AOL has hired a pair of New York investment bankers, Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co., to manage the sale of its ICQ instant-messaging unit.

Sources familiar with the situation said interest in buying the asset from two major non-U.S. companies prompted execs at the online service to put a process in place for a deal that will likely occur after AOL becomes an independent company in December.

AOL bought ICQ in 1998 for about $400 million–$287 million outright and $125 million in earnouts for the team.

Sources said AOL to looking to recoup $300 million.

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Essentially–although AOL is located in New York and not California–it’s going to be like tremors before the Big One at the online company today as about 100 employees are set to be laid off by management.

It is part of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s “Project Everest”–the code name for cost-cutting across the company. After this small cut, there could be a call for voluntary departures, followed by a much more drastic layoff.

The action comes in the same timeframe as the online site’s spinoff from Time Warner.

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According to sources close to the situation, AOL has been busy selecting the board for the company, which is still set to spin itself off by year’s end–even as it slows down a decision on a new search deal with either current partner Google or a more emboldened Microsoft.

AOL is using Spencer Stuart in the search for directors, led by well-known headhunter Jim Citrin, sources said, and the company has already settled on several outside candidates.

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Here is a video interview I did today with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in Germany–really!–where we both were appearing at a digital marketing conference.

In it, the former Google exec talks about a range of things, including the possibility of charging for content, innovating in the graphical advertising market, competition with Yahoo and the upcoming spinoff of the Time Warner unit.

But what he did not say is just as interesting.

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There’s no question that Spotify is the latest hot start-up of the moment, which would be super annoying to BoomTown–who is easily irked by never-ending froth around Web 2.0 companies–if co-founder Daniel Ek were not so sharp and the digital-music-on-demand service he created not so nifty.

But, indeed, Ek turned out to be a very refreshing and level-headed serial entrepreneur in an interview I had with him yesterday in London.

Here’s the video.

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Tomorrow, Yahoo will officially unveil the latest redesign of its homepage, an almost complete rejiggering of the look and feel of one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet.

The latest launch comes after about a half-dozen redesigns of the homepage since Yahoo was founded, the last one in 2006.

BoomTown thought it might be instructive to take a look at what has come before it, seeing how the Yahoo front page has evolved since 1994.

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Yahoo’s top mobile exec, Marco Boerries, is departing Yahoo, according to an internal email obtained by BoomTown that he sent to some staffers on Sunday.

I have also since confirmed Boerries’s departure with company insiders familiar with the situation.

In a post on Monday on a restructuring at Yahoo that new CEO Carol Bartz is likely to unveil to the company this week–sources tell me it is now set to be announced internally tomorrow–I noted that Boerries was one of the more likely high-level execs to go.

“With a very heavy heart I have to tell you, that I will be leaving Yahoo!,” Boerries wrote, attributing his departure in an email titled “Personal Update,” to issues related to his family.

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Yahoo is losing yet another top executive–Toby Coppel, its EVP and managing director of Europe and Canada, is set to announce today that he is stepping down.

The departure, which has been in the works for months, is not related to the recent news that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is also relinquishing his job as soon as the company completes its search for another CEO.

His successor will be Rich Riley, who is currently SVP of Europe’s Advertiser & Publisher Group, which put him in charge of all revenues for the division.

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Here’s the internal Yahoo memo from President Sue Decker about the stepping down of Yahoo European head, Toby Coppel, which BoomTown wrote about here.

The departure, which has been in the works for months, is not related to the recent news that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is also relinquishing his job as soon as the company completes its search for another CEO.

His successor will be Rich Riley, who is currently SVP of Europe’s Advertiser & Publisher Group.

Here’s the memo.

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Germany’s Hubert Burda Media threw a big luncheon in Palo Alto yesterday, which was stuffed full with Silicon Valley types. It was hosted by the company’s Steffi Czerny and Maria Burda, the wife of CEO and owner Hubert Burda, as well as well-known Israeli investor Yossi Vardi.

Burda runs an annual digital conference in Munich, called DLD (Digital, Life, Design), even though the media giant is best known for its old-line magazines about fashion, cooking and crafts.

So here’s the video!

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Okay, BoomTown is grudgingly going to liveblog this event at the Googleplex, as it might be mercifully short, given that Google is supposed to release its new Chrome browser at high noon, Pacific time.

Then again, this is Google, so you know they love to talk, because they are super-duper smart, I am told.

I will be posting video later, but thus far: A roomful of press in Building 43 at Google’s HQ in Mountain View. Tasty snacks as expected, but unusually caloric (many tiny pastries, heavy cream, very small amounts of fruit).

First up: Sundar Pichal, Chrome honcho!

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A few months ago BoomTown was in Berlin and visited a number of Internet companies there, including studiVZ, which I called the Facebook of Germany in the video posted below of my visit there.

Ooops!

As it turns out that is apparently the illegal way to describe it, at least according to Facebook itself, which sued the German company in a California court last Friday, accusing it of making a “knock-off” of the popular social networking site.

Apparently, studiVZ is also trying to block the suit in German court too, creating what amounts to an international SuperPoking incident (called a “gruscheln” on studiVZ).

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Why was supermodel Naomi Campbell suddenly standing right next to German publisher Hubert Burda at the final lunch for his company’s DLD–Digital, Life, Design–conference in Munich yesterday?
I have no idea, nor do I know why Burda broke out into song either–how much do you have to love a media mogul willing to do that?
But I [...]

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Here’s a video I did about the first day of DLD–Digital, Life, Design–put on my Hubert Burda Media in Munich this week.
The three-day conference focuses on digital innovation, science and culture. It is chaired by publisher Hubert Burda and serial Israeli investor Joseph Vardi and hosted by Stephanie Czerny and Marcel Reichart.
I was here to [...]

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I am now at the DLD conference in Munich, which is put on by Hubert Burda Media, a gathering that has become one of Europe’s most interesting in recent years.
The three-day DLD–which stands for Digital, Life, Design–focuses on digital innovation, science and culture and has the most cosmopolitan audience of any conference out there.
It is [...]

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