It seems that since Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is playing it coy about whether she wants to do a massive search deal with Microsoft or not, the software giant is just going to keep hiring her search tech team out from under her.

Today, Microsoft said it had hired Larry Heck, VP of search & advertising sciences at Yahoo Labs, who will work in its online unit.

It’s like the rapture, except geekier.

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Jill Nash, Yahoo’s chief communications officer, has told CEO Carol Bartz and other Yahoo staff this afternoon that she is leaving the company.

Nash, sources said, told staff that she does not have any plans to move to another company immediately, so the reasons for her departure are unclear.

BoomTown would have to guess that Nash is simply completely spent from her past two years at Yahoo, which have been very fraught from a public relations perspective, to say the least.

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With Yahoo earnings expected to be dismal when the company reports fourth-quarter earnings this Tuesday afternoon, new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is going to have to hang tough.

And she certainly seems capable of that. At her first all-hands meeting, Bartz said, according to one report others have since confirmed to BoomTown, that she would “drop-kick to f***ing Mars” employees who leak to the press.

That threat sent little shivers up BoomTown’s spine too, which is why it must have taken so long for her first-week missive to Yahoo staff worldwide to get to my inbox.

Well played, Ms. Bartz, well played.

But turnabout is also fair play…

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One of Yahoo’s top marketing execs, Eric Hadley, who came to the company with a lot of acclaim in November, is set to leave for a new job in Microsoft’s MSN online service, several sources said.

Hadley had previously worked at Microsoft, although he had come to Yahoo from the CMO job at Heavy.com. At Yahoo, he was hired as its VP of U.S. field marketing.

It’s yet another sign of renewed executive unrest at Yahoo. Yesterday, BoomTown reported that Zimbra founder Satish Dharmaraj was leaving Yahoo, which was later confirmed by the company.

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