According to numerous sources, Yahoo is claiming “cause” in its parting with former CEO Scott Thompson, related to the fake computer science degree on his resume.

Such a determination will mean the company is not obligated to pay him the large severance that would have been due to him otherwise.

In his offer letter on January 3, Yahoo spelled out the terms of the employment agreement, noting what would happen if he left the company under more positive “without cause” terms.

“If Mr. Thompson’s employment is terminated by the Company without cause or by Mr. Thompson for good reason, the Company will offer him severance benefits similar to the benefits it provides to other senior executives of the Company at the time of his termination,” reads the document, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “In addition, if Mr. Thompson’s employment is terminated by the Company without cause, by Mr. Thompson for good reason, or due to Mr. Thompson’s death or disability, the Make-Whole RSUs that are then outstanding and unvested will fully vest upon his termination.”

The “Make-Whole” RSUs — or restricted stock units, related to his time as president of eBay’s PayPal payments division — were valued at $6.5 million in Yahoo’s SEC filings.

But sources said Yahoo has relied on another clause in Thompson’s offer letter, titled “Code of Ethics and Yahoo! Policies,” to make the case that it would not have to pay out such a large sum to him.

Reads the clause:

“Yahoo! is committed to creating a positive work environment and conducting business ethically. As an employee of Yahoo!, you will be expected to abide by the Company’s policies and procedures including, but not limited to, Yahoo!’s Guide2Working@Y!, Yahoo!’s Code of Ethics and Yahoo!’s Corporate Governance Guidelines,” reads the letter. “Yahoo! requests that you review, sign and bring with you on your Employment Start Date, the enclosed Code of Ethics Acknowledgment Form.”

Under the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s ethical terms, the borked bio and how it got that way — which was still under investigation when Thompson stepped down — was the major issue in his ouster, since he was responsible for making sure it was accurate when submitted for regulatory filings.

In addition, while Thompson publicly blamed a headhunting firm for making the error back in the mid-2000 timeframe, that company — Heidrick & Struggles — hit back, saying his claims were “verifiably not true.” According to sources, Heidrick apparently possesses an inaccurate resume submitted to them by Thompson.

Heidrick, which placed Thompson at eBay many years ago, was not involved in his hiring at Yahoo. It had to recuse itself from his vetting as part of its search for a new Yahoo CEO, because it had placed him previously.

In fact, Thompson had nominated himself for the job via cold emails with Yahoo board members and was examined and hired quickly.

Perhaps too quickly, given the poor background check that was discovered by activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point.

Sources close to the board said that investor pressure relate to these credibility lapses grew too loud, along with employee rancor at Thompson’s actions — forcing the issue this weekend.

What was definitely not a reason for Thompson’s departure from Yahoo — although it was unfortunate timing — was an unspecified “illness” I referenced in my initial story on the subject.

(Note to readers: I found out this weekend that illness was thyroid cancer. But I declined to name it specifically, since I felt it was Thompson’s right to publicly reveal such a personal health issue and not mine. While I recently suffered a stroke and the experience perhaps influenced this editorial decision, the cancer was only a side issue to the resume drama at Yahoo and not naming it specifically seemed, well, more responsible to me. Argue amongst yourselves about it, but that’s my take. And also, I wish Thompson a successful treatment and speedy recovery)

That said, The Wall Street Journal did an entire piece about the cancer today today, noting that “the decision to step down from Yahoo was in part influenced by Mr. Thompson’s cancer diagnosis.”

That might have been true for Thompson — a source close to him characterized the parting as “mutually agreed” — and perhaps his illness accelerated the resume controversy.

But all that aside, he was given no choice in the matter by the Yahoo board, numerous sources said. The parting was almost entirely due to the mess about the botched bio and all its implications.

In fact, in all its public communications about his leaving, Yahoo and its execs offered no token thanks and barely even mentioned Thompson, such as in its official statement yesterday.

It read, referring to newly chosen interim CEO Ross Levinsohn: “Mr. Levinsohn replaces Scott Thompson, former Chief Executive Officer, who has left the Company.”

And left it he has, without a choice and with what will be a much smaller settlement, sources said. It is not clear when Yahoo has to unveil those terms in public documents.

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

The engineer, whose name hasn’t been disclosed, explained his plans to other engineers and at least one senior manager involved with the project, known as Street View, in 2008, the FCC report states. Nevertheless, it says, Street View managers told the agency they didn’t learn the Google cars were collecting the personal information until 2010.

Read the rest of this post on its original site »

Shakil Khan, the well-known head of special projects for the popular Spotify music service, is taking a job with the same title at Path, the fast-growing personal social networking start-up.

Khan will be focusing on growth and international issues, and based out of London but with global duties. Path’s HQ is in San Francisco.

That’s important, since Path has been growing strongly outside its initial U.S. market, especially in Asia. In February, Path CEO Dave Morin announced that it had two million users.

In an interview last night, Khan said he will remain an adviser to Spotify’s CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek, noting that he is also an investor.

Interestingly, said many sources and also a number of reports, both Path and Spotify are in the midst of large funding rounds with hefty valuations.

In fact, Spotify is being valued at $4 billion, which was not the case when Khan came to the then-fledgling company in 2008. Taking up a job essentially as a kind of fix-it guy for Ek, he worked on a number of important initiatives, from gaining early user traction to hiring its early management to wrangling celebrities to use the service.

Khan said that he decided to leave Spotify, which has recently had a huge spurt of growth due to its recent integration on Facebook, because he has “always been a start-up guy.”

“I loved the days when people used to say, ‘What is that, how do you spell it,’” he said about Spotify. “I need those kind of butterflies, and Path is just that kind of amazing product with huge global potential.”

In an email, Path’s Morin said:

“We are beyond delighted that Shak has chosen to join the Path family as we continue our mission to build the first global personal network by helping people journal and share life with family and close friends. Shak brings a unique global perspective and skill set to Path which will help us reach and serve our members and partners across the globe in a uniquely personal way.”

And Ek, calling in from Sweden (where it is 80 degrees!), said that he was sad to see Khan go, and was also in his debt for his service to Spotify.

“I am kind of an introvert guy, and Shak is definition of social, so he was the link to the rest of the world in many ways for me and for the company,” said Ek. “So where he is going and what he will be doing at Path is perfect.”

In answer to a direct question about whether his company was going to buy Yahoo at a forum at Stanford University in Silicon Valley this afternoon, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Jack Ma said: “We are very interested.”

Said Ma: “We are very interested in Yahoo. Our Alibaba group is important to Yahoo and Yahoo is important to us … All the serious buyers interested in Yahoo have talked to us.”

Finally, at least one crystal clear answer in the confusion at Yahoo. More importantly, it is the first time Ma has indicated that he wanted to be a principal player in any deal around Yahoo rather than an element of a buying group.

Later, in answer to a question I posed about how he was going to do that, Ma said he wanted the “whole” company, but that the effort was complicated and included a number of players.

Again, he said: “We are very, very interested.”

I also asked him if he had visited Yahoo in his trip to California, which Ma said he has not in 15 days here so far. He said he has mostly been sleeping and eating, as part of a longer-term visit to the U.S.

Ma’s declaration came as part of a lively closing keynote speech at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he talked about the Chinese Internet company’s growth, focusing on how China is the next great Web economy.

Talking about competitors such as eBay, which have tried to enter the huge Asian market, he joked that “eBay might be sharks in the ocean, but Alibaba is a crocodile in the Yangtze.”

Of course, given his presence in Silicon Valley, one topic of interest was whether Ma would be heading over to visit nearby Yahoo and what role he will play in the current internal debate over the company’s future in the wake of the ousting of its CEO Carol Bartz.

The disposition on Yahoo’s Asian assets, which includes 40 percent of Alibaba and a large stake in Yahoo! Japan, are critical to the current strategic review of the company, since they make up a large part of its market valuation.

In comparison, the value of its U.S. and other global assets are small.

When later asked about his experience of being involved with Yahoo, which made a very canny investment by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang in Alibaba many years ago, Ma also said that he would do it again, but not in the same way.

The same way has to do with the level of foreign ownership, which Ma has been trying to reduce in a number of ways and which Yahoo has thus far resisted.

To answer a question about the fight between Ma and Yahoo over its Alipay fight, when Ma spun it out of Alibaba, he said the situation was tense, but that today “the problem is solved and I am half-burnt.”

He was referring to a settlement, which will require a lot of growth from the still-nascent online payment business.

Ma was asked later about the biggest misunderstanding in the U.S. about China and vice versa. “Our job is not to solve the misunderstanding,” he said. “Our job is to change ourselves to solve the problem.”

In another query about his relationship with Yahoo’s Yang, Ma called him a lifelong friend and also said he appreciated how much that meant to Alibaba’s beginnings.

“But, this is business and not personal,” Ma said about the current situation. “While we appreciate yesterday, but we are looking for a better tomorrow.”

The first line, for those not mad fans of the classic movie like me, is from “The Godfather.”

The question is, though, will Ma make Yang an offer he can’t refuse?

AllThingsD has undergone a lot of changes in the past year that Walt and I are truly proud of, and today we are posting together about changes to social media on the site.

Social media, especially Twitter, has been a major part of the AllThingsD operation since our earliest days. We have always encouraged our writers to be active on the medium — something we continue to do.

That’s why we are launching 15 new Twitter accounts that break out our coverage into categories, as on our site, and also around specialized topics we know our audience follows closely.

Now, in addition to following the main @AllThingsD Twitter account for up-to-the-second updates, our readers can follow accounts that feature only our stories about Apple, venture capital, personnel changes or mobile, to name a few. We hope readers will customize their experience so that AllThingsD can be as useful a resource as possible.

In addition to the Twitter accounts, we also have newly refreshed Facebook pages, and we’ve enabled LinkedIn sharing of our articles as part of becoming one of its recommended news sources.

You can have a look at all the new social features at our brand-new social subscribe page.

We’re adding all of these features while maintaining respect for the personal privacy and data of our readers. Therefore, all social media implementations on AllThingsD require the reader to take an explicit action to share.

You might think this level of disclosure is overboard, but we think it’s the right thing to do.

We’ve also brought on Drake Martinet to be our social media editor.

As social as Walt and I can be, Drake will be your point of contact for questions, concerns and comments about social media and its use on AllThingsD.

If you want more specifics about what we are up to, I encourage you to read Drake’s post on the social media changes. He covers some of the tools and services we are using, as well as explaining a little more about the thinking that went into our new social strategy.

If you have any questions, we encourage you to tweet Drake (he’s @withDrake on Twitter) or reach him at his email here.

Please also see our new features here by clicking this button:

See the new features

Thanks,

Kara and Walt

Groupon sent out emails to its users this weekend, about changes it has made to its privacy statement and terms of use.

Among the most notable changes is more information about the Chicago-based social buying start-up’s collection and use of mobile location information.

Said Groupon:

“In short, if you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the “How Groupon Uses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement).”

In other words, if you let them, in order to improve the experience and make the Groupon Now app more useful, you’re being tracked.

This, of course, has been a dicey issue of late, most recently related to Apple and Google smartphones and what information they collect and retain.

In addition, with a pending IPO, Groupon is under all kinds of scrutiny and any big changes will be closely studied.

In addition, in its email to customers (see below in its entirety), the company said that it had broadened the definition of personal information to include your interests and habits and also that it may share that personal information with partners in new offering areas, such as travel deals with Expedia.

Groupon said it was also trying to improve readability of its consumer information and give greater transparency to its customers.

Here is the whole Groupon memo about the changes:

Wondering about Changes to the Groupon Privacy Statement?

We want to tell you a little more about some material changes we just made to the July 22, 2010 version of the Groupon Privacy Statement (the “Old Privacy Statement”) to create the new Groupon Privacy Statement (the “Updated Privacy Statement”).

In general, all of the changes to the Updated Privacy Statement were made to improve readability, provide greater transparency about our information handling practices, address some new types of relationships Groupon is forging and new technologies Groupon is using or may use, and to let you know about the privacy choices you have. Read on.

* Groupon continues to be a proud member of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. The Updated Privacy Statement contains a reference to the most current version of the TRUSTe Program Rules and includes some additional statements required by those Program Rules. As a TRUSTe Privacy Seal holder, Groupon is committed to complying with the Program Rules as applicable to its online privacy program.

* The Updated Privacy Statement replaces the phrase “Personally Identifiable Information” with “Personal Information” to improve readability and accuracy. (More on this below.)

* The Updated Privacy Statement clarifies that Personal Information is any information that could be used to identify, locate or contact an individual. This definition is broader than the definition in the Old Privacy Statement, which limited the concept of personally identifiable information to identification information in the context of certain defined identification activities. (Whew!) The broader definition in the Updated Privacy Statement reflects our dedication to protecting privacy in all areas of our business.

* The Updated Privacy Statement includes a definition of Personal Information and explains the types of Personal Information collected, used and disclosed by Groupon, namely “Contact Information,” “Relationship Information,” “Transaction Information,” “Financial Account Information,” and “Mobile Location Information.” These definitions provide more meaningful definition about the types of information we collect and how we classify information internally.

* The Updated Privacy Statement has shortened the section that goes on about how we use and disclose non-identifiable information. This change was made to improve readability so we could focus more on talking about what we do with Personal Information.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains information on Groupon’s collection and use of Mobile Location Information. In short, if you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the “How Groupon Uses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement).

* The Updated Privacy Statement presents Groupon’s disclosures of Personal Information in a more detailed and transparent fashion. The new “When and Why Groupon Discloses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement details the circumstances when Personal Information is shared with third parties in a comprehensive, bulleted-list format. This section reinforces Groupon’s commitment to protect privacy by generally limiting disclosures of Personal Information to our affiliates and services providers and to those merchants and business partners with whom our users interact.

* The Updated Privacy Statement omits the section in the Old Privacy Statement regarding disclosures of Personal Information to Google for remarketing purposes. Groupon does not provide Personal Information to Google for remarketing.

The Old Privacy Statement’s section on “Data Tracking” has been replaced with an expanded section on “Cookies and Related Technologies” to provide greater transparency around data collection technologies. This section contains information about all of the ways that we collect information using automated technologies, including cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, browser analysis tools, and web logs. The section is designed to educate readers about the types of data collected by each technology as well as how the data is used by Groupon. The Updated Privacy Statement clarifies that if automatically-collected data is associated with Personal Information, it is protected by the Updated Privacy Statement. This section also provides information about third party advertising relationships in a more readable form and includes a new paragraph regarding our relationship with Omniture.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains an expanded section on user choice. The “Your Choices” section in the Updated Privacy Statement provides readers with information on many different types of privacy choices that they can make, along with instructions for exercising the choice. This section also consolidates information on choices that was distributed throughout the Old Privacy Statement and contains a new link to the TRUSTe preferences page.

* The Updated Privacy Statement’s section on “Security of Personal Information” has been streamlined to more-simply state our commitment to maintaining a reasonable information security program with expected administrative, technical and physical controls.

* The Old Privacy Statement’s section “Updating and Correcting Personal Information” has been replaced with a new section “Accessing and Correcting Personal Information.” This section has been revised to improve readability and clarify the processes by which users can access, update and delete their Personal Information. This section of the Updated Privacy Statement also contains a new paragraph regarding data retention. This paragraph was added for clarity and to comply with the TRUSTe Program Rules.

* The Updated Privacy Statement contains a new section giving “Notice to Residents of Countries Outside of the United States of America.” This section educates international users about the fact that Groupon is based in the U.S. so Personal Information may be transferred to the U.S. for processing.

* The “Miscellaneous Privacy Issues” section in the Old Privacy Statement has been deleted and the content it contains has been included in more appropriate, descriptive sections elsewhere in the policy. Also, we omitted the section discussing children’s information because Groupon is not designed for children and the Groupon deals are not offered to individuals under the age of majority in their states of residence. See our Terms of Use.

* The Updated Privacy Statement introduces a new contact mechanism for privacy-related inquiries: privacy@groupon.com. While general customer service questions should still be directed to support@groupon.com, the new address provides a way for us to respond to questions that our users have specifically about the privacy of their Personal Information.

And here is the email sent to users, titled “Updates to Privacy Statement and Terms of Use”:

We wanted to let you know that we’ve updated both our Privacy Statement and our Terms of Use. These new terms, which affect all Groupon users, accommodate our new products and services that allow us to offer you more relevant deals.

If you don’t feel like wading through long legal documents, here’s a summary of the notable changes, in plain English:

We’ve clarified that Groupon Now! and our other mobile apps may collect geo-location data. This lets us present you offers that are close by. See Sections 1 and 5 of the Privacy Statement.

We’ve broadened the definition of “personal information” to include your interests and habits, and provided additional details about how we collect and use your information. We’ve done this so that we can better understand what types of offers you’ll find valuable. See Section 1 of the Privacy Statement.

You may know that we’ve started working with partners to offer Groupon users new deal categories — for example, travel deals with Expedia. Our new privacy statement explains that we may share your personal information with these partners if you subscribe to special communications or buy deals in these new deal categories. See Section 4 of the Privacy Statement.

We’ve updated our Terms of Use to help you understand the expiration policies for different vouchers, including Groupon NOW! vouchers. This explains, for example, that if you don’t use a Groupon NOW! voucher within 30 days we’ll refund the purchase amount. See Section 7 of the Terms of Use.

We also clarified our expectations to ensure that our customers and visitors use the services on our website in a way that keeps the experience good for everyone. For example, we’ve prohibited abusive practices like opening multiple accounts, submitting false information and other practices that we think detract from everyone’s experience with us. See Section 5 of the Terms of Use.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took time off from his myriad of witty talk show appearances to slap around a just-published Fortune cover story that was titled–get it?–“Trouble@ Twitter.”

Wrote Stone, in part, on his personal blog in a post titled “The Trouble Bubble”:

We founded Twitter, Inc. in March of 2007 and while we have long said it’s about the users, not the service, we have nevertheless enjoyed favorable media coverage. What took so long for somebody to write the article that says we are falling apart? The normal press cycle is to put a company on a pedestal and then knock it down. It’s much more interesting that way. Twitter has had so many ups and downs you’d think we would have had more negative press. To me, it’s like watching the movie Rocky–he’s up, he’s down, he’s out, he wins!

He correctly points out Fortune’s reliable proclivity–see Google, Facebook–to write a wildly positive piece about the latest tech phenom, followed by a smackdown, followed by a they’re-back! tome.

Now, it is the San Francisco microblogging company’s turn.

(In Fortune’s defense, you try selling a magazine these days without a hookish cover line! Hence, the hit-you-over-the-head wounded bird motif here.)

But vegan-y, nice dude that he is, Stone ends on a positive note:

“For a long time, we refused to hire a communications group and now that we have one, I’m having fun teasing them about this Fortune article but the truth is, we’re long overdue to be knocked down by the press.”

While it must be pointed out that Rocky suffered from brain damage in the last installment of the famed movie franchise, BoomTown awards a Stone-cold win for Mr. Biz-boa!

Here’s the full post:

The Trouble Bubble

We founded Twitter, Inc. in March of 2007 and while we have long said it’s about the users, not the service, we have nevertheless enjoyed favorable media coverage. What took so long for somebody to write the article that says we are falling apart? The normal press cycle is to put a company on a pedestal and then knock it down. It’s much more interesting that way. Twitter has had so many ups and downs you’d think we would have had more negative press. To me, it’s like watching the movie Rocky–he’s up, he’s down, he’s out, he wins!

Fortune magazine finally stepped up to knock us down with a cover article, “Trouble@Twitter.” Here are some examples of how this works. After mostly positive coverage of Facebook, Fortune finally published an article in April of 2009 titled, “Is Facebook Losing Its Glow?” However, later that year they published, “What Backlash? Facebook Is Growing Like Mad.” Google received similar treatment. In July 2010 Fortune published, “Google, The Search Party Is Over.” Later that year, they published, “Google Continues To Gain Search Marketshare.”

We’ve had lots of positive press from Fortune in the past. In July of 2010 they published an article titled, “Twitter’s Business Model: A Visionary Experiment.” The article ended with, “Facebook might want to take notes.” It may seem odd, but from my perspective, this means we are being taken very seriously. Twitter is an important company and it’s under scrutiny from journalists–this is exactly how it’s supposed to work. Now it’s our job to prove the reporters wrong so they can write an article later about how we have made dramatic progress.

The Twitter team is an incredibly dedicated group of people who truly believe they are doing the most meaningful work of their lives. It’s also a very small group of people when compared to the other companies Fortune is investigating. We still have under 500 employees–many of them working weekends and nights to fulfill a potential that is palpable. For a long time, we refused to hire a communications group and now that we have one, I’m having fun teasing them about this Fortune article but the truth is, we’re long overdue to be knocked down by the press.

According to several sources close to the situation, Apple CEO Steve Jobs–who is on a health-related leave from the company–is definitely considering an appearance at its big iPad 2 event tomorrow.

But the possibility–which would be a big sensation at the San Francisco gathering and has been subject to great speculation–is also just as definitely not confirmed as yet, stressed sources.

If he did appear, sources said, Jobs would make at least a brief appearance on stage along with other top company execs in showing off Apple’s latest version of it hugely popular tablet.

The new device reportedly has a sleeker look, as well as a camera and other improvements, changes that tech’s top showman would certainly love to tout and that his legions of fans would like to see him introduce.

But what BoomTown would like to see would be more of a focus on the iPad 2 itself, rather than armchair diagnoses of Jobs’s fitness based on any appearance he might make.

That’s no small thing, given the appalling series of photos and video that have surfaced recently, which show the Silicon Valley icon from the worst possible angle and looking quite gaunt.

As I have written before, and as you can see from the photo above taken at last year’s D: All Things Digital conference interview, it is clear Jobs has suffered due to his bout with a form of pancreatic cancer.

Due to nutritional issues, his weight has suffered, one of the key reasons Jobs seems to have taken this latest leave.

That said, in recent weeks, he has made all kinds of public appearances both at Apple’s Cupertino campus and in Silicon Valley restaurants, including a high-profile dinner with President Barack Obama. Jobs sat immediately to the left of the president.

If he decides to make another outing tomorrow, it is certainly with the knowledge that everyone will be trying to figure out his health from a stage appearance.

That’s a risk for Jobs, of course, who relishes in introducing Apple products in presentations that typically garner well-deserved accolades.

Given how innovative most of those products are, what would be a welcome change in the coverage of Jobs’s personal struggles would be to show a level of respect to him by paying more attention to what bells and whistles the iPad 2 has rather than to how his jeans are fitting.

There is no question, with its latest iteration, Apple is making sure consumers realize that it is coming out with a second, flashier version, even before other manufacturers–mostly using the new Honeycomb version of Google’s Android mobile operating system–are still scrambling to get their initial competing devices to market.

That’s the truly dramatic story to watch here, rather than needlessly rubbernecking about the struggles of one man–albeit, a very significant man–to regain his health.

While he won’t officially take over as CEO of Google until April, the recent full-frontal slapfest on Microsoft’s Bing search engine for shoplifting results from the search giant was so Larry Page in tone and temperament that it brought back memories from many years ago when I covered Google more closely.

Like the time in 2004 when he railed on the investment banking system as Google considered its IPO. Or, a meeting in 2005 when Page aggressively argued minutiae about the size of Google’s index size after Yahoo claimed its data trove was bigger.

And my ears are still ringing from a Googleplex lunch we had in the midst of his ire over a 2005 story on CNET that chronicled a lot of personal information about CEO Eric Schmidt, trying to show how much data was easily available on Google.

Page thought it best to be on the offensive and attack the report as a privacy violation, while I took the position that it was accurate and fair game and you don’t argue with the press and win.

It’s unlikely Page remembers any of this, but I do because I kept notes as part of my ongoing assessment of his characteristics as an Internet leader.

In fact, after our first interview in 2001, my notes on the encounter had this one line underlined and in all caps:

LARRY PAGE=BILL GATES.

It was not meant as an insult, but I can tell you I never wrote such a note about Page’s co-founder, the jokey and affable Sergey Brin.

Even then, Gates had a fearsome reputation as a manically competitive exec, a cutting manner to those not as smart as he clearly is and a reputation as a very tough and often eviscerating boss. (And all that was also my experience whenever I was interviewing him.)

While much wonkier, friendlier and more of a sensitive new-aged male, Page, it seemed to me, had the exact same obvious drive and aggression as Gates.

I stopped covering Google as closely years later–for personal reasons (see disclosure above)–and, thus, largely fell out of regular touch with Page.

But in reading the tough quotes and later blog post by Amit Singhal–quite possibly the sweetest dude at Google–accusing Bing of cheating, it felt like he was channeling Page’s very clear and nerdily indignant voice again.

In a nutshell: We have data to prove Microsoft’s stealing. Look at our detailed proof from our complex sting. We are outraged by this violation of geek code. Don’t you lay people get it?!?

I would wager that we’re about to see a lot more of this pugnacious, in-your-face tone from Google under Page’s leadership, which could have far-reaching implications for the company.

While I have no idea if it was his decision to let loose the dogs of algo-war on Microsoft, many with knowledge of how Google manages its public persona observed to me this week that this was just the kind of popping off that the outgoing Schmidt often tried to mitigate and soften.

But such bravado will play well with Google’s elite and pampered engineering corps in Silicon Valley.

And, in any case, PR considerations have never really been the point for Page, who cares not for how it might come off in the media (which he largely disdains anyway).

Which is to say like a temper tantrum of a very smart and very gifted child, who is probably largely right, but should not be quite so exercised given the level of violation.

No matter, since Page likely still lives and breathes data and algorithms and the Spock-like application of information.

It’s the rest of us who are illogical.

Mike Murphy–Facebook’s first head of advertising sales, who left the social networking giant in October to take some personal time off–seems done with relaxing.

He is now taking a part-time, but significant, role at online gaming phenom Zynga to help formulate its advertising strategy.

In addition, Murphy is also close to formalizing a consulting relationship with Facebook.

Given there has been strong interest from more obvious Facebook competitors in retaining Murphy–including Google and Twitter–his move to Zynga is probably the best outcome for it.

Although the relationship has been tense at times, Zynga remains one of Facebook’s major strategic partners.

Facebook has reportedly been close to filling Murphy’s job, talking to several major online ad execs recently, but has not yet replaced him.

While it is not clear what Murphy will be doing for Facebook, where former Google exec David Fischer runs the ad business, Murphy’s role at Zynga will be quite deep and could expand over time even more.

It will include overseeing the development of Zynga’s advertising strategy, team growth and advertising products, and creating new relationships with top brands.

After being contacted by BoomTown about the new job, Murphy confirmed it and said in a statement:

“Social games are becoming a core way for marketers to engage with their customers. Zynga’s network of games have created an incredible opportunity for advertisers to create passionate relationships and emotional connections with their customers.”

Indeed, as it moves toward an inevitable IPO later this year, Zynga is upping its focus on building its advertising business, aiming at selling its fast-growing audience and the frequency and engagement they use its casual gaming products.

At Zynga, Murphy will lead and build the team, scaling its relationships with big-name partners.

The company has already dipped its toe in this arena, integrating some major brands into its games in recent campaigns.

Such online-offline customer efforts, although early, have had strong adoption, such as a recent one to plant branded blueberry crops–organic!–in its flagship FarmVille game for General Mills cereals.

There has also been a McDonald’s-branded farm in FarmVille. (McReally.)

Interestingly, in an inside-Silicon-Valley-baseball way, the move to Zynga will reunite Murphy, the former Yahoo exec who ran global advertising strategy for Facebook for five years, with Owen Van Natta.

Van Natta was once COO of Facebook and hired Murphy there. He is now EVP of Business at Zynga.

Along with Murphy, Van Natta has also brought in Dani Dudeck as communications head from Myspace, where he had a rocky tenure as CEO of the News Corp. unit.

And Katie Geminder, who was a design and user interface exec at both Facebook and Myspace, is also now at Zynga in a similar full-time role.

At the time he announced his departure from Facebook in the fall, Murphy said he had decided to step down in order to take some personal time off, noting that hundreds of nights on the road over the years had been enough.

“For the last five years of hyper-growth here, I have been focused on Facebook,” said Murphy. “Now, I felt it was time to shift that focus to my family.”

And now, apparently, to Zynga.

The rich clients of Goldman Sachs, who are poised to grab a $1.5 billion piece of the company?

The venture investors, as well as Microsoft, who funded the social networking site when it was not the behemoth it has become?

Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who owns 25 percent of Facebook?

Of course they all do. But in the midst of this investor frenzy around Facebook, it is critical to keep in mind that the most important “owners” of Facebook are its 600 million users.

Not many of them have been invited to invest in the Goldman deal, but without their active support, uploading of all kinds of personal information and their friend networks, Facebook would be worthless.

Those users–whether or not they are being acknowledged by the company and the markets–are the real shareholders in Facebook.

And if they left, Facebook would become irrelevant. Such a thing has happened before (see: AOL). It’s Facebook’s contract with and service for those users that gives it that massive $50 billion valuation.

This particular deal might not be eyebrow-raising enough to get a ton of people up in arms, but it was specifically structured to consider Goldman investors a single entity, which some think is being done to circumvent shareholder limits that Facebook has historically avoided (although it does not have to any longer, as long as it goes public by the end of April of 2012).

But given the events of the last few years, the public and the government have developed an emphatic mistrust of tricky Wall Street accounting. It’s kind of a sore topic.

And potentially sorer still for Facebook and its consumer image. As the social network has no real competition in most regions and demographics, many users have developed a deep relationship with the service.

Facebook has tried to make its offerings be (and feel) egalitarian, but working hand in glove with Wall Street bankers to freeze out average investors is definitely not that.

Thus, it might be time for the company to think about who its most important constituents are.

Because the only thing that really matters in the long term is if users stick with Facebook or leave it behind.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Many years ago, before Google went public, I had an unusual late-night conversation in the lobby of the TED conference with its co-founder Larry Page about the prospect, about which–despite its inevitability–he had more than a little nervousness.

That would be: Taking the search company public.

After much ruminating, Page concluded that one of the more important reasons he felt compelled to have an IPO was to finally reward Google’s employees for all the work they had done to build the company.

While I have never had a similar chat with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the powerful social networking company and an initial public offering, I suspect that he would not express any such sentiment.

And it’s not because Zuckerberg does not value his staffers any less than Page did–instead, it’s because he seems to value his privacy most of all.

I know–ironic!–given how many perceive the company to be cavalier about important issues related to disclosures of personal information uploaded to Facebook by the mountain-load daily by its hundreds of millions of users.

That aside, Zuckerberg’s clear intent to keep the lid on Facebook tight–with no information about the details of financial performance and other pertinent information a public offering would require be disclosed–is clearly about to become a nettlesome issue for the company.

While that effort at preserving secrecy by staying private has resulted in little more than cute Silicon Valley media guessing games about a possible IPO, its most recent machinations are too clever by a half.

That would be the new and giant investment from Goldman Sachs, as well as a deal to get $1.5 billion of pre-IPO shares in the hands of the investment bank’s rich customers.

Aside from the appalling image that only the very wealthy can get an early shot at Facebook shares, which instantly became a press meme yesterday after the Goldman deal was announced, pretending this single investment entity–called a “special purpose vehicle”–simply feels like a Wall Street trick.

Plus, a special purpose vehicle sounds like a car that bankers use to take people for a ride.

Thus, a gaggle of rich doctors in New Jersey are treated like one blob, instead of what is plainly true to all. As the old Latin legal phrase goes: Res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself).

Of course, this strategic move is designed to keep the number of primary stockholders under 500, which is the IPO tipping point for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Therefore, by all means, let’s do it!

Or not, because I had an intense déjà vu about all this, and an unease that it felt vaguely familiar as a negative characteristic of Zuckerberg’s leadership that seems to cling to him.

That would be the dicey origins of Facebook, which remain a controversy to this day, including garnering an entire Hollywood movie on the subject.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Facebook’s history knows the basic question: Did Mark Zuckerberg “steal” the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins, as well as sandbag their efforts, while they were all students at Harvard University?

And, more to the point, was it illegal?

The Winklevii certainly think so, continuing in their Don Quixote quest to take Zuckerberg down in a series of ever-more-comical lawsuits.

For me, the answer is a lot more complex–I think Zuckerberg most definitely screwed with the Olympic rowing twins and it was very creepy that he did.

But, in terms of breaking the law, not so much.

Of course, if you are endeavoring to always act with ethics in your career, this should not be the bar set. But in practical terms, it was most definitely an aggressive knee-capping that is not uncommon in business.

Zuckerberg has shown similar tendencies many times since then, especially around the thorny issues of privacy, where fast-and-loose behaviors are quickly followed by the I’m-sorry-I-didn’t-mean-it excuses.

Okay, fine, I get it. Business is war.

But, as it moves into a more mature place, the question now is whether Facebook should keep stressing this kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge propensity, because it feels–how can I say this in the nicest way–icky.

Plus it will surely attract unneeded attention from the SEC, which is already looking into the opaque market for trading shares of closely held companies and where Facebook is the star attraction.

And this is to say nothing of other issues–for example, could there be insider trading problems around the buying and selling of these private shares, as one person close to the situation has noted to me?

Facebook, of course, will defend what it is doing as above board, say it’s not unfair to give special access to its bounty to the very rich in what is essentially a private IPO and wag a finger at critics like me and tell us we don’t understand sophisticated financial issues.

But here’s what I grok without a Harvard Business School degree: It feels sneaky, it feels elite, it feels opaque, and this kind of fancy financing footwork could end in tears.

Because these legitimate questions on how Facebook handles its stock will continue to dog the company until–when he is good and ready (and finances at Facebook look prettier)–Zuckerberg eventually pulls the trigger on an IPO.

It would be nice, even if Wall Street applauds his cleverness, if he didn’t keep shooting himself in the foot along the way.