Yahoo said today in a regulatory filing that it had hired one of Google’s top sales execs, Henrique De Castro, as its COO.

Earlier today, I had reported that CEO Marissa Mayer had been close to nabbing the advertising exec, who has most recently been Google’s president of partners business solutions.

De Castro is getting a pile of money for taking the job, including a $600,000 yearly base salary and an annual bonus that could double that figure. In addition, the Silicon Valley Internet giant will give him $36 million in stock grants, including a one-time retention equity award of $18 million and $18 million in the form of performance-based stock options.

He is also getting $1 million in “make-whole” cash for forgoing compensation from Google and $20 million in stock to replace his shares at the search giant that will vest over four years.

That is a very big check, although Mayer garnered an even bigger one when she joined the company in July.

Yahoo’s regulatory statement on the De Castro hiring is embedded below in its entirety, so you can read about his new riches for yourself (unless Yahoo’s persnickety legal head tries to block it).

Said a Google spokesperson about the departure: “We’re grateful to Henrique for all of his contributions at Google and wish him all the best in his new role at Yahoo!”

Both Mayer and also former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson have made previous overtures to nab De Castro, who has held a number of high-level jobs for Google across the globe, including at DoubleClick, in display ads and with major partners.

While he had previously rebuffed those efforts, this time De Castro bit.

There were signs he might this past week, after De Castro canceled a major offsite for his employees, and several attendees who know him well said he was not present at the company’s first night of its annual Zeitgeist event for advertising and publishing clients. The suave De Castro is usually a more noticeable fixture at such gatherings.

This is Mayer’s first big hire at Yahoo, having added only lower-level or less well-known execs to her stable of talent since she was appointed.

She touted the hire in a tweet, although the news was long out the door, while also noting on Twitter it was her first full day at the office since having her first baby two weeks ago.

My first full day back in the office, and I’m excited to kick it off by announcing my new COO, Henrique de Castro: businesswire.com/news/home/2012…

— marissamayer (@marissamayer) October 15, 2012

The hiring does create a potential issue in the sales arena, especially with current head of revenue Michael Barrett. De Castro and Barrett worked together at Google and multiple sources said the pair did not get along there.

It might not matter. While Barrett has publicly said he planned to stay at Yahoo under Mayer — he was hired by interim CEO Ross Levinson this summer before she arrived — many sources said he does not want to be at the company for the long term.

De Castro has a lot of work to do for the big payout he is getting and it will be a big challenge for him to turn around the troubled organization.

Along with declining growth, search market share, engagement and more, Yahoo also has had a management turnover issue of epic proportions.

De Castro will presumably be in charge of making it all better at Yahoo when he arrives sometime before the beginning of the year and is likely to focus on operations while Mayer zeroes in on products.

One area of trouble: While she has lavished attention on cultural issues and on the company’s tech troops, sources said most of the advertising and media leadership at Yahoo have had little interaction with Mayer since she arrived this summer.

Advertising, of course, is Yahoo’s biggest money maker.

The Portugal-born De Castro has a lot of experience here and is decidedly more of a charmer than Mayer.

More importantly, he is a very high-profile hire, as well as a colorful one. He speaks a menu of languages, dresses with a lot of style and is a worldwide traveler. I know him a little bit and find him to be smooth and confident, even if a little cagey.

Before Google, De Castro worked at Dell and also McKinsey.

All this makes him a perfect choice for Mayer, who is also a former Googler, since she has been considering purchasing a range of companies in the advertising tech space. The most likely candidate of late is PubMatic, which has been in early talks with Yahoo about being acquired.

The Silicon Valley start-up would be a solid add to Yahoo’s ad platform offerings, especially if it wants to stay competitive with Google. PubMatic helps publishers effectively manage their display ad inventory, and competes with Google’s AdMeld.

(Ironically, Barrett ran that start-up, which he sold to Google for $400 million about a year ago.)

Here is the De Castro hiring document from Yahoo:

YHOO-20121015-8K-20121015

And here is the official press release from Yahoo:

Henrique de Castro Named Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo!

October 15, 2012

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) announced today that Henrique de Castro has been hired as chief operating officer (COO). Reporting directly to Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, de Castro will be responsible for strategic and operational management of Yahoo!’s sales, operations, media and business development worldwide.

“Henrique is an incredibly accomplished and rigorous business leader, and I’m personally excited to have him join Yahoo!’s strong leadership team,” said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!. “His operational experience in Internet advertising and his proven success in structuring and scaling global organizations make him the perfect fit for Yahoo! as we propel the business to its next phase of growth.”

“The combination of Yahoo!’s unique properties with high quality content, its renewed focus on outstanding user experience and its massive reach bring tremendous value to users, advertisers and partners,” said de Castro. “This is a pivotal point in Yahoo!’s history, and I believe strongly in the opportunity ahead. I can’t wait to join Marissa and the team and get started.”

De Castro brings more than 20 years experience leading operations, strategy, partner management and revenue generation for some of the world’s leading brands. Most recently, he was vice president of Google’s worldwide Partner Business Solutions group, where he was responsible for advertising platforms and services for Google’s publisher and commerce partners. Prior to that, he led Google’s media, mobile and platforms organization, where he helped to grow the business significantly. Prior to Google, de Castro spent two years at Dell Corporation, where he managed sales and business development operations across Western Europe. He has consulted for McKinsey & Company, where he advised numerous clients across many different industries. His career also includes senior positions in private equity and advertising businesses.

De Castro will join the company on or before January 22, 2013, or as soon as he has satisfied his obligations to his current employer.

It’s been nice to see all the euphoria at Yahoo about free food and Apple iPhones kicking it up a notch.

But, purple people, guess what? Them’s just your basic table stakes in Silicon Valley these days and pretty much everyone else has had such perks for a long while now.

Thus, as nice as it is to drink your coconut water gratis, after two months in charge, it’s long past time to focus on what new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is up to besides making much-needed but obvious cultural changes at the troubled Internet giant.

She’s been busy with the expected listening tour of employees and also outside tech players — such as former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel — which is a textbook stop in the turnaround playbook.

Now comes the hard part: Actually beginning to make the significant decisions about how she’s going to turn around Yahoo and what the key issues of strategic focus need to be.

In a series of recent meetings, according to numerous sources inside the company, Mayer has begun to outline what those are to top staff.

Not surprisingly, they are many of the same thorny issues that Yahoo has been facing for a long time and which center primarily on making the company relevant again in a wide number of ways.

I’ll get to many of them over the next week in a series of What Will Marissa Do? posts — including looking closely at her new hires, when and how Mayer will deal with inevitable layoff decisions facing the company, where the sale of Yahoo! Japan stands and, finally, what she’s cooking up for key Yahoo products.

But the focus has to fall first of all on search and advertising, the two arenas that Mayer has been studying most closely, according to numerous sources close to the situation.

That has included a recent meeting and numerous discussions with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about improving Yahoo’s search advertising partnership, said sources at both companies.

That deal has been largely disappointing since it was struck under the regime of ousted CEO Carol Bartz several years ago.

Many reasons are given for the poor performance of the entire arrangement, including lack of improvement of cost per click and share growth for both parties. That means bid density and numbers of advertisers remain too low, especially compared to Google’s offering of access to a larger, more active and lucrative market.

Simply put, despite massive spending by Microsoft on search, users and advertisers get significantly better results overall with the search leader Google.

(You can read a great piece by Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan from last year, which exhaustively looked at the issues until then.)

The irony abounds that it’s up to Mayer to fix this problem of improving revenue per search with Ballmer, since she has been among the executives who have made Google the search behemoth it has become.

Her particular expertise has been on search experience for consumers, which is just the area that Yahoo desperately needs to improve after handing over technology duties to Microsoft.

That move was controversial at the time and some feel it was a big mistake. But, most also think there is no going back at this point, given the enormous cost of running a serious search enterprise.

Such an idea is still being raised inside Yahoo, although it seems more nostalgic than a realistic possibility, given the enormous price and, more importantly, the departure of the company’s core search engineers in recent years.

That doesn’t mean Yahoo under Mayer can’t be key to helping solve Microsoft’s search tech problems. She certainly knows the entire arena, which has already given Yahoo increased credibility among Microsoft’s search engineers.

“None of Yahoo’s many CEOs knew anything about search technology and that’s certainly not the case here with Mayer,” said one person close to the situation at Microsoft. “When she walks in, she instantly has status among the geeks as someone who knows what she’s talking about.”

It still may be a losing battle, due to Google’s overwhelming dominance, but if anyone at Yahoo can spot areas of even small improvement — which can yield big returns — it could be Mayer.

In addition, she can spearhead Yahoo’s own efforts to reverse — or perhaps simply stop — search market share declines via delivering a better consumer offering.

That’s still heavy lifting, no matter the exec, since both Microsoft’s Bing and Google are better equipped to win here, too.

“It hard to imagine we are going to slow down in any way,” said one former colleague of Mayer’s at Google to me recently in a rather ominous tone. “We’re only going to get more competitive.”

Pressure much?

And more: Mayer is under a time limit, since guaranteed payments Microsoft agreed to pay Yahoo for the shortfalls on what was promised will be running out next year. The pair has renegotiated that deal before, and it will likely have to do so again.

Of course, Mayer could try to walk and threaten to take Yahoo’s search business elsewhere, a move that former CEO Scott Thompson was mulling before his ouster.

That’s not a surprising ploy, except it is probably impossible to pull off, a fact acknowledged by top Yahoo execs.

“It might feel good to say we have options in search,” said one person close to the situation. “But that ship sailed years ago.”

Indeed, especially since Google is the only choice of possible alternate partners and such a move is rife with major obstacles.

There is the issue of the contract with Microsoft, which could lead to a potentially explosive legal struggle Yahoo can ill afford.

“They can try to get out of the deal,” said one high-ranking person at the software giant. “But that’s a lot easier threatened than done.”

And, there is the clear regulatory hairball any search hook-up between Google and Yahoo would lead to.

That’s happened before, which Mayer knows well since she was a top exec in Google’s business when it tried to partner with Yahoo as a way to prevent Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid for the company.

While times might have changed, Google is currently facing a likely battle with the Federal Trade Commission over its powerful search business, and trying to get Yahoo’s business now is a non-starter.

Thus, finally fixing the Microsoft partnership is key to Mayer’s success since it represents a little over one-third of revenue of Yahoo (see the chart below).

The bigger part of Yahoo’s business, as you can also see from the chart, has been display revenues. And that, too, has been a sorry tale of declines and ever more disappointing results.

A report by eMarketer on display market share had this depressing chart for Yahoo:

As is clear, the march downward for one-time leader Yahoo has been swift, and the prospects for the future are worse as Google and Facebook vie for leadership.

The reasons for this have been myriad, but Mayer has apparently decided that it’s been due in large part to the broken Yahoo ad tech platforms and their ever weaker performance.

As we have previously reported, she has determined that it’s now time to invest in improving them, both by funding internally and external acquisitions.

For that, she has formed a tight group of execs to scan the landscape for tasty and innovative treats for Yahoo to gobble up.

That includes: Scott Burke, SVP of Yahoo’s advertising and data platforms; Brian Silver, who runs the company’s Right Media Exchange; Xuhui Shao, a key engineering VP under Burke; and Mark Morrissey, the longtime tech exec who previously ran the company’s search business and was key to integrating the Microsoft search deal into place.

The cerebral Burke especially has been pushing ad platform improvement for a while and finally seems to have won the battle against detractors of the big and possibly grandiose plan by appealing to Mayer’s interest in not giving up.

Thus, the tabling of plans by Thompson, as well as interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, to outsource some of the automated parts of the display business to Google.

Those talks were very serious, as well as others to sell off Right Media, but they are done for now.

One major issue — the people in charge of the ad platform turnaround could also be seen (and most definitely are) as mired in Yahoo’s legacy of lackluster results and poor performance.

“It is kind of funny that the guys responsible for the decline now have the responsibility for fixing it,” said one source at Yahoo.

It’s a fair point to be made.

But that’s water under the bridge, apparently, since the group has been making the rounds, helped by Yahoo’s M&A execs, with a wide range of companies in many different ad tech area being considered (and some dismissed), including: Mediaocean, Turn, Criteo, PubMatic and Millennial Media.

Millennial is the most interesting, because it is a mobile ad play, where Yahoo is exactly nowhere (to be fair, less than nowhere) after years of botched efforts.

As with other companies, this is a critical arena for Yahoo, and yet one more that Mayer needs to focus on.

Lastly, Mayer has to make sure Yahoo’s premium display business remains strong. This is much more based on relationships with large advertisers than on major sponsorship and branding offerings, as well as creating consumer products and content that is appealing to marketers.

This area is now headed up by former Google exec Michael Barrett, who has publicly said he was staying put for now at Yahoo as its chief of revenue.

In fact, because he is in charge of all sales, he occupies the second slot under Mayer on Yahoo’s now strangely configured, punctuation-impaired and information-free management page.

But numerous sources inside and outside Yahoo said Barrett has also told many people that he is still not fully committed to staying in the role for the long haul.

If he eventually gets a lucrative exit package — something the new boss is not being very generous with overall, said sources — that will mean Mayer will need a high-profile and well-regarded ad exec to replace him; sources said Mayer has already begun reaching out to some candidates.

The pickings are slim, with only a few names on the list of those capable of taking on such a job. That includes: Demand Media’s Joanne Bradford, who was also a former top Yahoo exec; Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi; OWN’s Kathleen Kayse; MLB.com’s Bob Bowman; and any number of Google execs.

In that regard, as with all the other search and advertising overhaul efforts at Yahoo, it is a matter of attracting serious talent into the company going forward.

More on that — and more — to come.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has written a book on challenges facing women in the workplace that is expected to be published next year by Knopf.

Titled “Lean In,” the book is not a memoir, but a “call to action” with a lot of research and data, laced with anecdotes of the experience of one of Silicon Valley’s most high-profile female executives and also many other women.

“I believe that the world would be a better place if half our institutions were run by women, and half our homes were run by men,” said Sandberg in an email to me earlier this week. “The book contains practical advice for women — and the men who want to help them — on how to lean in and close the gap.”

Juggling leadership roles and family has been a central topic of Sandberg’s in numerous speeches she has given in recent years.

Among the key themes she has outlined — most prominently in a TEDTalk in 2010, which is embedded below — is the lack of progress for women in top positions and the loss to society when half the population holds only one-fifth of the top jobs across key industries.

The title comes from her advice in these speeches for women to lean in to their work rather than lean back, as many tend to do for a variety of reasons at key points in their careers.

In the speeches, Sandberg — who worked in a high-ranking job at Google and also did a stint in government at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration — also advised women not to “leave before you leave” a job.

In one speech, she said:

“So, my heartfelt message is: Don’t leave before you leave. Don’t lean back, lean in. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the day you have to make a decision. That’s the only way to ensure you even have a decision to make.”

The book’s publication, largely due to Sandberg’s prominence, is likely to reignite a heated debate over the longstanding issue about women and work. That includes in tech, where there are still a paucity of female CEOs, board members and venture capitalists.

Speaking of debate, publishing such a book — or being seen as doing anything not related directly to Facebook’s business — at such a dicey time for the company is sure to attract some negative attention for Sandberg and possibly Facebook.

That’s especially true after its botched public offering, which has been followed by a deep drop in the stock to half its initial IPO price and worries about its core business growth.

To be fair, the ideas in “Lean In” have been developed over many years and Sandberg has long noted that the discussion of these issues is too important to wait.

Sandberg said she finished the book well before Facebook’s recent tumultuous IPO and on her own time.

She added that she would eventually promote it on her own vacation time, too, and that all her profits will go to charities that support women. But Sandberg did not volunteer the advance she got paid for “Lean In.”

Along with that possible (and inevitable) why-aren’t-you-fixing-the-stock criticism, penning such a book might also further encourage persistent rumors that Sandberg will eventually leave Facebook, including to pursue a political office.

Not true, said Sandberg, who said firmly that she plans to stay put at Facebook as the No. 2 exec to co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He has apparently known about the book project since its beginning and has encouraged it.

To complete the book — which is now being edited — Sandberg worked with a full-time writer, Nell Scovell, as well as a researcher, Marianne Cooper.

Scovell, a journalist and longtime television writer in Hollywood, started helping Sandberg with her speeches about two years ago. Cooper is a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and is the author of the forthcoming University of California Press book, “Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times.”

Until the book is out, here’s a taste of what Sandberg has had to say so far on women and leadership at both her TEDTalk in December of 2010 and also at a commencement speech at Barnard College last May:

Remember the infamous “Peanut Manifesto,” in which former Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse likened the company’s innovation process to peanut butter?

In it, he wrote:

“I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: A thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.”

Not new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who has cooked up a new recipe for the longtime company albatross by sweetening it up.

Thus, yesterday, she sent out a new memo announcing a new sandwich topping to get the Silicon Valley Internet giant moving again: PB&J.

That stands for “Process, Bureaucracy & Jams,” and it is kind of like a city’s pothole alert line, except with more geeky pep.

Wrote Mayer and Patricia Moll Kriese — the ex-Googler who is now senior director of corporate projects at Yahoo — in a memo to employees, in part:

“Do you see a problem and know how to solve it? Want to brainstorm with colleagues about what to fix and how to fix it? Give us your ideas. Or be heard loud and clear by simply voting.”

In the missive, the pair also noted that besides the free food and new Friday FYI staff meetings, both of which I have previously reported on, the new leadership of Yahoo has been busy with some other stuff.

That apparently now includes: Turning off the turnstiles in building D at its Sunnyvale HQ, removing parking lot barriers, eliminating mandatory orientation at the gym.

(Yahoo really has been hopelessly bureaucratic, if it is requiring engineers to get schooled on how to work an exercise bike.)

In any case, it’s another interesting idea from Mayer to instill more ease and transparency to logistical aspects of running Yahoo (except when it comes to talking to media, of course — in that case, it’s awfully dark in here!).

These are important culture changes, of course, but the real rubber hitting the road will be what major execs Mayer brings in from elsewhere to really foment managerial change and innovation.

Sources say that at least one big hire is happening soon, with Mayer looking at candidates from “outside the box” from the regular suspects in the industry.

She has certainly been active in buttonholing important tech players on the subject over the last month, said sources, and asking for their input — from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel to a variety of others.

So far, her outside hires have been from Google, including Kriese (pictured here). While she had been listed as a project manager at Google, several sources said her last contracted job there was primarily to organize the annual trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, for top execs at the search behemoth. Apparently, Kriese is a whiz with a spreadsheet in marshaling the tetchy potentates of Google, so PB&J seems right up her alley.

Here’s the full memo:

From: Marissa Mayer
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 10:00 PM
To: [All Yahoo]
Cc: Patricia Moll Kriese
Subject: Announcing PB&J — Process, Bureaucracy, & Jams!

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD

Process blocking your success?

Bureaucracy getting you down?

Jammed by problems and see a solution? We are looking at how to streamline process, reduce bureaucracy, and remove jams — PB&J!

We’re launching PB&J today to gather your feedback on how to make Yahoo! the absolute best place to work. Share your ideas on what would make your job easier, boost your productivity and help solve problems.

What’s on your wish list for our corporate culture and work environment?

For example:

* GitHub for Code Review

* Dogfooding Yahoo! Mail & Calendar

* SSD’s (Solid State Drives) for faster machines

* Mi-Fi’s (mobile wi-fi cards)

We have done a few things already — free food, FYI, turning off the turnstiles in building D, removing parking lot barriers, eliminating mandatory orientation at the gym, etc. However, we know there’s more we can do!

Do you see a problem and know how to solve it? Want to brainstorm with colleagues about what to fix and how to fix it? Give us your ideas. Or be heard loud and clear by simply voting.

PB&J is available globally on Backyard: http://allhands.corp.yahoo.com/qna/pbj/latest

We will review your ideas and votes, reporting back in FYI each month on
actions taken. August PB&J starts now — and look forward to an update at
the next FYI in early September!

Questions/concerns/suggestions around PB&J, please contact Patricia Moll
Kriese, who’s our lead on PB&J.

Marissa & Patricia

And here is my fave depiction of PB&J, in the fantastically addictive “It’s Peanut Butter Jelly Time” dance:

As I just reported, former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn is leaving Yahoo.

Here’s the memo that its new CEO, former Google exec, Marissa Mayer just sent out to the troops, which is a very classy one, as well as Levinsohn’s adieu to staff and the regulatory documents that the Silicon Valley Internet giant filed about the departure with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Subject: Thank You to Ross Levinsohn

Do Not Forward

I am writing to let you know that Ross Levinsohn will be leaving the company at the end of July.

Ross has been an important and powerful contributor at Yahoo since he joined in 2010. During May and June, Ross stepped into an incredibly tough role as interim CEO and did a terrific job — he really helped keep the company moving, closed important deals, and assembled a very talented team. I am very grateful to Ross for his leadership and work throughout his tenure at Yahoo. His contributions will be missed.

Ross will be in Sunnyvale tomorrow (Tuesday, July 31). Please take the opportunity to drop by and thank him for all he has done for the company. I hope you can join me in wishing Ross well and letting him know how much you’ve appreciated him as a colleague.

– Marissa

I wanted to let you know that my time at Yahoo has come to an end. It has been an incredible journey for me and I could not be prouder of what we accomplished over the past few years helping define Yahoo as a leader in digital media and advertising. Yahoo is an amazing brand and company, and I leave knowing we did all we could to help inform and entertain more than 700 million users each month. Leading this company has been one of the best experiences of my career, but it is time for me to look for the next challenge.

– Ross

YHOO-20120730-8K-20120726

According to sources both inside and outside of Yahoo, outgoing interim CEO Ross Levinsohn — who lost the race for the company’s top job to Google exec Marissa Mayer — is unlikely to remain at the company.

The board, who unanimously bypassed the media-focused exec to select a candidate with deeper product experience and a much higher tech profile, has apparently hoped that Levinsohn might stay in the company and return back to running its media and sales arm.

But that fat-chance possibility seems remote, according to people close to the board, who said they expect that Levinsohn will only remain for a short amount of time before moving on to another job.

You think?

Last week, in fact, I reported that Levinsohn was considering several exit options, after the Yahoo board declined to name him — as some had expected — at its annual meeting, and was still considering other candidates.

Levinsohn was named interim CEO earlier this year, in the wake of the ousting of Scott Thompson over the appearance of a fake computer science degree on his bio.

Also in question are the members of the team he has put into place at Yahoo, and whether they will remain. The most prominent is Levinsohn’s recent hiring of well-regarded advertising exec Michael Barrett — who came to Yahoo from, yes, Google — to run sales.

According to sources, Mayer is already aiming to attract several former and current Googlers to Yahoo to help her turn around the troubled Silicon Valley company.

Among the names raised is longtime former Googler Ben Ling, who worked closely with Mayer, as well as current Google exec Henrique De Castro, who is president of global media, mobile and platforms there. De Castro has been previously targeted by Yahoo to run global sales.

Mayer is likely to aim at grabbing some top product execs rather than on a big PR hire. In fact, some close to Mayer said that she could minimize her profile in the new role, which would be in stark contrast to her prominent efforts to establish a large public media presence while at Google.

One person close to the situation said she might take a page from new Google CEO Larry Page, who has been initially quiet as he drastically reformed the search giant.

“Marissa likes to be in the press, but she knows she has to manage expectations at Yahoo from the start and cannot over-promise anything,” said one person familiar with her thinking. “While she is well-known, she has never been in such a big job or in such a spotlight.”

No, indeed, a spotlight that starts tomorrow, when Yahoo announces what are likely to be meh second-quarter earnings, and when the world presumably meets the latest of Yahoo’s CEOs.

Mayer will be Yahoo’s fourth top leader in the last 12 months, so it would be nice if she stays for a while.

“So, is Marissa the ‘unicorn’ CEO?,” joked one person, about my description of the Yahoo search as a magical quest for leadership perfection.

We’ll see. Unicorns don’t exist, of course, and Mayer is now living in the real world, where Yahoo will need more than magic to return to its former glory.

Image via .shock

According to sources close to the situation, the search for a new CEO for Yahoo is closing in on key candidates.

But, said sources, it appears to be coming down to a contest between interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn and Hulu CEO Jason Kilar.

“It’s pretty much a choice between picking a media exec or a product exec,” said one person, referring to Kilar and Levinsohn respectively, about leading the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant. “It’s about defining what Yahoo is going to be.”

Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart is conducting the search.

At this point, said sources, it appears to still be a situation that is Levinsohn’s to lose. Along with having been at Yahoo for several years, the media-savvy exec has also recently scored points with the hiring of a new and very well-regarded sales chief, Michael Barrett.

In addition, some Yahoo board members feel that adding yet another new CEO into the mix from outside could further destabilize a company that has gone through the leadership wringer over the last year.

That has included the ousting of two CEOs since last fall — Carol Bartz and Scott Thompson — in less than ideal circumstances that has called into question the competence of its board.

Actually, more precisely, its incompetence.

The newly formed board of Yahoo — most of the directors responsible for recent snafus have departed — is now very wary of making another such mistake, which is apparently why it did not name Levinsohn immediately.

“This has to be seen as a process that really is not slapdash,” said another source. “Yahoo can’t afford to make another mistake.”

No, it cannot.

But in keeping Levinsohn hanging, some inside the company feel the board is doing just that.

“The employees at Yahoo cannot take yet another all-hands meeting where we meet another CEO and hear another new vision for the company,” said one longtime staffer. “It’s hard to imagine that again without becoming nauseous.”

Still, Kilar is a favorite choice of some Yahoo board members; he is now out-of-contract with Hulu and is reportedly in the middle of negotiating his exit there.

“Jason is a free agent,” said a source close to the situation at the premium video service, which includes News Corp. (which owns this Web site) and Disney, as well as Comcast. “And he is looking for this next thing.”

He should, since tensions between Kilar and his major media partners/owners remain high and his departure seems imminent.

Whether taking on the huge task of fixing what ails Yahoo is that is unclear; some expect Kilar to favor moving on to a start-up.

One other issue: Neither Levinsohn nor Kilar has ever run a public company, although both have worked for them.

Other candidates Yahoo has spoken to are part of a list it has gone to several times before.

They include News Corp. digital exec — and longtime Levinsohn friend and business partner — Jon Miller, who has definitively declined to be considered due to his relationship with Levinsohn; former Yahoo exec Dan Rosensweig, who is now CEO of Chegg and who has declined several overtures; and former aQuantive CEO Brian McAndrews, whom sources said is also not interested in the job.

Other possible execs — none of whom appear to have bitten the Yahoo line either — include former Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell and former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt.

There appear to be no women candidates among those in the talent search. (What a shockeroo!)

It will be interesting to see if the usually lugubrious Yahoo board will act before the annual meeting, which is in one week. The choice certainly cannot drag on, though.

“Yahoo needs to move forward with someone,” said another source.

Facebook’s high-profile CTO Bret Taylor is leaving the Silicon Valley social networking giant later this summer, with future plans to work on an as-yet-to-be-determined start-up.

The move is likely to be of concern to some over the newly public company’s ability to hold onto entrepreneurial talent, especially in the wake of continued intense media and investor scrutiny over its rocky IPO last month.

That’s especially true since Taylor has been in charge of both platform and mobile efforts at Facebook, a critical arena for it.

A pair of Facebook execs under Taylor — Mike Vernal and Cory Ondrejka — will be taking over platform and mobile, respectively.

Vernal joined Facebook in 2008 from Microsoft, leading the original Facebook Connect project and also working on platform efforts and the development of Open Graph. Ondrejka arrived at the company in 2010 through the acquisition of Walletin; he previously worked at Linden Labs on Second Life virtual worlds.

While well qualified, they have big shoes to fill. Named to CTO two years ago, Taylor has also been a strong public figure at Facebook events, including its recent developers conference. And he was front and center at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this week at the announcement of Facebook integration into its newest iOS.

In an interview today, Taylor said he understands that his departure will be perceived as a disruption, although he noted that Facebook had a deep bench of talented technical staff under CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

“I had always been upfront with Mark that I eventually wanted to do another start-up,” he said. “And we felt now is the best time after the IPO and the launch of some recent things for me to do that.”

That includes the Apple deal, Facebook Camera and also its App Center, which helps users find mobile and desktop apps their friends like.

Facebook is also reportedly working on a major effort to create its own smartphone, a project known as “Buffy.”

Taylor, who had previously worked at Google, has a strong start-up background. He left the search giant to found FriendFeed, a once-popular social aggregator. FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook in 2009.

Noting that his time at Facebook “has been the among the most fulfilling times of my career,” Taylor said that his departure was only part of life as usual in Silicon Valley.

“Cross-pollination among companies is what drives so much of innovation, so I would not project a lot onto this event,” he said. “I am really confident that the mobile and platform leaders at Facebook can deliver what needs to be done.”

When asked about the worries he had for the company, Taylor said the challenge of becoming public was top of mind internally.

“We are dealing with the cultural change of increasing attention, from going from a private company with a lot of scrutiny to a public company with a lot more scrutiny,” he said.

But he maintained that Facebook’s ability to remain nimble as it grew was strong, noting that the tech side continues to work in small teams. “These details really matter,” he said.

As for his own future, Taylor said he had not decided the area that he was going to focus on, but that he would be starting something with another former Googler, Kevin Gibbs.

Taylor said that he would probably focus on an industry he does not understand well as a consumer, as he did when he was working on Google’s mapping efforts.

“People said we had no sense of direction, so making maps better made sense,” he joked. “That turned out pretty well.”

Here is Taylor’s post on Facebook about the pending departure:

I wanted to let you all know that I’ll be leaving Facebook later this summer. I’m sad to be leaving, but I’m excited to be starting a company with my friend Kevin Gibbs.

While a transition like this is never easy, I’m extremely confident in the teams and leadership we have in place. I’m very proud of our recent accomplishments in our platform and mobile products, from Open Graph and App Center to Facebook Camera and our iOS integration. I’m even more excited for the world to see all the amazing things these teams have coming.

I’ve learned more than I ever imagined in my time at Facebook. I’m also extremely grateful for my relationship with all of the amazing people I’ve worked with here.

I want to give a special thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. You’ve not only been my boss for the past three years, but my mentor and one of my closest friends.

Thanks to all of you at Facebook for the most incredible three years of my life.

Getty Images News | Justin Sullivan

Here we go again. After just four months, Yahoo has taken the CEO reins from Scott Thompson and passed them to interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, marking the fifth change in the company’s top job in the past four years. During this time, the company’s market cap has deteriorated from $28.53 billion at the end of June 2008 to $19.04 billion today, clearly indicating what the revolving CEO suite and associated roller coaster has done to shareholder confidence. But what about the impact on the 13,300 people employed by Yahoo?¹ Clearly, this is something the Yahoo board of directors and Levinsohn — however interim he is — must address, if they hope to achieve a turnaround.

Think about it: Yahoo employees who have weathered multiple rounds of layoffs have also had to adapt to the frequently changing leadership tides created by the revolving door at the top of the company: Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz, Timothy Morse, Scott Thompson, and now Ross Levinsohn. Not surprisingly, this has impacted Yahoo employees’ faith in senior leadership over time.

According to social jobs and career site Glassdoor, morale at Yahoo has softly teetered from quarter to quarter. On a five-point scale, employees have given the company a high rating of 4.3 (satisfied) in the first quarter of 2008 to a low of 3.0 in the second quarter of 2009; however, the rating has settled around 3.4 (okay), for the most part.

However, the employee sentiment surrounding how well each Yahoo CEO has led the company has had a much more turbulent path. When Carol Bartz started off, she had a 91 percent approval rating in her first quarter, but by her last quarter on the job, it sank to just 33 percent. For Thompson, it was too short to tell if his 48 percent approval was a starting-off point based on employee satisfaction, or if it was his personal high note.

Evidence of this employee turmoil, along with a desire for more direction and stability, can be found in many of the anonymous reviews left by Yahoo employees on Glassdoor in recent months:

As one Yahoo senior financial analyst comments, “Develop a clear strategy, and stick to it! Way too much disparity in communicating what it is the company stands for.”

A Yahoo principal engineer adds, “The lack of vision is really astounding … Executive management should try better communicating with senior management and solicit their input when making such major personnel changes. There should be clear strategic goals conveying what is trying to be accomplished.”

Another Yahoo employee notes that Yahoo “lacks a clear vision of what the company is all about. The sooner they figure this out, the sooner they can focus their resources in the right direction.”

Employees know the company best. As a leader, you may think you know, hear and understand your company’s challenges, but if you fail to listen to your employees and therefore fail to address those challenges, you will likely find the road to growth and change within the company tougher than expected.

Now, perhaps more than ever, Yahoo’s executives and board should listen to and focus on what’s at the heart of the company: Its employees. Some proven strategies that can support stabilization and rebuilding the business include:

Leadership must extend beyond one title or one person. There are a lot of executives on the Yahoo management team beyond interim head Levinsohn, some of whom have extensive tenure with the company, including co-founder David Filo. This team needs to quickly build consensus on strategic priorities and collectively own responsibility to make sure this is communicated and understood by the entire Yahoo employee population. The new permanent CEO should build on this foundational direction, not deviate from it or completely change it.

Define your vision, stick with it and repeat. Where the company is headed should be articulated in one clear, crisp statement, and as CEO or as a senior leader, it should be used and touched on routinely in all communications, both internally and externally. There is a lot to get done as a leader; there is a lot to convey. But without purpose and vision, efforts to move a business forward will fall flat.

Don’t mistake perks for culture. In the Valley, where talent wars are fierce, we often regard perks as synonymous with culture. While a hefty paycheck, bonuses and other perks like free food, on-site dry cleaning or on-campus childcare may help recruit top talent, they don’t do much to retain talent the way a solid and positive culture does. A good culture takes time, and emanates from a work environment that provides room for — and rewards — creative thinking, and allows opinions to be heard and to be challenged.

Get personal. I suspect that the trust level of senior management has been seriously compromised, and this last blow regarding Thompson’s degree has hurt whatever trust was left. It’s going to be a tough road ahead for Levinsohn and his succession when it comes to winning the hearts of employees. But Yahoo’s senior leadership can make it right, if they make it personal and swing for the fences in communication by hosting small group meetings and by truly showing that management is listening to the wishes, desires and dreams that employees have for the company and for themselves.

This is another critical juncture for Yahoo. With the board and management team in transition, it is especially important that time and resources be dedicated to rebuilding a new social contract with Yahoo employees around the world. Employees come to work every day and vote with their feet for the company to succeed, and it’s the responsibility of senior leadership to work on bringing together the troops to get the company back on track.

Rusty Rueff is a corporate and philanthropic board director, career and workplace expert consultant and writer, as well as start-up company adviser and investor. He currently serves on the corporate boards of Glassdoor, the leading social jobs and career community, and HireVue.com, a video interviewing platform designed to improve the recruiting process. Rusty is also the co-author of “Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business” (Prentice Hall, 2006).

At today’s all-hands meeting for Yahoo employees — in the wake of the dramatic ouster of its former CEO Scott Thompson — what pop culture icon did new interim CEO Ross Levinson use to loosen up the crowd?

Why, a little Al Pacino from the movie classic “The Godfather,” of course — the go-to guy solution menu for all troubles in the world.

Comparing the battered Silicon Valley Internet giant to Don Corleone after a gun ambush, Levinsohn said to the crowd gathered at URL’s Cafe on the Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ campus: “This weekend was like that scene from ‘The Godfather’ — ‘They hit ’im with five shots, and he’s still alive!’”

And also, trying to make Yahoos feel as if there were forward momentum: “There are things being negotiated now that are gonna solve all your problems and answer all your questions.”

Well, let’s hope so, and that it does not end for Yahoo — and Levinsohn — like it did for Luca Brasi (who sleeps with the fishes, in case you didn’t know).

So far, in his first impress-the-employees outing, the reviews for Levinsohn were largely positive on its internal message boards and from numerous sources I talked to.

What they liked: Acknowledgement of the tough past week, but not dwelling on the past, either; a theme of revival and spirit; no PowerPoint slides; and zero direct mention of Thompson.

What they really liked: The whole pile of compliments that Levinsohn doled out to the troops.

No tough-love dude he — unlike Thompson and his predecessor Carol Bartz, who liked to verbally smack around the troops a little more in a mobster kind of way.

Instead, said one person in attendance, “he was appealing to Yahoo pride, which is pretty much in the doldrums.”

Still, one questioner worried about the future and whether the company was going to still be stuck in a leadership vacuum, especially since Levinsohn was not named as the permanent CEO.

Fred Amoroso — who was just named Yahoo’s new chairman and was the only person who appeared with Levinsohn on the stage — tried to assuage that concern by saying he wanted Levinsohn to eventually become the head of the family for good.

While there will likely be a search for other CEO candidates, it is as close to a ring-kiss as Levinsohn is going to get for now.

That is, unless he does not produce some quick results on a variety of Yahoo’s thorniest issues, such as an Asian asset sale and a settlement of the patent lawsuit fight with social networking giant Facebook.

But the over/under on him and Amoroso together was good.

One person said it was important when Amoroso talked about coding and technology and products, which is not advertising- and media-focused Levinsohn’s expertise.

“It was nice to see a board member who cared about products and innovation,” said one person. “Or at least said he did.”

We’ll see how this pair works out together, but always remember this, Yahoos:

Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in.

Until we know how the movie ends, here is a scary video of me talking about the last week’s events at Yahoo on a local ABC television news station — I look a fright since I’m so tired from covering it all:

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree