Greg Nelson, who has had the thankless job of running MSN for Microsoft, has left that position and been given the even more thankless task of running the integration of the complex search and online advertising partnership struck by the software giant and Yahoo.

Nelson's counterpart at Yahoo, according to sources, will be Mark Morrissey, who is currently SVP of Products at the Internet giant.

The pair--pictured above, with Morrissey on left, Nelson on right--will have their hands full in what will ultimately be a two-year effort.

BoomTown's title for the relationship: A Couple of White Geek Guys Sitting Around Arguing!

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Earlier today, BoomTown reported that Yahoo was poised to name a few new top execs at its Silicon Valley HQ.

But the company has also hired a new director of public affairs in the nation's capital--Amber Allman of 463 Communications.

With a spate of regulatory issues coming up around its pending search and online advertising deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will need all the help it can get.

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is making the most substantive changes in her exec ranks since she did a massive restructuring of its staff in late February, according to sources close to the situation.

"She is continuing to clean the place up," said one top exec about the moves, which are likely to be announced internally tomorrow.

Will these changes also extend to Yahoo's board?

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Given its recent string of lousy financial reports, its weak platform strategy and declining share of the the global handset market, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Sony Ericsson began sacking employees again. And it did just that this morning, announcing plans to shutter its Research Triangle Park facility in North Carolina, as well as offices in Miami, India and Sweden.

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Essentially--although AOL is located in New York and not California--it's going to be like tremors before the Big One at the online company today as about 100 employees are set to be laid off by management.

It is part of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's "Project Everest"--the code name for cost-cutting across the company. After this small cut, there could be a call for voluntary departures, followed by a much more drastic layoff.

The action comes in the same timeframe as the online site's spinoff from Time Warner.

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Reporting a second-quarter loss that widened thanks to a weak videogame market, Electronic Arts today said it will cut 1,500 jobs by early next year as part of a restructuring effort aimed at trimming at least $100 million in costs. This after announcing plans this morning to acquire social network game maker Playfish for $400 million.

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An ugly Monday for Sprint Nextel employees. The company plans to eliminate 2,000 to 2,500 positions in the fourth quarter as part of its effort to reduce labor costs by at least $350 million.

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The Seattle area is going to get another jobless jolt today, with RealNetworks planning to lay off four percent of its workforce, sources said.

That's a small number--just about 70 people out of its 1,700-person staff--but the move comes on the heels of layoffs of another 800 employees at nearby Microsoft yesterday.

The reasons for the layoffs at RealNetworks are, as was the case at Microsoft, to realign the workforce after the recent economic downturn and to control costs.

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Tony Conrad, CEO and co-founder of Sphere--the contextually relevant content engine AOL bought in the spring of 2008 for upward of $25 million--left the Time Warner online unit last month, several sources have told BoomTown in recent weeks.

But, in an effort by AOL's CEO Tim Armstrong to hold onto entrepreneurial talent, Conrad has agreed to become "Special Advisor" to its AOL Ventures Unit.

Apparently, he is also mulling a new start-up and remains a VC too.

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Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes kicked off his quarterly earnings call by explaining why the company is cutting hundreds of jobs in its Time Inc. magazine unit.

But if you're impatient, you can simply look at this grim chart, which details the publisher's Q3 performance

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“We are mostly but not all done” with layoffs. So said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in May at the start of a second round of cuts that claimed the livelihoods of some 3,000 employees. Now, six months later, the company is finishing the job. Sources tell TechFlash that Microsoft will make additional job reductions this week--beginning as early as today.

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Longtime Yahoo tech leader Ash Patel is taking some time off until early 2010.

Yahoo confirmed the break to BoomTown.

In recent days, some inside the company had mistakenly thought the 44-year-old EVP for Product Architecture & Strategy was departing the company for good.

Actually, it's more of a sabbatical for Patel.

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Joe Kraus--the longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur who sold his most recent start-up, JotSpot, to Google in 2006 and has been a director of product management since--has moved to its Google Ventures unit as a partner, said several sources.

Sources added that Kraus is likely to be the first of several well-known appointments at the relatively new venture arm of the search giant.

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Hearst's dude-centric UGO site, which has been without a permanent CEO since June, is still looking for a new boss. But in the meantime, it has some new blood: The company has brought in Hearst veteran Christopher Johnson to run programming and product strategy and hired Julie Shumaker to run 1UP, the gaming site it bought earlier this year.

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Bob Moffat, the high-ranking, kilt-wearing IBM executive arrested in the Galleon insider-trading case, has traded his temporary leave of absence for a permanent one. According to a brief message posted to IBM’s internal Web site, Moffat, head of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, has left the company in the wake of the Galleon affair.

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While Nicki Dugan (pictured here) was not one of the top execs at Yahoo, she certainly is typical of many at the company who stuck with it through many ups and downs.

No longer, according to a memo BoomTown obtained, since the longtime PR staffer--who has been at Yahoo for almost a decade and who was previously with an outside public relations firm that worked for Yahoo--will leave the company Monday.

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Carl Icahn, the activist billionaire investor who made such a noisy fuss in his quest to force management and other changes at Yahoo, is taking a much quieter leave from the Internet giant's board.

He said "there was not a need at this time for an activist investor" on Yahoo's board.

That's true, of course, but here's BoomTown's quickie analysis: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz completely ignores him.

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Yahoo has hired a new head of mergers and acquisitions--former General Electric M&A exec Andrew Siegel, who will now be VP of corporate development.

Yahoo CFO Tim Morse dropped the news with no details about that title in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about the Silicon Valley Internet giant's third-quarter earnings.

One question apparently not answered was what exactly is the status of its current top M&A exec, Greg Mrva--who has had the title Siegel now has posted on his LinkedIn profile--as well as that of VP of mergers and acquisitions more recently.

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As expected, Condé Nast executives are swinging the layoff ax around the fabled magazine publisher. Today's cuts are at Vogue, where I'm told at least six people have been let go from one of the company's best-known titles. There will be more to come from the publisher, which shut down four magazines last week and is trying to bring down costs at its remaining titles by 25 percent.

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In one week, Yahoo will report its third-quarter earnings, after the market closes.

And so far, its stock is showing signs that investors are hoping for better days ahead for the Internet giant.

Other good news: A pair of bullish analyst reports yesterday.

But, a spate of executive departures, with chances of more to come, are worrisome.

As is the excessive yodeling Yahoo is once again encouraging.

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Lonely Planet, best known as a traditional travel guidebook publisher, is announcing a new U.S. head tomorrow--John Boris of Zagat Survey--as it increasingly moves to reposition the company as much more of a "cross-media" platform.

As the paid versus free content online debate gets louder over the next year, how well known brands like Lonely Planet--which has a strong reputation among consumers--handle the fallout will be more and more interesting to watch.

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Former Genentech chairman and CEO Art Levinson has resigned from Google’s board, where he has been a director since April 2004. No reason was given for his departure, though his membership on both the Google and Apple boards, and the Federal Trade Commission inquiry into into possible implications of such dual memberships, surely played a role.

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Employees at News Corp.'s MySpace have been waiting to find out who their new ad sales boss will be. And, here she is: Nada Stirratt, who until today was running digital sales for Viacom's MTV Networks.

Stirratt has her work cut out for her. The struggling social networking site, HQed in Beverly Hills, has been trying to reboot its image, spur innovation in its product and, most of all, pull itself out of a too-long slump, even as longtime rival, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, has seen explosive growth.

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Condé Nast, which shuttered four magazines this week, said it won't be cutting any more titles. But that won't be the last of its cuts: The publisher is looking to cut costs by roughly 25 percent at all the magazines it publishes, likely leading to layoffs in many cases.

Today's example doesn't come from a magazine per se, but from the company's digital group, which let go of "more than" 15 people, Expect more to come from Condé, and from other publishers, in coming weeks.

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So much for Dell’s personal computer manufacturing operations in the United States. On Wednesday, the PC maker said it would close its plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., as part of a long-term restructuring that will see it cut costs by $4 billion by the end of fiscal 2011. Over 900 employees will lose their jobs as a result.

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