Yahoo’s board has been meeting today and, doubtlessly, its directors had a lot to talk about (more on that later!).

Of course, there’s the obvious topic of having to figure out how best to deal with the noisy stylings of billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who is waging a proxy war on Yahoo and calling for new management at the top.

But perhaps what the board should be focused on is the old management at Yahoo, especially in the levels just below the top, who have been operating the company under a lot of stress for far too long.

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Gas prices through the roof?

Mortgage crisis continues?

A looming recession?

You almost have to admire Web 2.0’s fight for their right to party.

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Recently, BoomTown, along with a passel of press, was invited to an outreach dinner, set to be held on June 9 at a San Francisco venue, with some top Yahoo execs.

This was somewhat of a big deal, given the typically cave-dwelling mentality of the company in recent days, due to the drama of the Microsoft takeover bid that has jacked Yahoo’s typically skittish approach to press relations up to dangerously shy levels.

Then the dinner was canceled last week suddenly, with organizers blaming scheduling issues.

That move set tongues wagging at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale HQ, of course, and sources inside the company began to pepper BoomTown with two key theories.

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Things have been quiet, very quiet at Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) this week, and that means one thing to me: A deal between the two has to be getting ever closer.
In fact, several sources within Yahoo tell me after a range of noisy internal activity by top brass–such as outlining plans for staff–has stopped, [...]

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How glad BoomTown was to finally see Jerry Yang up close and personal, after our valiant but futile efforts to get near the Yahoo co-founder and CEO in 2007.

No, we’re not stalking him in a restraining-order kind of way, although I did stake a claim to a front row seat in the intimate theater at the Las Vegas Hilton for his keynote this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show, where Yang couldn’t help but see me.

Like he cared!

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When BoomTown broke the news that Yahoo was paying $350 million for open-source email and calendaring company Zimbra back in September, it was clear it was not a middling move on the part of the Internet giant, which too often can act like a mouse when it comes to acquisitions.

In fact, the innovative Zimbra and [...]

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This week Om Malik and his co-host, Joyce Kim, interview Satish Dharmaraj of Zimbra, on the online GigaOM Show on Revision3.
It’s a nice get in the wake of the $350 million sale of the email start-up to Yahoo, a story we broke last week in this column here.
They also chat with VC Jeff [...]

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Another day, another scoop we try to serve up honestly on BoomTown!

Yesterday, we broke the first news of the acquisition of Zimbra by Yahoo, after we had the first scoop last week of Yahoo’s purchase of BuzzTracker.
Those Yahoo dealmakers are certainly busy these days and we will continue to watch them oh-so-carefully.
Until then, here’s [...]

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Yahoo is set to make yet another acquisition–this time of white-label open-source email provider Zimbra. Sources close to the deal said that the Internet portal will pay $350 million, considerably upward of its most recent valuation, for the email and calendar provider.

Backed by Benchmark Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Accel Partners, San Mateo, Calif.-based Zimbra’s clients [...]

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Now that I have gotten back from a dusty vacation, I can return to my obsessive quest to figure out what Yahoo should do to improve its prospects pronto.
I noted a few weeks ago here that is was time to stop with all the recriminations related to its management turmoil and try to look [...]

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While it’s corporate sport to focus on the ins and outs of the departure of Terry Semel–was he pushed or did he motor out of Yahoo on his own or, the truth, a little of both?–it’s probably a better idea to look at what will come in the days ahead for Yahoo’s ranks.
Sources tell me [...]

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