Time waits for no man–but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer seems to be taking an awful lot of it in picking who will head the software giant’s long-foundering digital efforts.

Two months after the departure of former top exec Kevin Johnson, most inside the company had expected Ballmer to make the most obvious internal choice of SVP Brian McAndrews. Longtime digital SVP Yusuf Medhi has been seen as the No. 2 candidate.

But many sources report that Ballmer remains more intent on hiring someone outside the company, with the idea that such a person could better re-energize Microsoft’s moribund Internet efforts and bring in a fresher perspective.

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There will be a lot of different reactions to the first of Microsoft’s newest series of commercials, featuring Founder Bill Gates playing straight man to comic Jerry Seinfeld.

Set up as a discount shoe-buying skit, Seinfeld helps Gates purchase a pair called “The Conquistador,” and for some Seinfeldesque reason, it’s churros all around in this marketing effort.

What might be more effective, of course, at least in the Internet arena, is for Microsoft to get off the stick and lay out its next Web strategy clearly, especially in the wake of its failed attempt to acquire Yahoo, and name the digital chief it said it planned to.

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Once burnt, twice shy?

I suppose that’s the reason Microsoft is not loaded for bear and headed back down to Sunnyvale to make another play for Yahoo right now.

Not even after Jerry Yang orchestrated activist Carl Icahn’s defenestration by inviting him on the board at Yahoo, where he will be 100 percent silenced.

Not even after the stranger-than-fiction shareholder miscount (oops–we thought no meant yes!).

Not even after Yahoo stock’s consistent flirting-with-the-teens price.

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One thing is absolutely true: It is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and only Ballmer who knows for sure whom he is most interested in to take over the dicey job of head of the software giant’s long-suffering online services business.

But there is a movement afoot among its developers and other execs at Microsoft to push for Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who replaced Founder Bill Gates in the job just over two years ago.

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BoomTown was all busy trying to think of execs to replace Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, as pressure mounts on him to right the troubled Internet company.

But now, Yang’s position feels safer than ever and it’s his nemesis–Microsoft–that needs a new leader for its long-stumbling online services business.

Microsoft is already been cracking, according to sources, with a wish list of internal and external candidates that CEO Steve Ballmer is now considering.

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Kevin Johnson, the point person for Microsoft’s failed bid to buy Yahoo, is leaving the company to run Juniper Networks.

As the president of its Platform and Services Division, the smooth Johnson has been trying, without much success, to beef up the software giant’s efforts in the Web space, especially in the online advertising arena.

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Just prior to Microsoft’s annual advertising conference advance08, Kevin Johnson, President of the company’s Platforms & Services Division, sent the following strategy update to PSD employees.

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Well, I can tell you what Microsoft might do if it ever got Yahoo to stop snubbing its efforts to acquire the troubled Internet portal.

According to numerous sources familiar with Microsoft’s thinking whom I have been talking to this past week, quite a lot–from creating a single search index to forming one common ad platform to running the place with longtime Microsoft execs at the helm.

So let’s just ignore for now the latest wrinkle in this obviously dysfunctional relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft–which is beginning to remind me of that bizarre Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and football situation.

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