Google Gallops Toward $600

Just this weekend, Yahoo!'s head of sales, Wenda Millard, became the latest key executive to jump ship. In general, changes in personnel tend to be sanitized affairs, with both parties wishing each other well -- but in this case, knives were drawn.

Yahoo!, in a press release, first implied that Millard had been pushed out because she was no longer up to the job. Millard responded by taking the unusual step of telling the Associated Press that she had been offered a hierarchically better job by Yahoo! upon her resignation but that she parted for what she saw as greener pastures at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia(MSO Quote).

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"I am very disturbed that Yahoo! chose to turn my resignation into something that it was not," Millard told the tech blog AllThingsD on Tuesday, responding to the growing enmity. "I feel very sorry for Yahoo! these days."

Millard is often credited as a major player behind Yahoo!'s turnaround after 2001. The unseemly departure could induce even more executives to bail.

The Microsoft Factor

Microsoft, meanwhile, continues to step on landmines online, even as it points to the Internet as a growing source of importance to its business. The company is facing a massive backlash from bloggers in response to a botched online ad campaign that involved high-profile technology bloggers such as Michael Arrington and Fred Wilson.

Microsoft collected glowing comments about its products from prominent bloggers, such as those mentioned above, and displayed them in ad space purchased on the blogs themselves. The move sparked ire among other bloggers who charged that the company was essentially buying influence.