With Yahoo board Chairman Roy Bostock reportedly assuring investors and others that the company will have a CEO in place by the end of the year, it seems prudent for BoomTown to initiate an official Yahoo CEO Countdown.

After all, this column had a 100-Day No-Sacred-Cows Vision Quest to mark the time that Jerry Yang said he needed to give Yahoo a top-to-bottom look-see when he took over last summer as CEO.

So here’s today’s update: No Peter Chernin and a lot of thorny issues for other candidates.

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Former Yahoo tech star Qi Lu is poised to take on the big job of being Microsoft’s top digital executive, according to several sources inside and outside the company.

The appointment could be announced as early as next Monday.

A variety of details is still being ironed out, including whether the well-regarded techie Lu will be “paired” with another executive at Microsoft with more general business experience.

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Now let’s return from the land of fatuous deal schemes and half-baked plots to buy Yahoo and get to the most critical issue facing its board right now: Finding a new CEO to replace outgoing leader Jerry Yang.

Sources tell BoomTown that board Chairman Roy Bostock has been asserting a new CEO will be named by the new year.

Only 28 more shopping days until management clarity!

Well, maybe not so much, given there is no formal search committee. But there is a list and a pending AOL deal, so let’s hope for a miracle on 701 First Avenue in Sunnyvale!

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The Huffington Post, co-founded by Arianna Huffington, will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round, which was led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blogging site a valuation of “just south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site,” said Harman in an interview with BoomTown last night.

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A report in the Times of London in which Microsoft would buy Yahoo’s search business in a convoluted $20 billion deal that would include well-known Internet execs Jon Miller and Ross Levinsohn, is–in the words of one key player–”total fiction.”

Actually, that’s Levinsohn speaking, on the record. But that’s also the essential word from all key players regarding the Times’s report.

While Microsoft has long been interested in doing a search deal with Yahoo, BoomTown has spoken to top sources at Yahoo and Microsoft too and all scoff at such a deal taking place right now or that either side has been in any such discussions of late.

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When everyone else has been selling, it seems Carl Icahn has decided to throw good money after bad–as in nearly $1 billion bad–by buying almost seven million more Yahoo shares, according to a regulatory filing.

Why is he doing it? BoomTown is guessing that the billionaire investor thinks he can recoup some of his massive losses in Yahoo, as Jerry Yang prepares to step down and the board, on which Icahn sits, names a new leader.

That’s why my guess is that the choice of a new CEO is likely to be sooner than later, much more Icahn-friendly and strong on operational skills.

BoomTown’s new guesses: Yahoo board member John Chapple or perhaps an ops star like HP’s Todd Bradley.

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Yesterday, after the news got out that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was stepping down from his job and that a search was on for a new CEO, BoomTown got inundated with reaction from everyone from readers of this blog to Internet players to Yahoo employees.

In fact, my single favorite quote came from one Yahoo staffer: “You can kick this dog, but it still barks.”

Grrrrr…this and some Yahoo myths explored within.

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Obviously, the dream CEO for Yahoo is News Corp. President and COO Peter Chernin.

And, no surprise, he is the No. 1 choice of most inside and outside Yahoo in the wake of the news late yesterday that its current CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang is stepping down.

Well, Yahoo would certainly be a challenge for Chernin, in terms of a corporate cleanup challenge, especially compared to figuring out how to make bank on plush toys from “The Simpsons.”

But there are many other contenders for the job, despite the slog it could be. Here’s BoomTown’s list…

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As BoomTown reported earlier today in an exclusive scoop, Yahoo has confirmed that CEO Jerry Yang will be stepping down and a search for his replacement is underway.

Heidrick & Struggles will conduct the search for a new CEO, who is likely to come from outside the company.

Here is the entire Yahoo press release about the development…

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BoomTown has obtained the entire memo from Jerry Yang to his employees at Yahoo about his plans to step down as Yahoo CEO.

Yang, a truly nice man–which has been a plus and a minus for him–and an Internet visionary for sure, penned a classy note to the Yahoo troops. And BoomTown, feeling sentimental, will not even make fun of the lack of capitalization this time.

Here’s the memo…

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Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will step down from his job as CEO, said sources close to the company, as soon as the board finds a replacement for him, in what sources close to the situation call a joint decision by him and the directors.

Yahoo will announce the move later today. [UPDATED: Yahoo has since confirmed the move.]

Yahoo has hired Heidrick & Struggles, the well-known executive search firm, to vet candidates, both internally and externally, to take over the top spot at the troubled Internet giant.

Sources said it is unlikely current Yahoo President Sue Decker will get the job, which is more likely to go to an outsider.

Some BoomTown choices: News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman or former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig.

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What does Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist shareholder who waged war on Yahoo and now sits on its board, really think?

“…I really think current boards and managements are killing the country,” he said in an interview published Friday in The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal. “I’ll tell you why, ’cause I’ve lived it. I’m on a lot of boards, I see how ineffectual they are.”

While he was talking about the state of American management in general and not Yahoo in particular, BoomTown thinks Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang might want to listen up!

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With a $10 stock price, the turning down of Microsoft’s $31 a share offer, a collapsed search ad deal with Google, fleeing execs and bad news aplenty, it’s easy to blame Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and call for his ouster.

After all, the buck does stop with him.

Or does it? Because, to my mind, if there is anyone to cast stones at in the ongoing crisis at Yahoo, BoomTown would have to toss a large boulder in the direction of the company’s incredibly shrinking board.

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As has been copiously reported here and all over, Yahoo and AOL have been engaged in never-ending talks about a possible deal to merge their flagging Internet businesses.

Now, sources tell me, the circle of executives at both companies interfacing with each other has been widened, for purposes of due diligence.

That includes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who is in New York this week–where AOL parent, Time Warner, is located–to meet once again with its CEO, Jeff Bewkes, to see if they can actually complete the merger.

Now, all this frantic activity does not mean a deal will necessarily be struck.

But it is just this kind of ramped-up blabbery that has many at both companies predicting that a deal will go through, sooner or later, as soon as Time Warner and Yahoo can agree on a price.

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When Yahoo holds its first board meeting tomorrow–with three new board members, including shareholder activist Carl Icahn–there will be little time for getting-to-know-you chitty-chat.

In fact, it should be all business for the group, which needs to push the reset button hard for Yahoo.

In fact, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is acutely aware that he and his management team have only a few months to really show investors and employees that they can get things moving at the beleaguered company.

Thus, on deck: talks to buy Time Warner’s AOL, strategies to attract talent, and how to deal with the weak economy.

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