The legal high jinks in the contentious battle over the fate of Skype got worse this afternoon, as former Joost CEO Michelangelo Volpi and Index Ventures filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the founders of Skype–Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, via Joost and Joltid–against them.

It’s yet another chess move among a group of well-known tech players, who used to work together closely and are now at odds.

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Well, for sure, Microsoft execs were not doing high-fives after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said he was stepping down yesterday, as Yahoo execs reportedly did after the software giant abandoned its takeover bid for the Internet giant earlier this year.

Well, maybe some small and discreet ones.

And while Microsoft will not be making a renewed offer for the company now that Yang will be going, execs for the software giant were burning up the phone wires down to Silicon Valley yesterday trying to make sure it is well positioned to make the deal it does want: A sweeping search partnership with Yahoo to help battle Google.

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As BoomTown reported on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo have been chatting away informally, after a week of faux-wrestling.

It’s been like WrestleMania, except without the excitement and anticipation. Also, no cool names or outfits.

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In the late 1990s, during the height of the bubble of Web 1.0, there was a poolside charity auction at an Industry Standard conference for a variety of items donated by Web luminaries.
A tie from John Doerr, the right to push eBay CEO Meg Whitman in the pool and also the little black dress that [...]

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Over the last year, as he has sought to revive the flagging fortunes of Yahoo, CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang has ferreted himself away from the spotlight and has seldom made himself available to talk to investors or reporters about what he has been up to.

I dubbed it the “cave” strategy, mostly because that’s what many around Yahoo called it. Since Yang really didn’t have anything good to say about the troubled Internet giant, he didn’t say anything at all.

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