Yesterday, the day after after Google aired its first national commercial on the Super Bowl, an exec at a rival Internet company marveled at what high favorable scores the “Parisian Love” advertisement got, adding that the possibilities for spoofs were endless.

“I have a feeling that making fun of it will probably be a good thing for Google,” sighed the exec, who would dearly like such attention.

And, indeed, it did not take two seconds before the takeoffs on the ad–an unusually sentimental, but effective, ongoing story about love in Paris, using only Google’s iconic search box–appeared.

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Today, BoomTown motored down to the Sunnyvale HQ of Yahoo, this time with a tiny bit of trepidation.

Okay, not that much, but some!

Why? Because CEO Carol Bartz had invited me to be the first in a new speaker series for employees at the Internet giant, called “Yahoo from the ‘Outside In,’” due to my intense–some might say obsessive–interest in the company.

The twist: Bartz herself conducted the interview with me in front of about 600 Yahoos gathered in its URL’s Cafe, the main cafeteria at the company.

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AOL has taken another step closer to selling off its ICQ instant messaging service, culling seven bids to four “serious” ones, said sources close to the situation.

The price for the service is hovering just under $200 million, several sources said, with one bid 15 to 20 percent higher.

Sources said that the solicitation of bids is now over, with the four remaining described by one source as a “U.N. of buyers.”

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Here are two quotes that got me thinking about what would happen if Facebook–whose user base is inexorably marching toward 400 million–ever got serious about the news aggregation business.

While it is not doing that now in any organized fashion, it will be increasingly obvious that consumers are inevitably moving away from the only-search paradigm to that of discovery through social and other jacked-up affiliation networks.

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It will be like they never left the Googleplex in Silicon Valley if this Washington, D.C., invasion of execs from the search giant keeps up.

The fourth new geek in town is Sumit Agarwal, who was head of Google’s mobile product management and has become the deputy assistant secretary of defense for outreach and social media in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.

It’s interesting to see so many key appointments in the tech arena going to one company, especially one so immersed now in national and international policy issues.

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Longtime Silicon Valley exec Dan Rosensweig is stepping down as president and CEO of the Guitar Hero division of Activision Blizzard to take a new job as CEO of Chegg, the top online textbook rental start-up.

The move is unexpected given that the former Yahoo COO landed the job running the top gaming franchise in March of last year.

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You were expecting an A+, right?

Because of all the cursing and tough talk and uber-sassy assistant and loyal sidekick, Judy.

And especially, the use of elaborate barnyard metaphors from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s growing up in Wisconsin to describe the Internet giant’s current state of affairs.

But the colorful exec has been a lot more circumspect than you might realize–more Taylor Swift than Lady Gaga.

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Move on! No iPad to unveil yet!

But here is yet another bit of distraction for those not interested in the Apple invasion of all things tech media later today, as well as for those who can’t get enough data and pretty charts about Yahoo and its fourth-quarter earnings.

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News was actually committed during Yahoo’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call today when CEO Carol Bartz noted that the company would disable its irksome “hover interaction” on the homepage and that the Internet giant has restructured its international business.

Yahoo reported results earlier today that slightly exceeded expectations in the fourth quarter, but it was no blowout.

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BoomTown, as usual, liveblogged Yahoo’s fourth quarter earnings call, which starred Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. She was sick in the last quarter, with CFO Tim Morse filling in.

Tim tried, but could not channel Carol’s kinetic and sometimes caustic energy.

But she returned today, not with a bang, but not with a whimper either.

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While Microsoft has needed all the help it could hire in Washington, D.C., after its antitrust debacle many years ago, Google is quickly catching up to it as a tech power to be reckoned with in the nation’s capital.

According to the most recent public reports filed by Google with the Senate on its lobbying spending there, the search giant has significantly increased its outlay in 2009 from the previous two years.

Yes, it’s on.

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While Wall Street expects no huge upswing in Yahoo’s revenue or earnings when the company reports its fourth-quarter results today after the market closes, analysts are becoming increasingly positive about the prospects for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Why? Apparently, not-as-down-as-last quarter is the new up!

This makes sense given that Yahoo has had three consecutive declines in revenue of about 12 percent, so any lessening of the bleed is a good thing.

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Sorry for the break in grading Yahoo’s Carol Bartz on her one-year anniversary as CEO.

But BoomTown was swanning around the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this weekend, went partying with those boozy Hollywood types and ended up in Provo with the crazy gals from “The Runaways”!

I wish! Actually, running away from issuing any grade for deal-making for Bartz is a pretty good way to put it.

Because today, after much thought, I have to give the Yahoo leader an incomplete for deal-making.

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Yesterday, BoomTown asked a question on Twitter about what grade people thought I should give Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz for product innovation, because I was torn about what the grade should be.

One main reason: Bartz inherited a company that has been suffering from a serious and chronic case of product constipation, after many years of leading the Web in new and innovative offerings.

With every other Web competitor innovating wildly in 2009, the lack of spark from Yahoo has become worrisome.

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Yesterday, BoomTown began grading the performance of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, after she gave herself a B- for overall performance for the one year since she took over the troubled Internet giant.

But I decided to be more specific, splitting the grades into five categories: Management, financials, product innovation, deal-making and moxie.

For management, I gave Bartz an A-, which some thought was too generous and others thought should have been an A+. Which means, it was just about right!

Today, let’s look at financials–by which I mean Yahoo’s fiscal performance and its stock price.

In this regard, Bartz only gets a C++ (it’s a techie joke, get it?).

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