Yahoo! Talent Keeps Trickling

Marquez departs to work with Quincy Smith -- the noted dealmaker and former investment banker who was just pulled to head up CBS -- to look for potential acquisition targets. "It's clear that CBS Interactive will be active on the acquisition front," writes Tech Crunch. But his talents would have been a big help for Yahoo! at a time when the Web giant is looking for innovative companies to acquire as a shot in the arm.

Still, Yahoo! hasn't been able to close any major deals -- despite reports of negotiations with rapidly growing Facebook and speculation of a pickup of social networking site LinkedIn -- and the company's murky outlook plays a large role in this.

Yahoo! has $1.2 billion in cash on hand -- far short of Google's $3 billion -- and would likely have to bank heavily on its stock in any major acquisition. Google's acquisition of YouTube, for example, was an all-stock deal and signified not only YouTube's confidence in Google's prospects, but that of YouTube's venture capital investor Sequoia Capital -- one of the savviest investors in Silicon Valley, which was an earlier backer of both Google and Yahoo!.

But before Yahoo! can expect to bring a major new company onboard, it will have to persuade existing executives to stay put. And while the spotlight is on strategic talk, investors should be watching the rank of executives who will end up having to deliver on whatever vision the company creates.