Yahoo has hired a new head of mergers and acquisitions–former General Electric M&A exec Andrew Siegel, who will now be VP of corporate development.

Yahoo CFO Tim Morse dropped the news with no details about that title in an interview with The Wall Street Journal about the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s third-quarter earnings.

One question apparently not answered was what exactly is the status of its current top M&A exec, Greg Mrva–who has had the title Siegel now has posted on his LinkedIn profile–as well as that of VP of mergers and acquisitions more recently.

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According to numerous sources, Yahoo has been shopping around Zimbra, the open-source email company it bought in late 2007 for $350 million.

Zimbra is only one of the many assets of Yahoo that are now on the block, including its personals business, its HotJobs online classified unit and more to come.

The effort to unload Zimbra is yet another sign that the company is trying to slim down its diverse portfolio, even as it strives to redefine itself this week with a new, pricey marketing campaign that seeks to position Yahoo primarily as a consumer company.

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It’s certainly acquisition fever in Silicon Valley today. After it was announced that Facebook had bought FriendFeed, now comes the news that VMware has purchased SpringSource, a privately held enterprise and Web application development and management cloud computing start-up.

The price? That would be $420 million in cash and stock.

With the purchase of Spring Source, Palo Alto-based VMware–which is a top player in the virtualization space–is adding to its cloud-computing application-management strength and also its ties to the open-source community.

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As CEO and chairman of Mozilla, respectively, John Lilly and Mitchell Baker have overseen the huge growth of Firefox, the popular open-source browser.

The pair talk about this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

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Later this morning, the media circus has been summoned to the Googleplex in Mountain View for a look-see at Google’s new Chrome browser and a chitchat with Google about the meaning of it all.

(Also, a 100 percent chance of both free comics and tasty organic snacks too!)

And Chrome, the shiny code name of the project, which stuck as the brand name, will also be going out to the world at large right after that.

BoomTown will be doing a video report, of course. But, until then, I have decided to forgo writing the expected long, long, long, long what-the-new-Google-browser-represents-for-geekkind thumbsucker for a much shorter version.

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I met John Lilly last October on a decidedly odd techie scavenger hunt in Hawaii– trapped in a van all day while searching for tikis and such, as if we were a geek Brady Bunch (yes, BoomTown works that hard for you)–and found him to be just the kind of quietly intelligent, thoughtful and self- effacing digital exec that Silicon Valley could use a lot more of in these often frivolous, look-at-me Web 2.0 days.

Soon after, in January, Lilly was named CEO of Mozilla Corporation, after serving its its COO, taking over for Mitchell Baker, who remains its chairman. Mozilla just launched its Firefox 3 browser to much success.

Here’s my video interview with him about where Mozilla is going next.

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Before John Lilly got the CEO job at Mozilla, I had visited the HQ of the the open-source software nonprofit foundation (and, at the same time, a for-profit startup)–famous for its increasingly popular Firefox browser and red dragon logo–on Landings Drive in Mountain View.

I toured the place and took video note of a freakishly large sculpture made of soda cans and the biggest couch I have ever seen. In other words, just another typical Silicon Valley company.

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This week, I had lunch with one of the nicest young Web entrepreneurs around the scene, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg.
We use a custom WordPress.com installation for this site, which has worked out well for us, and the start-up also hosts AllThingsD.com. We also got a very nice hoodie.
In all seriousness, the company started as an [...]

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According to several sources close to Yahoo, the company will outline in much more detail its open-platform strategy next week, in its efforts to keep its cred as a big supporter of openness and also show it has a clear path to reinvigorate itself despite current turmoil.

Yahoo has been accelerating its open activities of late, mostly related to its search and ad infrastructure.

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Former Yahoo Senior Vice President Tim Cadogan will take the CEO job at OpenX, the popular open-source ad server start-up, backed by Index Ventures, Accel Partners and others.
As part of the change, the company will move from its London HQ to Los Angeles. OpenX has about 30 employees, including 10 developers in Poland, but not [...]

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Yahoo is set to make yet another acquisition–this time of white-label open-source email provider Zimbra. Sources close to the deal said that the Internet portal will pay $350 million, considerably upward of its most recent valuation, for the email and calendar provider.

Backed by Benchmark Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Accel Partners, San Mateo, Calif.-based Zimbra’s clients [...]

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