BoomTown is at the lovely Santa Clara Marriott in Silicon Valley at the 2009 Yahoo annual meeting, liveblogging the event, which should be spectacularly dull.

Here is a rundown of what went on.

10:05 am: The meeting kicks off with a little video presentation with various and sundry television talking heads saying “Yahoo” in quick succession.

Actually, this was the year during which all of those hype-magnets repeated “Twitter” so many times that it has began to make my ears bleed.

But I like the spirit of trying to make Yahoo seem relevant and innovative again.

Read More »

Is Microsoft about to make another move on Yahoo? Or perhaps on AOL? Or is it just getting ready to articulate strategic plans for getting serious about the online search business on its own at its financial analysts’ meeting tomorrow morning?

Or perhaps–and this might be the best strategy for the moment–the software giant is actually managing to stifle itself and wait to return to the playing field when things settle down a little bit.

Read More »

Microsoft’s not the only one backing billionaire investor Carl Icahn in his quest to unseat Yahoo’s leadership and board–major Yahoo investor Gordon Crawford told Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang in a face-to-face meeting last week that he was seriously considering voting against Yahoo in the looming proxy fight.

The troubled meeting that took place last Tuesday in Los Angeles between Capital Research Global Investors’ Crawford and Yang–accompanied by three Yahoo board members–could be seen as a portent of what is to come at the company’s annual meeting on August 1.

And those signs are definitely not good for Yahoo’s current leaders.

Read More »

Like the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead” who will not die, the notion of a big, sloppy deal for Microsoft to buy Yahoo is revived yet again in an article in The Wall Street Journal today.

Unfortunately for both Yahoo and Microsoft, it mostly serves to point out once again just how messy and pathetic the proceedings have been and continues to be.

But, as to the central idea, that Microsoft is aching to do a multi-part deal with various partners that would render Yahoo asunder, BoomTown is altogether dubious that this will ever come to pass.

Read More »

You would have to have been under a rock not to have heard about the controversial piece in Vanity Fair magazine this month about the troubling personal and professional escapades of former President Bill Clinton since he left office.

And the reason for these disturbing developments, besides Clinton himself? The piece actually placed a good bit of the blame on Clinton’s close friend, grocery magnate and billionaire Ron Burkle, who also has been one of the key directors at Yahoo in its takeover fight with Microsoft.

Read More »

One of the most overlooked parts of Web companies are their board members, so I think it is time to start looking more carefully at those firms where the role of directors is going to be increasingly important in 2008.

First stop, obviously, is Yahoo, which reports its fourth quarter and also full year earnings (and also perhaps some board-approved layoffs) tomorrow after the markets close.

With everything from consistently persistent takeover rumors, a still-lagging stock price and continued scrutiny on its moves to revive itself, the company’s managers and–it must be assumed–its directors obviously face challenges in the year ahead.

Read More »