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 stock seesaw for Yahoo–fueled this time by a story in The Wall Street Journal that claimed that former AOL CEO Jon Miller was buttonholing private equity firms for money to buy the Internet giant–continues.

Yahoo shares rose seven percent due to the report, to $11.50, up 76 cents.

Unfortunately for everyone but stock manipulators, the Journal story had a lot of problems, including the highly pertinent fact that Miller has not been actively working on such a deal with any more effort that he had been over the last six months.

“Nothing is different now than it was last week, or even months ago,” said one person close to the situation.

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Let me be crystal clear: Yahoo and Microsoft are not currently secretly at work on a pricey new search partnership and a piece this weekend in the Times of London that said they were is inaccurate.

It’s natural for the idea to be brought up, since they have talked about such a deal many months ago and have indicated publicly and recently that they should again in the future, so smart betting is correct in guessing that they probably will do some sort of search deal in the months ahead.

Still, various rumors pop up weekly about deals between the pair, which are about as convoluted as a mash-up of “Richard III” and “Macbeth,” with some “Three’s Company” thrown in for comic relief.

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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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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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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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Well, this was certainly predictable–the mindless piling on of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang now taking place in the blogosphere, in the wake of yet another setback for the troubled Internet company.

This time, it comes after the collapse of the search advertising deal with Google yesterday.

BoomTown is not saying the co-founder of Yahoo does not deserve criticism for how he has run the company since last summer.

Nonetheless, it is simply lazy to just call for Yang’s ouster as the panacea for what ails the company. It’s a feel-good suggestion, mixed with a creepy mob mentality, that offers no clear path to improvement.

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Okay, here is what is true at this moment about Yahoo, which is sure to get even more caught up in the maelstrom of rumor and innuendo about its fate after the collapse of its controversial search advertising deal with Google today.

While Yahoo’s corporate gyrations are beginning to feel like there are more twists and turns than a Spanish telenovela, the actual situation is a lot less sexy and definitely more grim.

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BoomTown was a squeaky enough wheel to get Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to grant a long interview by phone yesterday–just a day after he had announced weak third-quarter earnings results for the Internet giant, caught as others are in the econalypse, as well as layoffs of at least 10 percent of its global work force.

But instead of being glum, as you might expect, especially after a year of corporate turmoil that would have finally gotten to even Job, Yang sounded surprisingly confident that Yahoo would emerge a winner after all the wrenching change is wrought at the company he co-founded.

Here is the first of two parts.

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Oh, this is just too good to pass up, so it is once again time for BoomTown to let you know exactly what Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang actually meant in his internal memo to employees about the hiring of Bain & Company to evaluate its troubled business systems.

Jerry wrote: yahoos,

it’s time for another update.

Translation: Yep! Still no adult punctuation! We might continue to face serious big-boy issues at the company, but we refuse to give in on our insistence on kindergarten spelling patterns.

In that vein, would you like a nice cold glass of chocolate milk before I get to the bad news?

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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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