With a $10 stock price, the turning down of Microsoft’s $31 a share offer, a collapsed search advertising deal with Google (GOOG), 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.

The board is, after all, Yang’s boss and the ones charged with keeping Yahoo (YHOO) on track. That’s why their apparent stasis is just astonishing, if it were not quite so appalling.

And that’s also the opinion of major Yahoo investors, who have been watching with horror as their equity in the company has also shrunk to an infinitesimal size, with little apparent movement by the directors of Yahoo.

“They have no sense of urgency or seem to feel any pressure to do anything, even though by every metric they have failed,” said one investor I recently spoke to, who has been in touch with some Yahoo board members recently. “Should they kick Jerry out? Should they restart talks with Microsoft? Should they consider other options to turn the company around? And while they’re telling me they are going to do something, nothing happens.”

Said another big investor: “With all the other things going on in the economy, I have just decided to move on and write Yahoo off…but the lack of action by the board is really hard to understand.”

What’s hard to know is exactly what new board member Carl Icahn–the billionaire shareholder activist (pictured here), who joined after a very public fight with Yahoo, along with two others he hand-picked, former Nextel CEO John Chapple and former Viacom exec Frank Biondi–has been up to.

Not much, it seems, for the typically noisy gadfly, who owns five percent of Yahoo and has lost a fortune doing so.

Last week, Icahn did suddenly pop up on CNBC and make a declaration: “We believe as large shareholders that eventually we at Yahoo should, if available, make a deal with Microsoft to do search. We could save a fortune at Yahoo if Microsoft could do search for us.”

Yang himself made a similar suggestion at the Web 2.0 Summit last week that Yahoo was open to a deal to sell the whole company to Microsoft.

It was an offer Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer shot down the very next day, although the software giant is still obviously interested in a search deal.

But sources at Microsoft tell me that Ballmer has said recently that he has no idea who to work with at the company to get anything done and that Yahoo–especially its board, since his relations with Yang have not been successful–has to be the one to act first.

That means, of course, that the ball is squarely in the Yahoo board’s court to do something–at this point, really, anything.

And those directors should be hard at work trying to hit it, instead of not even deigning to take a swing.

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–in fact, this column has been quite active in following the story.

There are very real questions about whether Yang has the right talent and temperament for the job at hand, as much as he clearly loves the company he co-founded.

After all, the stock is in the basement, after Yahoo (YHOO) lost a lucrative bird in the hand in the form of a $31 per share offer from Microsoft (MSFT).

Next, a weak economic environment is forcing it to cut deeply into the muscle of its many businesses, with slashing out 20 percent or more of costs, a worrisome trend if Yahoo hopes to grow when we all eventually emerge from the downturn.

And, of course, more key executive departures, weak employee morale and an overall inability to clearly articulate the changes Yang has been trying to make at the company, such as its laudable open platform efforts.

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.

Still, as it is said, intelligence has it limitations, while stupidity is infinite.

Thus, immediately after Yahoogle went down came the specious rumors of Yang getting kicked out with a new Microsoft takeover bid in the works. Way too many sites posted and reposted the “news,” with most not bothering to actually call Yahoo or sources who might know to ask if this might be happening.

As the old cliche goes–if wishes were horses, all beggars would ride–so too it is wishful thinking that Yang would be flushed out just like that.

But, as with Britney Spears in her crazy days, people seem to believe anything they hear about Yang’s demise. Thus, the Google (GOOG) deal had to be the straw that finally broke the camel’s back and the board of Yahoo was tossing him overboard forthwith.

Then, inevitably comes the posts that Yang is sad, friendless and alone, a tragic figure of ridicule. Or, better still, borrowing from “Macbeth”–a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.

Except for one thing: While a lot of investors, media, analysts and other detractors (including some on Yahoo’s own board) might want to see him step down as CEO, there has to actively be an actual effort on the part of the board to fire him (or, at least, kick him upstairs, back to his former Chief Yahoo job).

While some sources within the company say Carl Icahn and the two board members he brought with him–John Chappelle and Frank Biondi–to the Yahoo board have been reaching out of late to lower-level Yahoo execs to garner info about Yang and his management and also signaling Microsoft that there is renewed interest in reigniting talks, that means little unless the rest of the directors play along.

So far, many sources tell me, they are not.

If I were guessing, it would be Yang who would be the one to initiate any serious talks with Microsoft.

Bizarrely, he kind of did that publicly yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit, when he said onstage: “To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo.”

As not being CEO, I think it would also be Yang who will determine when and how that could happen, if at all.

In other words, critics can smack him all they want, but does not mean it will yield the prize they seek.

Instead, several sources with knowledge of the situation think Icahn is more likely to choose Edward Meyer and Frank Biondi (pictured here, left to right), both of whom were on the alternative board slate when the activist investor was waging his now-defunct proxy fight against Yahoo (YHOO).

Another possibility is someone BoomTown had previously picked–former Nextel exec John Chapple (pictured here)–as a personal favorite, noting in late July:

Thus, overall, from good-fit perspective, I like another former exec, John Chapple of Nextel best of all because mobile will be increasingly important to Yahoo in Web 3.0 (frankly, it better be, as Web 2.0 has not been too kind to Yahoo).

Via Sprint (S), Chapple knows from big mergers and he knows how to makes deals. He has been the operator of a digital company, unlike many of the others. And he is also an entrepreneur, which is a plus.

Longtime media exec Frank Biondi is a longtime Icahn crony, and Meyer definitely has the advertising chops Yahoo needs, as former Grey Global Group head.

Icahn has already been seated as a board member of Yahoo.

Presumably, Icahn will now begin to try to figure out ways to goose Yahoo’s lackluster stock from the inside, in order to recover the hundreds of millions of dollars in paper losses he has endured since he started his still fruitless quest to change Yahoo’s management and/or get it to sell to Microsoft (MSFT).

One possible scheme was to eventually install Miller as Yahoo CEO.

In any case, both Icahn and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang strongly supported Miller for the board.

But Miller was unexpectedly nixed because of a noncompete agreement still in place that he had signed with Time Warner after he was tossed from AOL in late 2006.

After tacitly agreeing to waive the noncompete, Time Warner’s CEO Jeff Bewkes told Miller he could not be considered for the slot.

Thus, Yahoo is limited to the list of possible members of Icahn’s director slate.

The reason is a noncompete Miller (pictured here) signed, part of a severance agreement he reached with the media giant after it unceremoniously tossed him out in late 2006.

A Time Warner spokesman said Miller was barred from working “for a variety of competitors, including Yahoo, until March of 2009.”

Like it matters.

According to sources at Time Warner (TWX), the decision came from on high at corporate and not from the AOL unit. And it is not due to jealousy over attention Miller has received of late–Microsoft was also interested in hiring him to take over for departing exec Kevin Johnson.

Miller, sources said, was called by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes (pictured here) last night and told by him, “We’ve changed our mind.”

Why?

Well, to be sure, Miller is no Time Warner favorite, even after being gone for almost two years.

But Miller, whom Time Warner and AOL execs never miss an opportunity to bash, off the record, is also no threat to AOL, which he actually helped revive from the ruins of the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger.

While working on my second book about AOL in 2002, I will always remember visiting Miller at AOL HQ in Dulles, Va.–where he took up residence in former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s office–and finding him unusually calm after he got the thankless job of following Pittman and AOL icon Steve Case.

Time Warner forces, in the form of new CEO Dick Parsons, had finally managed to take back control of the company and–in a fit of misguided pique–brought holy hell down on the AOL unit.

It was a profoundly emotional reaction, which cost Time Warner precious years and much, much money, as the Internet business revived itself and AOL largely sat on the sidelines.

Miller was in the unenviable position of cleaning up the mess, while also having to listen to endless griping from his bosses.

And, despite the line being put out by Time Warner, he did a pretty good job.

While he might have dumped the dial-up business sooner and been more of an organized manager (the two big complaints about him), Miller did strike AOL’s lucrative Google search ad deal and also bought Advertising.com. (He also tried to buy YouTube, to no avail.)

That purchase should be reason enough for Time Warner to erect a small altar to him, given that it is one of AOL’s only truly valuable assets and the reason Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) have been interested in possibly buying the unit.

But no.

Instead, there is the usual he-said-she-said wrangling about whether Miller got approval for being let out of the noncompete clause.

Time Warner apparently claims Miller never got an official waiver, and Miller forces say Bewkes okayed the issue weeks ago, when it was first announced that Miller was one of the board picks being put forth by activist investor Carl Icahn.

It defies belief to go with Time Warner version, given everyone and their mother’s mother knew Miller was the likely pick of both Icahn and, especially, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.

More interesting is why Time Warner would choose to speak now, especially on the day of Yahoo’s board meeting.

At the meeting, the Yahoo board approved expanding its number of directors from 9 to 11 and formally voted to let Icahn take over the seat being vacated by Robert Kotick.

Miller was the shoo-in, with other likely choices. including former Nextel (S) exec John Chapple, media exec Frank Biondi and former Grey Global Advertising head Edward Meyer.

Perhaps Bewkes imagines somehow that Miller will be a leverage point in talks Time Warner has been having with Yahoo to be acquired. But the smooth exec is an expert negotiator and that seems unlikely.

More likely is that those talks, like AOL’s talks with Microsoft, have gone a little cold of late as everyone shuts up and stops making ill-conceived moves, to show Wall Street that they have their forward-leaning Internet strategies figured out.

No one does. Not Yahoo. Not Microsoft. And, most definitely, not Time Warner’s AOL.

That’s why Bewkes should stop the saber-rattling and free Miller to serve on the Yahoo board.

Yahoo could benefit and, as it stands now, Time Warner just looks silly–it does not want Miller, but it doesn’t want anyone else to have him.

My three-year-old knows how to share better than that.