Google (GOOG) has some 20,000 employees, so the scale of the sackings isn’t earth-shaking news. And these aren’t Google’s first cuts: In January the company got rid of 100 recruiters. In February it announced it could cut up to 40 jobs as it folded up its radio group.

But the fact that these cuts come from sales and marketing, which just lost its high-profile leader, Tim Armstrong, to Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL and replaced him with Google veteran Dennis Woodside, is interesting. As is SVP Omid Kordestani’s note explaining the cuts, in which he says Google simply made hiring mistakes as it grew its sales group.

Here’s the complete text of Kordestani’s post:

Google has grown very quickly in a very short period of time. When companies grow that quickly it’s almost impossible to get everything right–and we certainly didn’t. In some areas we’ve created overlapping organizations which not only duplicate effort but also complicate the decision-making process. That makes our teams less effective and efficient than they should be. In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time.

So today we have informed Googlers that we plan to reduce the number of roles within our sales and marketing organizations by just under 200 globally. Making changes of this kind is never easy–and we recognize that the recession makes the timing even more difficult for the Googlers concerned. We did look at a number of different options but ultimately concluded that we had to restructure our organizations in order to improve our effectiveness and efficiency as a business. We will give each person time to try and find another position at Google, as well as outplacement support, and provide severance packages for those who leave the company. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone affected for all they have contributed to Google.

Used to be that most of their fulminations generally went unanswered, because:

1) Techmeme creator Gabe Rivera generally keeps to himself, at least in the physical world.

2) Rivera created Techmeme using an algorithm that was supposed to automatically suss out which stories were most important, using a link-based hierarchy similar to Google’s (GOOG).

But dudes who are still unhappy with Techmeme (and yes, I mean dudes; with a couple rare exceptions that prove the rule–hello, boss–this is unfortunately a Man’s Man’s Man’s World) have someone they can vent at/to. Meet Megan McCarthy, the former Valleywag writer Rivera hired late last year to add a human’s touch to the site. Headline for his blog post announcing the move: “Guess what? Automated news doesn’t quite work.”

That doesn’t mean that Techmeme has abandoned the algorithm–just that Rivera wants McCarthy tweaking the site and making sure that important/useful/interesting stories bubble up. Or that’s their argument, anyway. Sounds right to me.

If you’re at South by Southwest this weekend, you can chat McCarthy up yourself–she’s the very tall, very pleasant woman who seems to know an awful lot of people. Or you can watch this clip, where she bravely agreed to let me hold a Flip camera in front of her face.

Important (at least to some people) addendum to my interview: When I argue that Rivera “favors” certain kinds of coverage, I mean just that–that he’s more interested in, say, Web 2.0 news than he is in gadget coverage, and that he’s set up Techmeme to reflect that.

It wasn’t just Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer meeting in New York last week.

According to several sources close to the situation, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes rounded out the trio of chit-chatting execs, presumably gathered to discuss possible partnerships and other deals between and amongst the companies whose digital assets are among the largest on the Web.

Although the possibilities are numerous, exactly what Bostock, Ballmer and Bewkes–let’s call them the Busy B’s from here on out–were cooking up is unclear.

But for Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and Time Warner (TWX), which owns the AOL online service, it is a meal that is probably long past due.

That’s especially true given the struggles each has had with his online assets of late.

Some sort of alliance between the threesome could be a way each could solve those problems and more importantly, create a Web counterweight to the growing power of Google (GOOG).

Last week, on the heels of Carol Bartz’s appointment as new Yahoo CEO, BoomTown wrote a post noting that Microsoft was ready to deal in its long-sought-after effort to strike a search deal with Yahoo.

Last year, the software giant launched a takeover battle for Yahoo, which was resisted and ultimately abandoned. But Microsoft never lost interest in doing an outright deal to buy Yahoo’s search assets or create a significant partnership around search.

Yahoo has been long been lukewarm to such an idea, first rejecting Microsoft outright in favor of a deal with Google.

Since its Google deal collapsed over regulatory concerns, Yahoo has still dragged its feet about the notion, with its board divided over the right course of action.

And, while Bartz told Yahoo employees last week that her “gut” did not favor the deal, most saw that more as a negotiating ploy than a signal that Yahoo was not at least somewhat interested.

It has to be, given that many of its investors and also Wall Street have been eager for Yahoo to make such an alliance.

Therefore, the sighting of Ballmer and Bostock at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan together, first reported by Valleywag late last week, was a sign that relations between Yahoo and Microsoft were improving.

(The Ballmer/Bostock confab was also later confirmed by the New York Times.)

But sources at all the companies have said Bewkes was also meeting with the pair, which makes it clearer than ever that a much bigger and more complex game might be afoot.

It’s kind of inevitable too, given that this group has done more back and forth blabbing and bickering than Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson on “American Idol.”

That’s because Yahoo and AOL have also been involved in serious, but painfully prolonged, discussions to merge, talks that were tabled once Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said in November that he was stepping down.

In addition, Microsoft has been interested in eventually renewing its bid for AOL’s search business, which is now run by Google. Microsoft lost out to Google the last time the contract was up.

It recently paid a small king’s ransom to become the key search partner of both Dell (DELL) and Verizon Wireless (VZ), distribution deals that have become one of Microsoft’s favored tactics to take some market share away from Google.

Microsoft even hired a well-known Yahoo search techie, Qi Lu, to head its digital efforts, mostly to turbocharge its search business.

But given that Google’s search share is over 70 percent now, which yields it a lion’s share of the search ad dollars, none of this has been enough for Microsoft to get true traction in the search game.

That’s why some sort of union with Yahoo is probably critical for Microsoft, since this would get it past the 20 percent share mark.

As for Bewkes, he has been mightily trying to unload AOL, which has had a long and painful history with Time Warner.

So it’s clear the trio had a lot to talk about.

And I hope they get creative this time, rather than just rehashing the same old ideas that have still not been consummated.

Here’s my suggestion, which is a bit nuts, to be sure, although variations of it have previously been considered by all the companies:

Instead of Yahoo doing the acquisition, which it can ill afford with its depressed stock price, Microsoft buys AOL for $4 billion to $5 billion.

It then quickly spins AOL’s content, advertising and communication assets into Yahoo, nabbing the search business, throws in some cash as an investment and perhaps even its MSN assets. Microsoft gets a large stake in the newco.

Time Warner gets the cash from the AOL sale and perhaps even a stake in the newco, along with perhaps striking some kind of interesting online deal for the rest of its copious media assets.

And Yahoo gets to own massive assets in content, communications and premium advertising on the Web. While it would lose search, Yahoo would also get a pile of money, along with enough key search data from Microsoft that it would drown in it.

And, most importantly, Yahoo could focus on what it does best rather than get squeezed in a search arms race between Google and Microsoft.

And if the meeting among Bostock, Ballmer and Bewkes was only another chapter of the endless and unsuccessful talks that have so far lead exactly nowhere?

Well then, the three will eventually look more like the Three Stooges than anything else.

There it was again–like the gnarly ghost of Christmas past–in the Los Angeles Times this week. But this time Lloyd Braun wasn’t going to take it anymore.

The object of his ire was dropped right in the middle of a blog post on how Yahoo was “reversing its Hollywoodification” with–egads–no more reserved parking spaces for top execs at its Santa Monica offices.

The Times said the new rule “signals a stark new era of austerity that overshadows the elimination of the last vestiges of the corporate culture war spurred by the hiring of former Warner Bros. chieftain Terry Semel and ABC’s Braun.”

Knock, knock, L.A. Times! Because that war is actually still raging at Yahoo (YHOO)–although the parking spaces carry little symbolic weight anymore at the company, which has much bigger problems to solve these days.

But even more unusually, the piece also abruptly dropped in old allegations the newspaper had included in a devastating story in November of 2005 by Chris Gaither about Braun and Yahoo’s media push at the time, titled “Can Yahoo Sign on to Hollywood?”

It was noted in the post as an aside:

(Braun also converted a conference room with a patio into his personal office and requested a corporate jet for the Santa Monica office. Oh, and there was the time he reportedly took an umbrella without paying for it from the Yahoo store on a rainy day and then asked the clerk who requested payment: ‘Do you know who I am?’ He later explained that he just wanted to make sure the clerk knew he was good for it. But we digress).”

Digress is right, because it turns out, the bulk of those juicy anecdotes about him in the new blog post and the old story actually don’t check out, after extensive reporting BoomTown had done previously and this week too, talking to a range of key execs at the company at the time.

Thus, when I saw the Times post this week, I contacted Braun (pictured here) and sent him the link. He quickly responded via email:

“I am not an umbrella thief–and I promise I never will be. I never once asked for a corporate jet. I was and continue to be a big fan of Southwest Airlines. And I certainly never engaged in any kind of office construction while at Yahoo.”

Braun–who now runs his own online and traditional media production company called BermanBraun in L.A. with Gail Berman–also said he had immediately asked the Times for a correction of the blog post, as he says he did three years ago when the original story ran.

Times Business editor Sallie Hofmeister, whom I also contacted (but who was not in charge at the time of the 2005 piece), said the Times was looking into the situation and wrote in an email to me:

“The story we published in 2005 was a reflection of the sentiments within Yahoo at the time. We worked very closely with Yahoo on the story, so the company’s top management had every opportunity to challenge our reporting. After the story ran three years ago, neither Yahoo nor Lloyd requested a correction and no correction ran. What you hear from people today probably would be different than what they would have said three years ago. Lloyd is long gone and so are the tensions of entertainment’s invasion at Yahoo. People’s recollections also change. Enemies then are friends today.

“As for blog post, we strive for accuracy and when people in our stories take issue with our coverage, we take them very seriously.”

So do I.

Thus, it is long past time to set the record straight and put to bed a fable of raging Hollywood high-handedness–with too-good-to-be-true-because-they’re-not, clichéd lines like, “Do you know who I am?” and filched umbrellas.

Why bother looking into it at all these years hence? Well, for one, it is just not fair for inaccuracies about Braun to remain, complete with a never-die life on the Web and a nagging perception that he was some digital version of Ari Gold from “Entourage.”

But, more importantly, the struggles at Yahoo back then have everything to do with what is going on now. And that is a company culture at war with itself about what it is and should be.

I have, in fact, been collecting string on Braun’s alleged escapades for years, mostly from Yahoos. I was fascinated since, like a game of telephone gone awry, those who worked with Braun closely and would know, told a different story from some of those in Sunnyvale, who might not.

That did not stop many there from telling various stories about Braun, almost none of which were accurate when I actually followed up.

Because of that, I started to look very closely at Yahoo to figure out why such fallacies went unchecked about him and later, about an ever longer string of departed execs.

But let’s start with what was clearly true in that 2005 piece, which began with another parking kerfuffle and a hissy-fit email from a new Yahoo exec, recruited from Fox, threatening to tow “someone” who parked in his assigned place.

It was a classic opening, trying to show in an anecdote the clash that was going on at Yahoo at the time.

And it was an apt one. There was indeed a lot of resistance to the decision by then-CEO Terry Semel, who was pushing Yahoo as a media company.

To do it, Semel hired Braun–a highly successful Hollywood figure (think being key to initiating and developing “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” and you have a good idea of his stature)–to pull it off at a big new and splashy office complex in Santa Monica.

Thus, the lines were drawn by some at Yahoo HQ, where execs mostly work in cubicles and where a we’re-all-equal ethos prevailed among some of the techie old guard especially, at least in their skewed perceptions of themselves.

(Guess what? They do work in cubicles, but some Yahoos in Sunnyvale are more equal than others.)

Still, back in 2005, it was easy to make an ebullient, brash and sometimes abrasive entertainment exec like Braun into a tidy little caricature and mock the idea of his task.

And who was hired to make new and innovative kinds of online programming hits, much as Braun had on television so well.

There is no doubt there were tensions. The Times story began focusing on the level of distrust, which in my estimation–I also was watching Yahoo closely at the time–was mostly from the tech side and mostly without interface with those in Los Angeles.

But, as Gaither noted correctly:

Yahoo’s ability to blend the cultures, milking each for what it does best, will be key to reaching its ultimate goal: to build on its success as the most visited destination on the Web by leveraging the links between content and the technology used to create and deliver it.”

Unfortunately, the Times story then launched into a series of really broad clichés about Hollywood versus Silicon Valley, using the typical “conspicuously expensive car” in LaLaLand versus the “energy-saving” one in Geekville.

(Again, my experience is that the tech folks always seem to have Porsches too, much as many Hollywood slickies drive Prius hybrids.)

The story went on to talk about the arrival of Semel, whom Gaither reported was seen as not as Hollywood at first as was expected by some wary Yahoos. He then got to Braun, who apparently was.

That’s where the problems come in, first by making it seem as if Braun was responsible for the pricey lease for the new Santa Monica offices at the Colorado Center.

Actually, according to top execs like Dan Rosensweig–Braun’s direct boss–as well as sources close to Semel and many other execs involved, that facility’s planning was directed largely from Sunnyvale, as most such projects are.

Braun did give an interview when the lease was announced, but was in no way the driver of the building’s renovation, which was actually being done by the company Yahoo rented the space from.

Next, came an assertion that the execs in Santa Monica got “Hollywood-style perks,” pointing out that Braun had “converted a conference room with a patio into his personal office. He also reserved a parking space close to the elevators for his car.”

Well, Braun did have a reserved space, which was no real crime to my mind, and which was actually not particularly close to the elevators.

How do I know? I have walked Braun to his car in the parking garage, which is about as nonluxurious as it gets, as opposed to Yahoo HQ, which used valets.

More importantly, Braun converted no office space and was assigned a temporary office elsewhere during the renovation, according to a panoply of execs and workers at Yahoo, such as Rosensweig, Jeff Weiner, Scott Moore and sources close to Semel.

It was a good office–after all, Braun was the boss of the Media Group.

And while both offices did have patios, the large outdoor spaces were also kind of dingy, especially compared to the manicured lawns of Yahoo HQ. And the patios were accessible to many parts of the floors, as I noticed on my many visits.

(As an added note, after the renovations were complete, Braun’s official office was not by any means fancy and was very standard in its drone-like look.)

The worst part was the next line: “Yahoo’s top executives drew the line when Braun asked for a corporate jet,” which was followed by a stunning quote by Semel.

It read:

The reaction was basically, ‘No,’ said Semel, who does not ask Yahoo to foot the bill when he flies to Northern California in his own private plane. ‘A lot of the more traditional media companies are doing their best to scale back on some of the perks and put the investment into the products and the consumers.’”

But, top Yahoo execs have uniformly told me over the years and this week that such a request from Braun never happened.

What was actually occurring, again directed by Yahoo’s Sunnyvale HQ, was an analysis about whether the company should start a charter air shuttle for the many engineers in its Burbank facility, working on its then-Panama search project, and employees at its growing Santa Monica facility.

There could be up to 20 workers going back and forth north daily, and the Southwest Airline bills were getting high.

Thus, a look-see to determine if an L.A.-Sunnyvale shuttle for everyone was needed. But it was conceived as a less-than-high-end plane, essentially a puddle-jumper that left at 7 a.m. and came back at 7 p.m.

Braun thought it was a good idea to examine and told Rosensweig, who was in charge of looking at the charter idea. But Braun was not part of the consideration of it.

Ultimately, Semel nixed the idea as too costly, and Braun did not object.

Why Semel seemed to tell Gaither that is curious. But a person familiar with Semel’s thinking said he was only referring to an company shuttle for everyone and not a corporate jet just for Braun and his minions, as the story opaquely implied.

“The discussions over the charter had nothing to do with Lloyd,” said the person. “And he did not ever ask for a corporate jet ever.”

Rosensweig, Weiner and several other top execs at the highest echelons–many of whom did not get along with Braun–support this version, on the record.

“I never saw anything out of the ordinary or Lloyd playing by Hollywood standards,” said Vince Broady, who worked for Braun, after being brought to Yahoo by Rosensweig. “I mean, Lloyd is a colorful character, which makes people notice him, but the idea that he was more difficult than anyone else was overblown.”

There is no doubt why Braun would attract attention–he is very noticeable and had a long and bruising career in Hollywood, with lots of stories of his dishing it out. He’s a genuine character, indeed, but not really that unusual compared to others in the entertainment sector, except perhaps to some at Yahoo.

Thus, I have no doubt, though, that such a story went around that Braun did desire a jet of his own and that Gaither heard it told, just like this most incredible of anecdotes in the piece.

The infamous umbrella!

Here is what Gaither wrote:

Braun’s long career in Hollywood has led to some awkward moments and misunderstandings inside Yahoo–and provided gossipy fodder for critics eager to cast him as a technically illiterate egomaniac.

According to one widely recounted tale, on a rainy day Braun took an umbrella from the Yahoo merchandise store without paying for it. Then, when asked for payment, he reportedly berated the store clerk, asking, ‘Do you know who I am?’ In fact, Braun’s representatives say, it was an innocent question to ensure that the clerk knew he was good for the money.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said the umbrella ultimately ended up in a pool of umbrellas available to all employees.”

I could not, obviously, find the clerk to whom Braun allegedly said this. But I can say that there are free baskets of umbrellas for staffers all over Yahoo, and top execs like Braun can also buy them at company stores and just use their names as part of an account system.

And while I have no proof, the use of such a clearly hoary Hollywood phrase–“Do you know who I am?”–seems like it was simply made up to me by critics bent on making it a much better story than it was.

To be fair, Gaither does portray it as a “tale” that was circulating around Yahoo. But that probably should have alerted him that it was a very tall one indeed and not very reliable–a kind of digital urban legend rather than an actual event.

That’s why I would not have used it, without a much more explicit explanation that it was more an example of the tensions at Yahoo between the media and tech units than it was reality.

Perhaps worst of all was the impact of the piece, which forever cemented Braun’s reputation as a Hollywood-gone-wild exec.

Most interesting was that, according to both the Times and Yahoo sources, the company complained about the tone of the piece, but never asked for a correction.

Why? Sources familiar with Semel’s thinking said that he and PR execs thought it would cause more attention to focus on Braun, if they contested the piece, and it was better to just let it go.

It was probably a bad decision, given it was in the L.A. Times, which had a lot of credibility.

And, indeed, the high-profile Braun was later slapped silly by Valleywag, as the Times piece kept circulating within Yahoo. By the next year, Braun became one of the gossip blog’s first targets.

Valley–which knows a good character when it sees one and likes to poke and prod many, many such Silicon Valley-linked figures in mocking glee (with varying levels of accuracy)–even had a countdown to when Braun would be fired.

Because of this kind of thing, Braun said he tried to get Gaither to take another look at the stories about him, and met with Times editors to get them to make corrections.

The Times said Braun never formally asked for a correction and instead just complained about the story. To me, that is the same thing, but I am not privy to the Times’s internal corrections process, and Hofmeister declined to elaborate.

In any case, looking back, Braun told me this week the lack of support from Semel and Yahoo to fight the story was hugely disappointing and was the moment he realized he felt he would probably have to leave Yahoo.

Eventually, the feeling was mutual, as tensions escalated even further after the article appeared.

Braun–who had a particularly rocky relationship with Rosensweig, which is now patched up–was eventually pushed out in late 2006, after Yahoo moved away from its media focus to drill down in search.

That turned out to be a bad move, as Yahoo got its head handed to it by Google in search efforts. And it has since seriously been in tailspin in the wake of a series of jarring events.

Those include: the sudden departure of Semel mid-2007; the appointment of Co-Founder Jerry Yang as CEO; a painful public struggle to redefine Yahoo; a botched takeover fight with Microsoft (MSFT); a messy proxy battle with Carl Icahn; a collapsed search partnership with Google (GOOG); a decimated stock price; a scarily declining graphical advertising market; wrenching layoffs; and the stepping down of Yang and the thus-far uncompleted search for a new CEO.

You get the idea.

More importantly, with the cutting off of its more vaunted media aspirations, Yahoo closed the door on possible innovative directions that could have made it more competitive now, as it continues to struggle to define itself.

One of Yahoo’s great strengths–and it still is–has been its content properties, which are the most popular, by and large, on the Web. Instead, stinging from the article and the fallout of it, the company retreated from pushing forward aggressively in media.

Had it not, I can imagine a host of stuff it might have done.

And, ironically, Braun is now working on an online project with Microsoft, a celebrity site that will debut early next year and use a lots of the concepts he worked on at Yahoo.

In the 2005 piece, Gaither quoted Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner as saying, in a Yin-Yang concept: “We’re often asked, “Is Yahoo a media company or a tech company?”

Sadly, that question never got resolved then and still has not today.

It almost makes one nostalgic for stolen umbrellas, controversial parking places, questionable patios and wrangling over corporate jets.

Almost.

While layoffs have become all too common across tech and this country, today’s at Yahoo feel a little worse, coming after 18 unceasing months of painful changes and stumbles at the troubled Internet icon.

As previously reported by BoomTown, about 10 percent of Yahoo’s workforce–1,500–are expected to get their walking papers, starting this morning.

I have gotten more than a dozen impassioned emails from Yahoo (YHOO) employees, some of whom are there and some who have left, this week alone–all of whom truly care for the company, in spite of obvious anger.

Here is part of a sadly typical one:

“Yahoo has made a lot of stupid moves, starting with turning Microsoft down, but to cut the high caliber and quality of people that they are cutting now–basically choosing quantity over quality–is an abomination. How’s the old saying go: you don’t mess with success. Yet, that’s exactly what Yahoo is doing, and is only going to become even weaker than it already is.”

The layoff number was announced by its (eventually outgoing) CEO Jerry Yang on its last earnings call on Oct. 21, as part of an attempt to turn around the fortunes of Yahoo.

Since then, the economy has worsened, making it even harder for the company to right its fortunes. Even Yang has since announced that he was stepping aside, as Yahoo searched for a new CEO.

As I wrote earlier this week, here are some highlights of the layoffs today:

1. The number currently remains at 1,500, although given the current economic environment, several sources at Yahoo expect the eventual numbers to add up to be more that that, up to 2,000.

2. The layoffs are across the board. But expect general, human resources and finance to take a bigger hit, since the expense cuts are cost-based and most of the costs in those divisions are staff.

3. Employees targeted will be told this morning with a “normal separation period,” which means they will be out within a few hours today.

Valleywag has apparently obtained the script for those exits, which–as typical as they are for these situations–truly bleed purple.

4. Yahoo execs are not expecting any serious problems because these layoffs have been long anticipated. But there will be security present at its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ and elsewhere.

5. Most employees do not know if they will be let go yet, nor has management in charge of the cuts made that public.

That’s because whole projects might be eliminated, and there is the possibility of whole divisions being moved among big managers.

6. Yang’s successor has not yet been named, although the race is narrowing.

An open-ended timetable for an employee stock sale program.

Perhaps it’s the same “open-ended timetable” Facebook’s using for that mythical liquidity event, hmm? Without a silver bullet business model and no stable revenue stream to speak of, investors were bound to question Facebook’s perceived valuation sooner or later. And, apparently that’s exactly what happened, according to Valleywag’s Owen Thomas. “Facebook’s common shares…have a value that put the whole company’s worth at around $4 billion,” Thomas explains. “Or they did. A source close to potential investors said they wanted to buy shares from employees at a lower valuation, or with guarantees similar to Microsoft’s. To reward a small number of employees who had enough shares to benefit from the program, [Facebook] would have had to give away something for nothing.”

Yesterday, based on sources, BoomTown reported, that Yahoo search exec Sean Suchter was headed to Microsoft.

Now it’s official. Here’s a Microsoft (MSFT) statement on the hiring of Suchter (pictured here), an important tech leader at Yahoo (YHOO), from Satya Nadella, SVP for Search, Portal and Advertising:

“We are very pleased to confirm that Sean Suchter will be joining Microsoft as the GM of our Silicon Valley Search Technology Center, working on Live Search. Sean will report into Harry Shum when he starts work on December 22. We look forward to welcoming him to Microsoft at that time.”

The talent grab from Yahoo is an interesting one, given that Microsoft has also tried to to buy Yahoo’s search and search ad business many times, to little success.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reiterated that desire yesterday at the software giant’s annual meeting, although he discounted the possibility that Microsoft would rebid for all of Yahoo after it abandoned a takeover attempt earlier this year.

His statement sent Yahoo’s stock further into the basement.

Losing important execs like Suchter, who was the VP of Search Technology at Yahoo, will also not help the company’s prospects. Suchter was deeply involved in Yahoo’s efforts to open up its search platform, initiatives the company has touted aggressively as a bright spot in its not-so-lustrous landscape.

Suchter–who came to Yahoo almost six years ago after it acquired Inktomi (the company that got Yahoo into the search business) in early 2003–has been talking with Microsoft for a while and his leaving was not linked to this week’s announcement that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will be stepping down.

But it could be linked to the possibility that another former major Yahoo search exec could also be going to Microsoft. I wrote a post earlier today that I thought the Ballmer was looking at Qi Lu–the well-regarded Search and Advertising Technology group EVP at Yahoo, who left earlier this year–to be its digital head.

All this muscling up in search by Microsoft is troubling for Yahoo. There are big questions, now that Yang is stepping down, whether Yahoo will stay in the search business or sell it off. Yang has been a big proponent of doubling down in search, considering it integral to the entire Yahoo ecosystem.

But others make the very persuasive argument that Yahoo will be increasingly outspent by both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft, in what is turning into a very vicious and expensive arms race.

If it sold off its No. 2 search business to Microsoft–ironically, Yahoo used to deliver Microsoft’s search results–many think it could have huge costs savings and garner guaranteed revenues.

News of Suchter’s departure from Yahoo, including the internal memo announcing it, appeared in Valleywag yesterday.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Yahoo–which has stuck to its guns by staying in the search business, even though many think it is a losing game and should be sold off to Microsoft–has lost a key engineer in that arena to, uh-oh, Microsoft.

Sean Suchter, the VP of Search Technology at Yahoo, was also deeply involved in Yahoo’s efforts to open up its search platform, initiatives the company has touted aggressively as a bright spot in its not-so-lustrous landscape.

The departure of Suchter–who came to Yahoo (YHOO) almost six years ago after it acquired Inktomi (the company that got Yahoo into the search business) in early 2003–has been in the works for a while and was not linked to this week’s announcement that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will be stepping down.

Yahoo confirmed Suchter’s departure, but Microsoft (MSFT) has not yet announced his arrival there.

[UPDATED: Microsoft has now officially announced that Suchter is coming to the company.]

But sources said it will be in late December, with Suchter will be working in search for Satya Nadella, the SVP who heads engineering for Microsoft’s search, portal and advertising platform group.

Sources at Microsoft had told me of that they were close to locking down this impressive get several weeks ago. “If we can get someone like Sean, it says a lot,” said one source.

Indeed, Suchter has been an important tech leader at Yahoo, much as Qi Lu–the well-regarded Search and Advertising Technology group EVP, who left earlier this year–was.

In his LinkedIn profile, Suchter noted about his duties at Yahoo:

“I run Yahoo’s Web search engine, with overall responsibility for its success. This includes engineering, product responsibility, operational stability, results quality, capex spending and revenue (from the paid inclusion program).”

There are big questions, now that Yang is stepping down, whether Yahoo will stay in the search business or sell it off. Yang has been a big proponent of doubling down in search, considering it integral to the entire Yahoo ecosystem.

But others make the very persuasive argument that Yahoo will be increasingly outspent by both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft, in what is turning into a very vicious and expensive arms race.

If it sold off its No. 2 search business to Microsoft–ironically, Yahoo used to deliver Microsoft’s search results–many think it could have huge costs savings and garner guaranteed revenues.

News of Suchter’s departure, including the internal Yahoo memo announcing it, appeared in Valleywag this morning, which speculated that Suchter was headed to Microsoft.

In the memo, Tuoc Luong, Yahoo’s SVP of Search, stated the very obvious about Suchter’s departure:

“Unfortunately, I have to give some bad news to you. Sean Suchter has resigned. Sean’s last day will be December 19th.

Some of you will find this news shocking given that Sean has been a Gibraltar rock at Yahoo and in particular for the Search team. I understand this.”

Interestingly, Yahoo has recently nabbed several of former Microsoft execs, including U.S. ad head Joanne Bradford and U.S. Audience SVP Jeff Dossett.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

[Photo from Flickr stream of WebProNews.]

Safe to say that the mood of last week–with its anticipation of change–is a distant memory. A different kind of anticipation permeated the tech and online media industries, one more reminiscent of April 2001. There was news all around of layoffs, pending layoffs, bankruptcies and stock dives.

To wit:

Digital Daily offered up a body count of companies in the tech sector that have been beaten into whimpering submission. Nortel (NT), once a telecom high-flyer, lost $3.4 billion in Q3. The company announced plans to lay off five percent of its workforce–including some high-ranking executives–eliminating 2,500 positions. Other high-ranking execs are taking part in the econalypse too, notably Kevin Kettler, Dell’s (DELL) chief technology officer. A week after the computer maker began offering workers voluntary separation plans, Kettler decided to take the company up on it. No word on how many followed suit. Other victims of the gloomy economy are Circuit City (CC), which declared bankruptcy this week, and Intel (INTC), which faced “sharply lower revenue.”

Media Memo presented a handy index of actual online advertising sales results (courtesy of Jupiter Media) and noted that the ad slowdown has hit Google (GOOG), too. Nick Denton, Gawker Media publisher, folded Valleywag into Gawker.com, the flagship blog of the media empire and, in an ironically appropriate move, put Consumerist up for sale. Denton, doom-mongerer of the econalypse, would surely appreciate the following layoff roll call: Condé Net and Time Inc., not once, but twice. No, wait. Three times.

BoomTown was on a Yahoo (YHOO) roll this week, writing about the company’s upcoming layoffs and its stock plunge. Just to squash rumors: Jerry Yang will not be laid off. Social media, mainly Twitter, became a hot topic this week in terms of its effect on the PR industry, and BoomTown had something to say about it. Also noted was the good humor of Mobuzz video, which made a plea to its users to donate five euros apiece to keep it afloat. And in case you were wondering what makes BoomTown impatient, the main two things this week were Microsoft’s (MSFT) continuing failure to find a head for its digital business and Yahoo/AOL’s failure to make anything happen in the ongoing yawn-fest of a nonacquisition.

In Personal Technology, Walt Mossberg gave the lowdown on Wi-Fi for your car, and in Mossberg’s Mailbox discussed disabling Wi-Fi on a laptop. In The Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret reviewed the Flip MinoHD, the latest addition to the Flip family, and its first foray into hi-def.

Yes, this is the third post I’ve written today about Gawker Media’s Nick Denton, who seems to prefer to get all of his news out at the same time.

But briefly:

• Denton has put Consumerist, his, um, pro-consumer site, up for sale.
• Denton is folding Valleywag, his Gawker-for-techies site, into…Gawker. Editor Owen Thomas will keep his job, and essentially become Gawker’s man in Silicon Valley. Writer Paul Boutin will contribute some stories, but likely fewer.
• Denton has more moves to come. Conveniently, he has provided a playbook for them via his post this morning, in which he spells out what Internet publishers should do in the face of a cratering ad market. Educated guess: If you sell ads for Denton, or work for one of his most successful titles (Gawker, gadget site Gizmodo, videogame site Kotaku), there are decent odds you will get to continue doing so in the future. Everybody else, all bets are off. Then again, that’s the same position that all those with a job in media finds themselves in these days. Cheers!

A year ago, the conventional wisdom said that the online advertising market would still grow in an economic slump because online ads were cheaper and more effective.

And they are. But if the slump is big enough– like the one we’re in now–then all bets are off.

Which is why there’s no longer any conventional wisdom about the future of online ads. Two data points, and one anecdote:

• J.P. Morgan (JPM) Internet analyst Imran Khan has reduced his projections for ad growth for the second time since September. But he’s still projecting growth. In fact, Khan sees overall spending, fueled by search ads on Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO), growing 13 percent in 2009, down from a previous projection of 19 percent. But he thinks display ads will fare much worse, noting U.S. spending on display will only grow six percent in 2009, down from his earlier forecast of 16 percent.
• Ad network optimizer The Rubicon Project reports that the average price for an online ad at “thousands of sites and 270 ad networks” dropped 11 percent in the last quarter. But since it can also find evidence of prices increasing at some sites–news and reference sites, for instance, increased prices 36 percent–Rubicon argues that things aren’t so bad after all.
• Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton thinks everyone who doesn’t see misery next year is delusional, period. The man behind sites like Gawker, Gizmodo and Valleywag happily offered this insight at the Silicon Alley Insider/Founder’s Club event last week, which was packed with digital movers and shakers. All of them should be terrified, he said, charmingly: “Anyone who isn’t prepared for ads to go down 40 percent is crazy.” Obligatory disclaimer here: Denton is always seeing doom just around the corner. But he’s very convincing.

Want a (slightly) more upbeat spin? Here’s Khan’s executive summary:

* Overall ad budgets continue to weaken. Since we reduced our estimates on September 4th, we have seen a further slowdown in the economy, particularly in the last two weeks of the third quarter. Weakness continued into October and spread from the US and UK throughout continental Europe and Asia. Additionally, dollar strength was greater than expected which will further depress growth rates. We are now basing estimates on a $1.25 exchange rate vs. our prior base of $1.40. Our updated model calls for total online global advertising growth of 25% in F’08 and 13% in F’09 vs. our prior estimates of 28% and 19% Y/Y growth respectively.

* Deterioration of display advertising is more pronounced than expected. Our channel checks are showing that sell-through is declining. Additionally, so far CPMs for premium inventory are flat to slightly down. Looking forward, we think CPMs will remain depressed and sell-through rates will worsen.  As a result, we are lowering our F’08 and F’09 domestic display estimates to $7.95B (11 percent Y/Y growth) and $8.45B (6% growth) from $8.15B (14% Y/Y growth) and $9.43B (16 percent growth). We are now modeling F’08 global display ad growth of 14% Y/Y vs. our prior estimate of 16% growth.

* Search performance held up in 3Q but we expect ad budget cuts to bleed through. We continue to see performance-based advertising holding up better than banner advertising. Long tail advertisers continue to allocate additional dollars to search. However, keyword price inflation is moderating. Additionally, we think marketing spend pullback in some segments including travel, telecom, autos, and retail is worsening. As such, we are lowering our domestic F’08 and F’09 search growth estimates to 23.4% Y/Y and 17.3%, respectively, from 27.4% and 25.5% Y/Y growth. We are modeling F’08 global search ad growth of 34% vs. our prior estimate of 36% Y/Y growth.”

as we look ahead and to position us for success in 2009, we’re continuing the work already underway to get fit as an organization: actively looking for ways to make process and structural changes to our business that will allow us to work more efficiently, with more scale. we’ve enlisted the help of Bain & Co. to work with the leadership team on identifying ways to leverage our strengths, and to improve and accelerate our performance.”

As Valleywag notes, Yang doesn’t come right out and say “layoffs” or “restructuring,” but it’s evident to anyone who’s read a “corporate rightsizing” announcement that this is what he means by “getting fit as an organization.” Unless Richard Simmons has a new, unpublicized gig at Bain.

As Boomtown noted earlier today, cuts at Yahoo are a question of “when,” not “if.” And the answer, obviously, is “soon,” though Yahoo spokesman Brad Williams insists it would be premature to speculate about layoffs at the company. Said Williams, “Yahoo has been exploring ways to streamline our processes and bring new agility and efficiency to how we work as an organization.”

Streamline? Odd choice of words for a flack spinning this story. Doesn’t he know that it’s on The Grand List of Asinine Corporate Layoff Euphemisms as well?

Here’s one certainty in the hubbub that has resulted in the wake of the departure of high-profile exec Ben Ling from Facebook last week: COO Sheryl Sandberg is definitely not responsible for the melting of the polar ice caps.

That’s the joking question–”Was global warming Sandberg’s fault too?”–asked at a staff meeting at the social-networking start-up last Friday afternoon after the news of Ling’s departure on the heels of previous employee exits suddenly morphed into a series of increasingly vituperative posts on the Valleywag tech gossip site centering on what blogger Owen Thomas called Sandberg’s “reign of terror” at Facebook.

Using Photoshopped images–one of Sandberg wielding a rifle and another with the bright-red word, “LIAR,” plastered under her mug–the vaguely sexist and decidedly over-the-top picture painted was of Sandberg (at right) as some unholy cross of Lady Macbeth, the bad side of Hillary Clinton and a really grumpy fascist dictator of a small third-world country.

“She demands total loyalty, and brooks no dissent–even the healthy, boisterous debate that’s common to start-ups,” wrote Thomas dramatically, as if Sandberg might really use that fake rifle on errant minions. “You’re either with Sheryl, or you’re against Sheryl. And if you’re against Sheryl, you’re not long for Facebook.”

Owen, you have now officially scared the bejesus out of BoomTown with that added dash of Rosa Klebb!

(And, of course, this image conveniently leaves out the very pertinent fact that Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is still firmly and much more militantly in charge at Facebook than ever before, but we will get to that later.)

In any case, Valleywag used all of this to postulate that Sandberg’s insane reaction to Ling’s leaving–complete with a sneaky-sounding stock bribe to buy his silence–was evidence of her mad grab for power over all of Facebook.

The talented and strong-willed Ling was portrayed in an odd way too, as some sort of whiny victim of circumstances he was unable to control.

Except–while BoomTown likes a good “Tom and Jerry” cartoon as much as the next person–it’s a deeply inaccurate portrayal of Sandberg, who arrived at Facebook in March; of what happened with regard to Ling; and most of all, of the often-painful growing-up process that has actually been occurring inside of Facebook.

The Ling incident is, in fact, a perfect example of this.

According to multiple sources from all sides, Ling (pictured here) was offered the choice of resigning or being terminated last Monday, and he and Facebook senior management wrangled over how he would leave the company and announce his return to Google (GOOG)–in a big job at its YouTube division, in fact. But the true story of his departure is highly typical of how small, promising Web companies stumble forward.

From mismanaging expectations related to Ling’s job after his arrival from Google last fall (after Facebook widely touted the new recruit), to constant shifts in how the company was organized, to a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings on both sides, the curious case of Benjamin Ling and Sheryl Sandberg is–more than anything–completely human.

Which is to say, it is a bit of a mess.

Here’s what I found out, after spending the weekend talking to as many people with knowledge of the situation as possible, in a very long report:

To begin, as someone who has been consistently tough on the company for its insane valuation, criticized its sometimes ham-handed management and pressed it to show the true path to sustainable monetization, I think I cannot be considered a cheerleader for Facebook or for its shifting management.

Thus, I and many others looked closely at the recent departures of CTO Adam D’Angelo (to take time off) in May and longtime exec Matt Cohler in June (to become a VC at Benchmark Capital) with a gimlet eye.

Looking further, I learned from several sources that the 20-something D’Angelo had issues with the company inevitably becoming larger and more bureaucratic, and there were also questions about his ability to run the much larger and increasingly complicated technical organization.

The sudden exit of Cohler (pictured here), who had become Facebook’s VP of Product Management, had an even a more complex set of variables, sources said, including his longtime interest in being a VC, the highly attractive offer he got from Benchmark and, most of all, his lack of interest in running a much larger organization.

While some say Cohler–who was, in fact, key to bringing Sandberg in–quickly grew disillusioned with her and the direction of Facebook, it seems a bit of a stretch to me to say he left because of her.

As Zuckerberg’s earliest and most trusted of execs, who is also well-liked by all, Cohler had as much–if not more–power as Sandberg over the organization. More likely, I imagine Cohler would have stayed if he thought she was laying waste to the place.

In any case, the arrival of Sandberg–followed quickly by the hiring of former Google PR head Elliot Schrage–heralded massive changes and an eventual path to an IPO for Facebook, a journey that not everyone welcomed, to be sure.

With their much more disciplined and controlling management styles, highly polished Harvard, Washington, D.C. and Google resumes, and obviously sharper edges, Sandberg and Schrage (pictured here) represented a contrast to earlier, less-intense times that not everyone at Facebook has liked.

Many execs–used to the chaos of jostling for attention and power from the close-to-the-vest Zuckerberg, whose attention to various employees seems to always wax and wane–also resisted a No. 2 in charge.

Typical was discontent from Technical Operations VP Jonathan Heiliger, whom many sources pointed to because of his vocal complaints around the company and around Silicon Valley about Sandberg’s more brusque and meddlesome style.

(Heiliger now gets along better with Sandberg, according to many, as do many execs previously wary of the new regime.)

Interestingly, Ling was not in this disgruntled camp, having known Sandberg from Google and hoped her arrival would clarify his growing disappointment with the job he thought he had been hired for.

According to many sources, Ling thought his job as director of platform product marketing, as described to him by Zuckerberg and others who recruited him in the fall of 2007, would be much more expansive than it turned out to be.

And, indeed, the letter from his new boss, Chamath Palihapitiya, heralding his arrival seemed to indicate that Ling would have a lot of responsibility:

Hi Guys,

Please join me in welcoming Ben to Facebook as our Director of Platform Product Marketing, working on my team. He joins us from Google where he was the General Manager of eCommerce, where he ran Google Product Search and Google Checkout and was the founder of Google Checkout. Ben also led the mobile efforts at Google in 2004, where he launched Google SMS. Prior to Google, Ben received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Ben is responsible for overseeing Platform aspects of Product Management, Product Marketing, Technical Support, and Partner Solutions.

Zuck, D’Angelo and I are psyched to have Ben on board. *BLING*, as he is known to his friends, sits on the 2nd floor of 156 if you want to come by and introduce yourself.

Chamath”

It was a wide swath of duties, which seemed to indicate that Ling was, in essence, the lead manager of the platform.

This turned out not to be the case, as Facebook runs more as a “functional” organization rather than a “cross-functional” one, which is to say, no one manager is in charge of all the many parts it takes to get a product out the door.

For someone like Ling, sources said, the lack of structure meant chaos and no clear lines of accountability, and he pressed his bosses for more definition of his role.

For their part, sources said, those execs–Palihapitiya (pictured here) and then Cohler–felt Ling was too interested in internal politics, his title and control rather than in taking the lead in a more organic way. They also felt Ling, while a good executor of tasks, lacked the vision to be the overall manager of the platform.

Whether they ever did anything about it, of course, remains unclear, except for the fact that this kind of thing happens a lot all over Silicon Valley.

Let me just stop here then, because one can go round and round with this kind of wrangling over job performance issues and never be able to determine who exactly is to blame.

But it is safe to say Ling was not happy with Facebook and Facebook was not happy with Ling.

When Schrage was put in charge of platform marketing (and not in charge of the platform itself, as many have misconstrued, since he is decidedly nontechnical), the controversial move caused more problems and threw Ling’s status into even more confusion.

Ling and many others did not like the move, of course, but Ling did go to Schrage to share his disappointment and then took his gripes to Sandberg.

That, from what I can tell, is where things went most awry.

In that meeting about 10 days ago, Ling told her that Google had been tring to recruit him and that he was unhappy with the structure of the Facebook organization. According to those who back Ling, he was not making a threat, but seeking advice.

That is not the way those at Facebook see it. “Ben wanted a bigger job, and he was using the prospect of going to Google as a hammer,” said one person. “But he was not doing a good enough job with what he had been running to make such demands.”

Sandberg said she would discuss it with other senior execs, most especially Zuckerberg, and get back to Ling with some answers on Monday.

That was when discontent with Ling bubbled up among his managers, and suddenly a series of smaller slights and problems with Ling added up, and not in his favor.

Curiously, although Facebook sources claim they were dissatisfied with Ling’s work, there seems to have been exactly zero effort to remove him before he revealed the Google offer.

Nonetheless, all now agreed that Ling should not have the larger job, especially if he was also considering a job at rival Google–although, once again, it is not clear that he actually asked for a larger role within Facebook.

What has been lost in this story, though, is that the final decision came from Zuckerberg (pictured here), who was irked by Ling’s demands and his perceived disloyalty.

Sandberg and Schrage came back to Ling on Monday of last week with a startling decision: He could either resign immediately and write an email to his staff announcing it or he would be terminated by them that night and they would announce it.

Ling was, many sources said, flabbergasted that what he thought was an attempt to get some clarity had turned into this. His detractors maintained he was threatening Facebook by dangling the Google offer.

Ling wrote his letter to staff, and news of his departure leaked by the next day, both to me and VentureBeat’s Eric Eldon.

In my post, Ling did not say he resigned under pressure, nor did Facebook say it was about to fire him if he did not resign.

“I have huge respect for Elliot and work well with him,” Ling told me. “Facebook is a tremendous organization, and I would not leave it if it were not for a great opportunity.”

Facebook’s statement said, in part: “Facebook confirms that Ben Ling will be leaving the company in the coming weeks to pursue other interests. We wish him well and appreciate his great contributions to the early success of Facebook Platform.”

No surprise, but things got worse when the discussions quickly turned to the terms of his departure. Ling was only a few months away from his “cliff” for vesting one-quarter of the equity he got for coming to Facebook.

Facebook offered to either accelerate that completely or even make an offer of some of those shares, but only if Ling stayed on the Facebook payroll–taking a two-month vacation–and did not accept an offer from Google or anyone else in that time period.

In addition, deeply sensitive to the perception of a high-profile Google hire going back to the mother ship, Facebook wanted the deal to include a provision barring an immediate announcement that Ling would return to the search giant.

Obviously, given that the original story had been all about talent leaving Google to come to Facebook, the opposite was a much less palatable plot.

Still, this kind of request to refrain from going right to work for a competitor in exchange for shares is not untypical, and companies almost always ask for strict nondisparagement clauses.

But in the hothouse blogging environment of today, of course, to ask for help stopping such news from leaking is like asking to hold back the ocean waves. External optics on Ling’s departure clearly became too much of a focus of Sandberg, Schrage and others.

More to the point, although he did consider delaying acceptance of the job at Google, even though there were other contenders for the position, Ling did not want to agree to Facebook’s messaging about his departure.

Said one Ling supporter: “How could he guarantee that someone was not going to find out and then he would have had to tell a lie about his plans? Especially, given that Facebook is the leakiest place in the Valley?”

Good point and thank goodness! Valleywag wrote about Ling lunching at Google and I wrote of the details of Ling’s new YouTube job on Friday.

Facebook sources, though, said Ling threatened to badmouth the company if they did not pony up. “He insinuated he was going to talk badly about all of us, and we did not want to deal with him acting like that,” said one source.

Sources supportive of Ling said this was not the case and that he was not ever going to impugn Facebook, although Ling was, of course, unhappy.

“Why they didn’t give him some credit for his work and align his interests with theirs by being more generous is a mystery to all of us,” said one Facebook exec, who noted that Ling was prominently featured onstage in the most recent rollout of platform changes at Facebook. “His fall from grace makes you think anyone could go from valued employee to bum pretty quickly.”

Other sources at Facebook disagree, noting Ling was simply a hire who did not pan out as expected and that the fault was in not dealing with the issue sooner.

They also note that the company would never have agreed to put Ling prominently onstage if they had known he was considering a move to Google.

But once again, if Facebook was unhappy with Ling’s work, why put him onstage at all?

It’s hard to get a good answer to that question, which–to me–underscores the disorganization around Ling’s leaving.

“Ben is a really smart guy and Google is probably a better place for him,” said one Facebook exec. “He will probably do well, but he did not do well here.”

Actually, neither Facebook nor Ling did very well in dealing with the disintegration of the relationship.

Ling got a new job at YouTube and a fat signing bonus, but no Facebook shares, some of which he probably deserved for his work on the platform.

And Facebook learned yet another hard lesson about growing up. It is doubtless going to be one of many, many to come.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Ben Ling–the high-profile Facebook platform exec who came from Google less than a year ago and then up and left the social-networking site earlier this week–is about to head back to Google, this time taking a job leading monetization efforts at YouTube, according to several sources.

On Tuesday, BoomTown reported that Ling (pictured here) was leaving his job at Facebook, where he has been director of platform product marketing.

At the time, Ling would not be specific as to his reasons for leaving, saying in an interview: “Facebook is a tremendous organization, and I would not leave it if it were not for a great opportunity.”

And that opportunity apparently entails returning to his previous employer, where Ling once worked on Google’s Checkout product and other e-commerce platform efforts.

Ling’s is a move that will surely spur many to rev up the Facebook-versus-Google (GOOG) stories, given that several top Google execs–such as COO Sheryl Sandberg and PR and Platform head Elliot Schrage, as well many others–have been recruited by Facebook over the last year.

Apparently, the Empire does strike back.

Interestingly, Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed the YouTube monetization issue in an appearance on CNBC’s “Mad Money with Jim Kramer” yesterday.

Here’s a transcript of the section where they discussed YouTube:

CRAMER: LET’S SPEAK ABOUT A QUESTION THAT, AGAIN, I’M TRYING ADDRESS THE QUESTIONS HOLDING THE STOCK DOWN. YOU HAVE TREMENDOUS DOWNLOADS IN YOUTUBE ARE EXTRAORDINARY.

SCHMIDT: BUT EVENTUALLY WE’D LIKE TO MAKE MONEY OUT OF IT, BUT IF WE DON’T, THE FACT THAT SO MANY PEOPLE COME TO YOUTUBE MEANS THEY ULTIMATELY GOOGLE AND DO GOOGLE SEARCHES AND CLICK ON ADS. SO DON’T BE TOO WORRIED ABOUT ALL THAT TRAFFIC GOING TO YOUTUBE. I’D BE WORRIED IF PEOPLE WEREN’T USING YOUTUBE. SINCE IT IS AN ENORMOUS SUCCESS GLOBALLY WE KNOW WE WILL BENEFIT.

Valleywag ran an item earlier today speculating that Ling might be on his way back to the mother ship, noting he was spotted having lunch there recently.

Make that two years or less.

I wonder if Michael Dell would shut Apple (AAPL) down and give the money back to its shareholders now?

Another executive departure will be announced today at 2 p.m. PDT.

Dr. Usama Fayyad, Yahoo’s chief data officer and EVP of Research & Strategic Data Solutions, is leaving the company, a move that sources say was a long time coming.

Fayyad’s departure comes on the heels of Boomtown’s scoop that Jeff Weiner will be leaving Yahoo to become an entrepreneur in residence at both Accel Partners and Greylock Partners.

The story was first broken yesterday by Valleywag, which speculated Fayyad was on his way out.

Last night, dressed in my kindergarten soccer-coach best (sneaks, sweats and athletic socks–glam!), I ventured over to the Tenderloin district of San Francisco to attend VentureBeat‘s party in honor of the launch of its new digital media blog.

Held at the Ambassador club on Geary Street, it was as if 1999 had never ended, and the huge crowd was partying like it was, well, 1999.

Shoulder to shoulder–or, in my puny case, shoulder to stomach–entrepreneurs, PR folks and a healthy smattering of press jammed into the venue, chattering about valuations, venture deals and other vacuous topics of Web 2.0.

Attendees included Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, Craigslist’s Jim Buckmaster, blogger Dan Gillmor and Microsoft-man-in-Silicon-Valley Dan’l Lewin (who gave us bupkis info about the deal, as you can see in the video).

Also in the video, in order, Meebo Co-Founder Seth Sternberg (fresh from a big funding); VentureBeat’s new editor of its digital media blog, Eric Eldon; Lewin; Gillmor; Valleywag’s Owen Thomas; and, finally, VentureBeat Editor and Founder Matt Marshall.

In the first, he egregiously ignores BoomTown’s subtle (as a hammer!) way of asking about the Microsoft (MSFT) situation.

In the second, Weiner talks about Yahoo’s (YHOO) social-networking strategy (translation: this is not yet another social network, because we–oops–neglected to build one people liked!).

In the third, he talks about Yahoo’s “White Hat” ad plans to allow consumers to someday pick their own ads.

And, finally, in the fourth clip, Weiner disses YouTube’s (GOOG) business model (or lack thereof).

Unfortunately not here, our back-and-forth about what kind of food Yahoo would serve if it were a restaurant–you had to be there–given its reputation for being all over the map. My suggestion: Everything.

But, personally, BoomTown really enjoyed Weiner’s wire-cutting performance in the Yahoo spoof video, called “All Hands, the Movie,” which Yahoo execs made and showed to its troops recently.

Weiner’s performance, which is at the start in a James-Bond-diffusing-the-bomb moment, is actually really good (and especially compared to other execs, like the golf sadist role for CEO Jerry Yang and the broom-wielding President Sue Decker).

Plus, finally–a really good use for his legendary “Miami Vice” stubble beard.

Here’s a link to Valleywag, which got a copy of the full (and quite clever) video, and a screen shot of Weiner below.