Let’s just say the firing of AOL CEO Randy Falco and President Ron Grant was not exactly expected–even if everyone thought it should happen–within the high ranks of the troubled online unit, until Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes dropped the guillotine this afternoon in Manhattan.

And drop it he did, lopping off the pair of executives Bewkes had installed himself. He replaced them with Tim Armstrong, Google’s head of ad sales, a man with a much brighter resume, for what is likely to be an attempt to spin out AOL now that merger options are moribund.

“It’s a shock to everyone how sudden it was,” said one exec, noting that AOL’s top execs had no idea this is coming today. “Everyone talked about when Bewkes was going to run out of patience with Randy and Ron all the time, but no one knew it was coming now, since it had taken so long.”

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Obviously, the dream CEO for Yahoo is News Corp. President and COO Peter Chernin.

And, no surprise, he is the No. 1 choice of most inside and outside Yahoo in the wake of the news late yesterday that its current CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang is stepping down.

Well, Yahoo would certainly be a challenge for Chernin, in terms of a corporate cleanup challenge, especially compared to figuring out how to make bank on plush toys from “The Simpsons.”

But there are many other contenders for the job, despite the slog it could be. Here’s BoomTown’s list…

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Valleywag got a hold of a sticker (see below) that Bebo employees are passing around in anticipation of the close of the purchase of the third-ranked social-networking site by AOL for $850 million in cash.
The motto: “I, for one, welcome our new AOL overlords.”
Why shouldn’t they? As BoomTown reported, every Bebo employee has had their [...]

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