Oh dear.

Even more waiting for Yahoo to turn itself around? Until 2009? Really? Another 100 days, and another, and another and then more than half of another?

This is starting to feel very, very familiar.

Too familiar.

Well, it did take seven months to replace Farzad Nazem as CTO at a–um, well–technology-dependent company, so perhaps the glacial pace of non-change change planned for the Internet giant should not come as too much of a surprise.

Still, any surprise or new development from Yahoo might be more welcomed by Wall Street, which decidedly did not like much of what it heard from CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang or other Yahoo top execs during their fourth quarter and year-end earnings session yesterday.

After the underwhelming call, which came after the markets had closed, Yahoo shares were off almost 10% in after-hours trading, falling below a dangerous $20 level to $18.89.

Or, as I like to call it, takeover territory. Or even, as many media and tech players I talked to recently have been suggesting more fervently, the land where Yahoo merges with AOL or eBay.

But, really, who knows? Even, it seems, Jerry Yang.

He used the term “head winds” to characterize Yahoo’s sober guidance for the future, even as Yahoo had a sharp drop-off in net profit for the quarter.

Oddly, he did not highlight the much ballyhooed layoffs, which might number about 1,000. Or not–because some laid off can look for other jobs at Yahoo in more promising product areas. Got that?

I don’t and that’s probably the most critical problem Yahoo faces. Still, right after the call, Yang and his top execs went back into the cone of silence they have been living in, which is located in their cozy cave of noncommunication, without further comment.

Incredibly, reporters were asked to email or text any follow-up questions and given no access to anyone in charge.

While Yang and others there often note that they have their heads down–remember, there are scary head winds out there and potential hair-mussing dangers!–and don’t have time for such things, even Punxsutawney Phil knows that the only way winter ends is if you come out of your hole and don’t get scared looking at your own shadow.

Sources tell me that now that Sue Decker has ascended to president from running the Advertiser and Publisher Group, that job, as well as the never-filled Audience Group one (announced by Semel in the last reorg in December), will no longer exist. As in, poof, gone!

Executives under those umbrellas will apparently report up through current ranks to Decker.

That is, except the job of tech head–recently vacated by Farzad Nazem and taken over on an interim basis by new CEO and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang–which will report directly to Yang. That’s right, for now, Yang will report to Yang.

But what else? First, I would expect there to be more executive departures.

With the drop-off in the display ad business, for example, one wonders if current Chief Sales Officer Wenda Harris Millard is going to be feeling the pressure from on high. Pictured here, she joined Yahoo around the time Semel got there, bringing a lot of advertising experience to the then-flimsy ad efforts.

While she definitely raised the game at Yahoo, results are results. Also vulnerable is Gregory Coleman, Yahoo’s executive vice president of global sales.

And, it is important to underscore the need to raise morale at Yahoo and attract dynamic new employees. The mood at the company has been, shall we say, glum, and that falls in the purview of Libby Sartain, Chief People Yahoo, an annoyingly cute way of saying she runs human resources. (She is pictured here.)

Now, I don’t find many companies where the HR head is beloved, but Sartain does attract an unusual amount of ire from some in the company for not being as supportive as one might hope.

But the real issue won’t be those leaving with a bit of a push, but those who want to get out while the getting is good. The departure of major execs, shown here, like Marco Boerries (right), the executive vice president of the Connected Life Division, and the more high-profile Jeff Weiner (left), who is executive vice president of its Network Division, would be a blow.

While it is not likely either will bolt soon–and it is critical for Yahoo to hold onto as many top execs as they can right now–they are ripe pickings for any aggressive Internet company looking for leadership.

And what of Brad Garlinghouse, shown here, the man who seemed to set this whole conflagration, when he penned the now legendary “Peanut Butter Manifesto.”

That four-page memo struck a nerve inside and outside the company when it became public late last year, as it called for an overhaul of Yahoo management, a resetting of priorities and pointed out cleverly that the company had spread itself too thin. (Get it? Peanut butter? Spread thin?)

Given his role as the one whose recommendations have seemingly come to pass and then some (”Existing business owners must be held accountable for where we find ourselves today–heads must roll,” he wrote), it’s likely Garlinghouse’s job is pretty sticky.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

(”Your job, should you choose to accept it, Mr. Phelps, is to beat the Goog Borg.”)

Nazem said in a post on a Yahoo blog that he had decided to slow down, but it’s clear there is more to the story. So I will be spending this week, semirecovered from the hubbub of our D conference last week, ferreting out more information about the latest development in the ongoing saga of Yahoo’s management upheavals.

(I have written about the turmoil here and here.)

But his leaving should come as no surprise to anyone who has spent time with any midlevel Yahoo executive. Without fail in any conversation with those toiling to launch or improve products at the struggling online portal, most fingered “Zod,” which is Nazem’s nickname internally, as one of the choke points at the company.

So many wondered why Nazem, pictured here, had escaped the swirling maelstrom of changes that has impacted its top management to the core in recent months.

That’s especially true because technology has been at the center of Yahoo’s ongoing struggle to chase Google in the monetization of search. In order to compete better, Yahoo recently launched its new system, called Panama. But it is too early to tell if the upgrade is paying off, as recent results have not been the blockbuster ones expected.

Things will surely improve, of course, but the problem is that neither Google nor anyone else is standing still. In fact, new reports show Google’s search-share advances increasing, with Yahoo still playing sloppy second.

Another problem cited by many is that few in any of the divisions have adequate control of the technology development of their products and had to channel too many of their requests through Nazem’s Technology Group.

While engineers rule with an iron fist at rival Google, Yahoo has many more kinds of consumer products (and they are more complicated) that need much more cooperative efforts between the techies and other players like product managers and marketers.

Slowness to act or even react was at the center of most of the complaints leveled at Nazem, who has been at the company since very early, joining 11 years ago (he has been CTO for nine of those years, in fact). He is one of the few old-timers left at the top, in fact, except for co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo.

Yang and not the more techie Filo, interestingly, will become “interim executive sponsor”–whatever that means–of the tech group until an internal or external candidate is found. That mission-impossible job, as you might imagine, will be a hard one to fill.

Nazem’s departure now leaves two major divisions with no head honcho–Technology and its Audience Group. For now, Sue Decker, who runs its Advertiser and Publisher Group and is considered the next in line to CEO and Chairman Terry Semel, is alone near the top.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.