readers, no more! Let Arrington be Arrington!

And that seems to be a talented blogger with a flare for the dramatic, with a clearly sharply-honed news nose and sassy writing skills, but a scribe who much prefers to be a playah than just an observer and chronicler of that play.

And, after more reflection, I thought: Well, maybe it is a better idea for Arrington to go play with all the boys in Silicon Valley, which would probably be more fun than taking flack for lack of traditional journalistic ethics he never ascribed to in the first place.

I once jokingly nicknamed Arrington Yertle the Turtle after the Dr. Seuss book on one dubious king of one small pond in Sala-Ma-Sond, after he went particularly nuts on the topic of news-embargo breaking.

That diatribe on how he saw news rules–which is to say, there aren’t any that bind him–was vintage Arrington, too. And, after reading his latest post, I suddenly realized that it’s pointless to give a turtle a hard time for not being a fish.

But Huffington is another story. She has put herself in word and deed right into the center of the debate on where news is going on the Web, especially after AOL paid $315 million for her Huffington Post news and opinion site.

Huffington has certainly taken a lot of hits over the years as the HuffPo has grown, some deserved, but she has clearly led an impressive effort.

In fact, I think the cute-kitten and celebrity-loving angle played up by her detractors to dismiss her is silliness, because she and the Huffington Post are clearly more than that and are obviously having a major impact on the future direction of content in the digital age.

But that power she has sought also gives her a responsibility to say exactly what that means on a real and granular and consistent level, beyond the platitudes of wanting to make great journalism that she declares all the time now.

In other words, very specifically: What does Arianna Huffington stand for in regards to journalism? What are her rules and standards and codes? And, perhaps more importantly, what does she not stand up for?

These are questions I hope Huffington–who is really good at smacking back at criticism, too (See: the New York Times’ Bill Keller)–will address in one of her patented blog-xplosions and many times over, too.

Until then, here’s a link to my very long and very detailed ethics disclosure on All Things Digital, which is exactly how our little site thinks it should be in the digital age.

In short, besides signing the Dow Jones Code of Conduct–standard at The Wall Street Journal and other DJ publications–all our editorial staff is required to also pen their own in-plain-English personal and detailed account of disclosures that are pertinent to their job.

(You can read an extensive interview with me on the subject, in fact, which was posted here by Two Bananas Marketing, this week.)

My ATD disclosure is probably the most detailed of all of them, since I gay-married Megan Smith a dozen years ago. She later became a VP at Google, which I cover from time to time, especially related to other companies I focus on more, such as Yahoo.

Most of the time, if you care to read my posts on Google, I am probably tougher and snarkier than not, mostly because I know the search giant from its earliest days.

And, even though I once wrote extensively for the Journal about Google since its founding and before Megan arrived there, I thought it wise to lay it all out in detailed detail.

(By the way, if you want to try to tweak me by asking what News Corp.-owned Fox News’ ethics rules are, I don’t know, as ATD belongs to Dow Jones, which has had them forever. I will say, though, that Roger Ailes often freaks me out.)

In any case, as Arrington preaches, the more disclosure the better, and perhaps I should say even more so here, given the current swirl, by noting explicitly that I garner exactly no financial benefits from my relationship with Megan.

That might seem odd, because she certainly earns more. But I don’t know how much nor do I ask, since we have separate bank accounts and she always pays up–well, almost always–when half the bills are due. While it sounds painfully un-romantic, we only spend overall what each of us can afford equally in an exact 50-50 split.

In addition, I also legally signed away all rights to inheritance–although I had no such marriage rights in the first place, being gay–of Megan’s assets, which are in a trust for her relatives and our sons (for when they are too old to have any fun).

More to the point, I believe this makes me the only person to marry an exec at a hot Silicon Valley company with no prospect of any gold-digging.

Thus, I clearly would make the worst investor ever–not that I ever invest in tech or plan to while I am a reporter covering the sector.

Thank god, I suppose, that Michael Arrington is there to take up the slack.

“We are wandering around and people are asking us questions and we don’t know what’s going on ourselves,” said one very nervous Yahoo ad salesperson this morning, in New York for Advertising Week, the most important gathering of the year for online sales. “There’s a lot of uncertainty from an employee perspective.”

You can say that again.

Today, as news BoomTown broke about the departure of Yahoo’s U.S. head Hilary Schneider and two other key execs at the Internet giant spread, I have been on the receiving end of a spate of emails and calls and text messages from staffers at the Silicon Valley icon searching for information about what’s up at their own company.

That’s because neither the top management of Yahoo (YHOO) nor its typically ineffectual board has communicated to its thousands of employees about exactly what is going on, nor about plans to replace bosses in charge of giant swaths of the business.

Now, for example, Yahoo’s ad sales execs say they don’t know who to report to, since Schneider is headed out and no one person replaced U.S. ad sales leader Joanne Bradford in Yahoo’s key moneymaking market after she left in March.

And media workers, such as GMs of powerful Yahoo news, sports, finance and mobile efforts, all under departing Audience head David Ko and VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro, are also wondering who is now in charge.

Here’s my promise: I will have all internal memos here, as soon as they are released and I can get my mitts on them.

It’s not clear when that will be. Sources said Yahoo might make a statement about the situation this afternoon, before the planned announcement tomorrow afternoon about the exec departures, but it has not been determined yet.

But sources said Yahoo might have an exec to announce to replace at least Schneider by today, given how important sales are to the company.

Since Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is from Microsoft and he has brought in several execs from there to Yahoo, rumors are swirling around yet another one coming in.

Some outside partners are also nervous, including those staying at Microsoft.

In an interview just this morning with the new head of global ad sales for Microsoft (MSFT) Carolyn Everson, for example, she pointed out that Yahoo is slated to take over premium online ad sales for the software giant under the terms of their search and technology partnership in just two weeks.

“I’ll be honest,” she said. “We are a little worried.” But she added that Yahoo remains an important strategic partner and the success of the alliance is a key focus.

Worried? Get in line, it seems.

Digits rounded up a few of the most notable stories from this summer as cautionary tales:

One of the most dramatic tales that surfaced this month was the unnamed woman in the UK who was fired after she insulted her boss and wrote “OMG I HATE MY JOB!!” in a Facebook status update, without realizing that he was her Facebook friend.

Her boss responded on Facebook: “You also seem to have forgotten that you have 2 weeks left on your 6 month trial period. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow….And yes, I’m serious.” Screenshots of the whole Facebook exchange have spread virally all over the Web.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

BoomTown liveblogged Yahoo’s “chalk talk” about search earlier today, which was an update of what the Internet giant is up to in the competitive space that includes Google and Microsoft.

Presenting at the event were Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs and Yahoo Search Strategy; Larry Cornett, VP of Consumer Products; and Marc Davis, chief scientist of Yahoo Mobile.

At its HQ in Silicon Valley last week, Google put on a similar show-off, called “Searchology,” about its own latest search innovations.

And although they are clearly No. 1 and No. 2 in the search space, both Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) are bracing for the launch a major overhaul of the Microsoft’s (MSFT) search offering, which is expected next week at the D: All Things Digital conference and code-named “Kumo.”

11:45 a.m. PDT: A delightful lunch was offered to a room full of tech reporters at the San Francisco offices of Yahoo’s outside PR firm, Outcast Communications.

But all the munching was quickly swept aside by the aggressive tone of the speech to be delivered by the normally gentle-looking Yahoos.

Apparently, top Yahoo execs want to “kill the 10 blue links.”

Yipes!

“Nobody really wants to search,” said Raghavan, describing a broken consumer experience and how Yahoo wanted to fix it. This has been a bell he has been ringing from last fall, in fact.

But we all were soon deep in the weeds of tech, as he noted that Yahoo wanted to move from a “Web of pages to a Web of objects.”

It still sounded very, very Webby.

12:01 p.m.: Soon, Raghavan started to talk about Yahoo products, such as Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS), which he says has generated almost as many daily queries as Microsoft’s whole search offering.

Snap!

Next up was Cornett, who began talking about intent and how Yahoo was trying to weave what a consumer wants in with what is displayed.

That means “helping users accomplish that goal by connecting objects in the real world.”

He trotted out Yahoo’s Search Pad offering, which is simply a way for people to keep track of their searches online, instead of on a dopey scrap of paper that the dog eats.

Cornett also showed how embedded music, video and other structured data are inserted into mostly dull search results.

Yahoo, in other words, is going to know what we want and give it to us–even before we know we want it. Sounds like my mother!

12:15 p.m.: Cornett reeled off lots of stats about its SearchMonkey technology, which is a year old.

There was a picture of a monkey with a birthday hat, natch! (See here!)

SearchMonkey, according to Yahoo, is a “framework for creating small applications that enhance Yahoo search results with additional data and structure.”

Cornett then invited up Facebook software engineer Alex Moskalyuk to talk about building apps with SearchMonkey.

Lots of tech talk that was actually incomprehensible to the reporters gathered, although they all scribbled away (I, at this juncture, chose to eat another sandwich).

Here is one line: “Originally used XPath extractor, switched entirely to hCard.”

Welcome to my world! It’s like some telephone guy talking apart a handset and explaining the guts of the device, when I am only interested in making a call.

12:23 p.m.: Next up: Matthew Hertz of Pipl.com, a people search engine built on Yahoo’s BOSS.

People search was, he said, a “deep Web challenge.” Indeed, there needs to be an easier way of finding out about a potential date online!

Actually, Pipl is a nice service and useful too, and Hertz is right that Pipl should not have to reinvent the search wheel to take advantage of all the data already available on big search services.

12:29 p.m.: Yahoo’s chief mobile geek Marc Davis was up, talking about “answers, not just links.”

Now they’re talking!

Actually, mobile is a key search arena with the increasing popularity of smart phones.

That means knowing everything from movie times to weather to flights to cheap gas prices nearby immediately.

Twittery humanity needs to know now!

Yahoo’s offering is called oneSearch. which is also a good product. It better be. “For many people in the world, their phone is the way to access” the Internet, said Davis.

12:40 p.m.: Now, the Yahoos summed up “What’s Next?”

Let’s review: Kill the blue links! Intent! Objects! Open! Mobile!

Raghavan then gave me a great joke by using the term: WOO, which is Web of objects. Apparently, they go around Yahoo talking about getting to the WOO.

It sounded naughty and I liked it.

Time for Q&A!

A question was posed about how quickly Yahoo rolls out these technologies, which are often limited in “bucket tests” of smaller groups of users.

As soon as they can, of course.

Next question was about how WOO impacts online ads. “It takes us away from a marketplace of keywords to a marketplace of intent,” said Raghavan.

That means advertisers can eventually make better ads. Oh, joy.

Then a question about when links are appropriate and when rich search should prevail.

Well, it depends on the user!

Next, a question about the currently trendy “real-time” search–a magical power that the blogosphere has, in its infinite hype-osity, bestowed on Twitter.

Raghavan called it a “buzzword” and I agreed.

Cornett added, correctly, that it should be about precision and accuracy in search, as well as serving “fresh” data. Fresh was a diplomatic word for whatever the mostly useless tweets are yammering on about at any given moment, which are most pointless.

The next question was about how soon a lot of this cool rich search data gets to the masses. Answer: Some of it is in testing and some is live systemwide.

I then asked about whether Yahoo would shove out the bells and whistles if, say, Microsoft’s new search service has a lot of the same features.

Cornett noted that Yahoo will only roll out after testing showed good results.

In other words, Yahoo will kill (or drink) no blue links before their time!

More questions about rich data, with one that makes the point that Yahoo was originally known for “curation,” which was its original business as the Web’s first truly useful directory.

It was.

1:01 p.m.: Still more questions.

Someone asked the Yahoos to comment on a recent post on TechCrunch that said the company was not developing for BlackBerry and focusing intently on the iPhone from Apple (AAPL). An exaggeration, said Davis, which was a diplomatic way of saying the story was wrong.

Blackberry users can now relax.

Later today, as BoomTown reported last week, Yahoo is putting on a search party.

Well, not a “party” party–although there will apparently be some lunch noshing at the “Search chalk talk,” during which top techies at the Internet giant will talk up the strategy for its more innovative products, such as Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) and Search Monkey.

Presenting at the event with be: Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs and Yahoo Search Strategy; Larry Cornett, VP of Consumer Products; and Lee Ott, senior director, Mobile Search.

Yahoo (YHOO) has a search share that hovers around 20 percent, compared to the more than 70 percent that Google (GOOG) has.

At its HQ in Silicon Valley last week, Google put on a similar show-off, called “Searchology,” about its latest search innovations.

And, although they are clearly No. 1 and No. 2, both Google and Yahoo are bracing for the launch a major overhaul of Microsoft’s (MSFT) search offering, which is expected soon and code-named “Kumo.”

It will be interesting to see what Yahoo’s techies focus on, especially as the company’s brass continue to talk with Microsoft about a possible search and online advertising partnership.

I’ll be liveblogging the Yahoo event, which begins at 11:30 a.m. PDT.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Suddenly, search!

Earlier this week, Google put on a show called “Searchology” about its latest search innovations at its HQ in Silicon Valley.

And next Tuesday, Yahoo will trot out its search extravaganza, called “Search chalk talk,” during which top search techies will talk up its more innovative products, such as Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) and Search Monkey.

Could all this search blabbing have anything to do with a certain upcoming launch of a new search offering by a very rich and even more determined giant tech company?

As in: Microsoft (MSFT) and whatever it ends up calling its redone search product, code-named Kumo.

Since the launch is likely to be loud and splashy, the No. 1 and No. 2 search players needed to make some of their own noise in advance about their stuff.

So Google (GOOG)–which has a massive lead in search of upward of 70 percent–trotted out Udi Manber, VP of Search Engineering, and Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience, this past Tuesday for a media audience.

The distillation of the event was that doing search well is still really, really hard–a new kind of “rocket science,” in fact, as Manber declared.

(Google’s spaceship crashed a bit today, as it turned out, with an outage, which was blamed on a “traffic jam” in Asia.)

At the event, the search giant also unveiled some new bells and whistles, such as Search Options, including a “Wonder Wheel” and “Google Squared,” as well as “Rich Snippets.”

Not to be outdone, Yahoo (YHOO) will have its own confab for reporters and bloggers next Tuesday morning in San Francisco.

Presenting at the event with be: Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs and Yahoo Search Strategy; Larry Cornett, VP of Consumer Products; and Lee Ott, senior director, Mobile Search.

Yahoo has a search share that hovers around 20 percent, which makes the upcoming increased competition from Microsoft more problematic.

Which is why the company continues its talks with Microsoft about a search and online advertising partnership.

But until any deal is struck, of course, it will be competition as usual.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Kara Swisher broke the story last night, but for the record, here’s the AOL press release announcing the Time Warner unit’s umpteenth new sales boss. Meet Jeff Levick, a Google (GOOG) vet who replaces Yahoo (YHOO) vet Greg Coleman, who just started in February.

Coleman’s departure won’t come as a shock to many online ad executives, who were predicting he’d leave as soon as AOL CEO Tim Armstrong started on April 7, if not sooner.

Then again, Armstrong never asked Coleman to slow down or reconsider the reorg of the sales group that he’d been undertaking on his own. Now it’s unclear whether he wants his former colleague to follow Coleman’s lead or blow every thing up yet again.

Presumably this will all be cleared up before Time Warner (TWX) spins off the Internet company.

JEFF LEVICK NAMED HEAD OF AOL GLOBAL ADVERTISING AND STRATEGY

New York, NY – April 30, 2009 – AOL announced that Jeff Levick will join the company as President, Global Advertising and Strategy. In this new and expanded role, Levick will be responsible for Platform-A, AOL’s advertising business, as well as developing global revenue strategies. Levick comes to AOL from Google, where he was most recently VP of Industry Development and Marketing, The Americas. He will report directly to AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong.

“Our goal at AOL is to create great content and products, as well as make our advertising offerings the best in the industry for marketers and we are putting together the strategy to achieve that. I’m delighted that Jeff will be coming on board to lead this effort,” Armstrong said. “I’ve worked with Jeff for more than seven years at Google, and he is absolutely the right person to drive growth in our premium ad sales, dramatically scale our Advertising.com business, and further develop AOL’s research initiatives and consumer insights.”

“This is a perfect time to join AOL and I firmly believe that AOL’s best days are ahead of it,” said Levick. “The company has one of the largest and most engaged audiences on the Web, some of the best advertising technology in the business, and a powerful third-party network. There is great opportunity here for us to capture.”

As a result of this change, Greg Coleman will be leaving Platform-A, where he has served as President since early February 2009.

“In only a short time, Greg made a strong imprint on Platform-A’s sales organization – reorganizing and refocusing the team,” said Armstrong. “I appreciate his efforts and know that they will contribute to the work that lies ahead with Platform-A.”

Levick will officially join AOL in the coming weeks. At Google, Levick was responsible for business marketing activities for the Americas as well as sales development and strategy for all of the vertical industries covered by Google’s Americas sales organization. Levick joined Google in 2001 and has held various executive management positions in the company’s advertising sales organization in both North America and Europe.

Prior to joining Google, Levick served as a corporate attorney with a specialty in mergers and acquisitions at the international law firm of Katten Muchin Rosenman, and held roles at various online ventures in Chicago. He currently serves on the board of directors of Helium.com, the advisory board of the College of Communications at DePaul University and as an advisory board member of the global trade organization Search Engine Strategies (SES). Levick holds a J.D. from DePaul University and a bachelor’s degree from New York University, where he graduated cum laude.

Oh, a nice tiny surprise from Yahoo, as it reported its fourth-quarter results, which came in at 17 cents a share in adjusted earnings, compared to the 12 to 13 cents Wall Street was expecting.

“Despite the challenging economic environment, Yahoo! delivered adjusted operating cash flow above the midpoint of guidance for the fourth quarter,” said new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in the company’s official release. “The company also made important investments while aggressively managing costs, leaving us better positioned to weather the economic downturn and emerge stronger when advertiser spending improves. We have work to do, but I am excited by Yahoo!’s opportunities, and encouraged by the tremendous innovation and momentum I’ve seen since joining the company as CEO.”

But let’s experience Bartz Live and Unplugged at the fourth-quarter earnings conference call, including a Q&A in which–the company’s intro speaker noted at the top of the call–former Yahoo (YHOO) CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang might make an unexpected cameo appearance.

(He didn’t.)

2:08 p.m. PST:

It’s Carol’s show obviously, coming on first and foremost, with a little joke, after hearing all the typical caveats that must be uttered by Yahoo’s investor relations folks before the call begins.

“I should have understood all those risks before I took this job,” she chuckled.

Now that’s the understatement of the year!

Noting she has been on the job only eight days, meeting and greeting the folks of Yahoo, Bartz said she was impressed by the energy and “can-do” spirit of the company, noting that the product pipeline was fantastic.

Of course, products have never been the problem at Yahoo, as many have noted (including BoomTown many, many times). Execution has been the devil in the details!

Bartz obviously got this, but was not going to insult former management this time, as she did in her debut public conference with the press and analysts.

Right after she was hired in mid-January, Bartz noted that Yahoo and its assets, “frankly, could use a little management.”

But it is probably not a good idea to say that again with thus-far silent Jerry Yang sitting right next to her.

2:09 p.m. PST

A tiny bit of kissing up to Bartz by CFO Blake Jorgensen, who started to go over the numbers in great detail, putting the best face on a weakish performance overall, especially compared to previous years.

At the end, he said that Yahoo had performed well in 2008, considering the poor economy, and added guidance going forward was not great either, especially compared to a year ago.

Also, he warned Wall Street not to expect too much guidance for 2009, as Microsoft had also said last week in its own depressing earnings call.

2:20 p.m PST:

Back to can-do Carol Bartz, who began by pointing to all the various assets that Yahoo has–including its Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) product and Yahoo News–all of which are strong products for advertisers, she said.

But Bartz also finally made the point that execution needs to improve, which she said was “addressable.”

Before the Q&A started, she answered some questions about the company she asked herself, before they could be asked by others. Apparently, now that Bartz is an “insider,” she knows better than anyone else!

Did she come to Yahoo to sell it? “No.”

Will she sell search? Bartz does not know yet, but noted “search is a very valuable part of [Yahoo's] business.”

She added that Yahoo search market share was three times the size of the third player, which Bartz curiously did not name, but which is–of course!–Microsoft–which wants very much to buy Yahoo’s search business.

Uh-oh, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer might not get his way so quickly!

2:26 p.m. PST:

The first question was about selling the company.

“I did not come to Yahoo to sell the company,” said Bartz again. “It’s too early to say more than that.”

The second question was about reports–in this column too!–about talks with Microsoft and Time Warner (TWX) unit AOL recently.

Bartz said Yahoo does not comment on reports that “come from nowhere.”

Sorry to disagree, but they did come from somewhere and were very well-sourced–just like the absolutely on-target post this column did of Bartz’s pending CEOship at Yahoo, before it was officially announced. But let’s just try to ignore that slight and move on–unless, of course, Bartz keeps up with what has become regular blog-bashing, which means a testy war of words and copious leaked memos to come!

The third question was about the management. Bartz said she plans on getting the lines of communication clearer, which she said she was really good at.

Kissing up to herself was a nice touch.

2:33 p.m. PST:

Next came a question about international business–which is the least of Yahoo’s worries, no matter what its execs say about the great products.

The next question was about guidance. No guidance, folks!

Now, one on the display business, with questions about the pressure on prices and on premium online advertising, which is Yahoo’s top business.

Jorgensen said Yahoo is trying to help advertisers, but that there has been and will continue to be a slowdown in advertising, due to the recession.

More on outlook, cost-cutting, etc. Jorgensen: More caution. Hey, analysts, we’re in a recession and I am not so sure how many ways he can say that.

So far, no Jerry Yang, which was starting to seem odd, since that Yahoo minion said he might be chatting away too.

But, as I said, it seems to be Carol’s show, which has been highly entertaining so far in her tenure, although she’d probably scowl at me sternly for saying that and pull out that cheap trick of insulting the press again.

Next up was a question to about various foreign assets and investments. Bartz will look into it! Jorgensen got in a good joke about her priority not being foreign tax issues.

The following question was about product innovation aimed at a younger demographic.

Bartz was on top of that too, pointing out that she has kids in their 20s.

First, she noted children do grow up, and that they will start to use Yahoo products like its finance offerings, as they move into the workforce and have less time to post dopey pictures on Facebook and throw digital sheep.

Also, young people are finicky, she added. They jumped from MySpace to Facebook, after all!

“Who knows what’s going to come next?,” she said, sounding like a typically exasperated parent. In other words, Yahoo will grab them when they grow up and prefer to be more dull!

2:43 p.m. PST:

The next question was about the timing of changes to come, which prompted Bartz to make another joke about buying the New York Times tomorrow! She was kidding, because the analyst asking the question suggested the troubled Yahoo buy the troubled media company in a recent report.

But, seriously folks, Bartz reiterated: “Gimme some time.”

Next, someone asked about the advertising sales force at Yahoo, which is a good question. Bartz is headed to a sales force meeting in a few weeks, she said, wherein she plans to have a beer with them and find out (once they are drunk and presumably easy to get blabbing).

Still, no Jerry Yang! Sigh. I suddenly desperately miss him and his lower-case ways.

The next question was on shareholder value, which has not been very valuable of late. Bartz noted that everything is on the table related to Yahoo’s businesses, but underscored how valuable the property is as a whole.

“This is not a company that needs to be pulled apart and left for the chickens,” said Bartz.

Apparently, this folksy little saying is from her Wisconsin upbringing. Scary poultry metaphor alert!

Bartz is asked about top assets at Yahoo.

She once again noted that Yahoo’s great products will save the day, from customization to integration of assets. “If we have strong products, we will attract the audience that just beats everything,” said Bartz.

A question about search and display being together, which is a sneaky way to ask about Microsoft, since that’s the great debate within Yahoo over whether to do a deal to outsource it or not.

Bartz made a confusing house metaphor, with search being the house, but it is completely lost on me. Is search the house or a living room or what?

“Whether we keep it or sell it, it’s an important asset,” Bartz then said, which was a clever way of saying exactly nothing.

2:55 p.m. PST:

A question on Yahoo brand, which Bartz basically said is about being the place people come every day. But she admitted there was too much complexity to that brand, although products are strong!

Next, someone asked a question about relevancy of Yahoo. “Our users don’t need constant change,” noted Bartz, who has a decent point about the jumpy nature of Web 2.0′s change-for-change’s-sake mantra.

Still–let’s be honest–Yahoo’s missed a key trend or two in recent years.

Next up was a question about ad prices and another on cost cuts. Jorgensen said that it’ll be more about efficiencies and perhaps some more outsourcing.

Bartz thanked the group for not being “too pushy” in their questions, which was an odd end note, since pushy should be the main job of analysts.

In fact, after listening to the call, I hope that Wall Street keeps up the pushy factor, as investors deserve a lot more answers from Bartz and Yahoo going forward.

It is not, as Bartz insisted in the conference call, a case of inside and outside perceptions being different. Yahoo does have strong products, but it still has gotten itself into its current mess all by itself, much of which has little to do with the weak economy.

That’s why I plan on being very pushy, asking about everything from what structural changes Bartz plans to make to how she envisions Yahoo’s business going forward to improving morale on a sustained basis to what she thinks she can do to make Yahoo the strongest it can be when the economy comes out of the recession.

And, not to get pushy or anything, but what happened to some words from the promised Jerry Yang?

Perhaps he fell victim to the vicious chickens of Wisconsin.

[Dear Yahoos: To get on board the Can-Do Carol Bartz Express, you can buy the "Yes We Can" t-shirt at Zazzle.com for just $23.40!]

Did Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang have an extra bowl of Wheaties recently?

If so, it could be a very good thing.

In what is most definitely much more than a glimmer of innovative spark for Yahoo (YHOO), the company has opened up its search technology to allow anyone to build their own search engine.

BoomTown even likes the aggressive name of the service, which is BOSS, or Build Your Own Search Service. It debuted last night in public beta.

The project is part of Yahoo’s efforts to open its technology to third-party developers, with the hope of extending its reach further.

Yahoo has made several initiatives in the open arena recently, including SearchMonkey, which lets outside developers add more information to Yahoo search results.

But BOSS represents a quantum level from that largely cosmetic offering, by letting programmers do just about anything with Yahoo search results.

While the technology is free and will not be Yahoo-branded, Yahoo will require that those who use it also use Yahoo’s search advertising, revenues in which partners will eventually share.

Yahoo hopes it can hold onto its slipping search share through, well, sharing of its technology, in essence, by letting 1,000 search engines bloom that are all powered by Yahoo.

Both Yahoo, as well as Microsoft (MSFT), have been trying with no luck to hold onto their share of the search market in the face of search juggernaut Google (GOOG).

And the attraction for partners would be to not have to bear the cost of creating a search engine, while at the same time getting to have a customized one.

“What this represents is a deletion of the fundamental barrier to search,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, chief strategist for Yahoo Search. “We are removing that barrier for entry and you don’t have to replicate our efforts.”

Added Raghavan: “Anybody with a good dea will be able to get going without that upfront cost.”

Sadly, Yahoo doesn’t appear to be among them. Which is why the company is where it is today, risking cannibalization of its own search business for the chance to grab a sliver of market share with the help of a certain Web search giant based in Mountain View. (Too bad Yahoo didn’t acquire Google for $3 billion when it was still an up-and-comer back in the day, huh?)

“We believe that being open is core to Yahoo!’s future success. Opening our network, opening our own search experience via SearchMonkey, and now, opening our search infrastructure via BOSS will lead to innovation both on Yahoo! and powered by Yahoo!,” the BOSS team said in a post to Yahoo’s Search Blog. “For BOSS, we see a virtuous circle in which partners deliver innovative search experiences. As they grow their audiences and usage, we have more data that can be used to improve our own Yahoo! Search experience, and as a result, improve the quality of results our BOSS partners and their users get. [And] we do see new revenue streams from BOSS. In the coming months, we’ll be launching a monetization platform for BOSS that will enable Yahoo! to expand its ad network and enable BOSS partners to jointly participate in the compelling economics of search.”