• D: All Things Digital, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 11:16 AM

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn make a fine trio, says BoomTown writer Kara Swisher. Yang's indecisiveness has cost his company billions in market cap. Under Ballmer, Microsoft has spent the better part of the last decade "not getting the Internet." And Icahn, well, Icahn never "got" and has shown no intention of ever "getting" the Internet, either.

The chief question shareholders face on Aug. 1 is which of this fine bunch can resurrect the once-mighty Yahoo. Until then, Swisher says the fighting will continue, with each man earnestly professing to move solely on behalf of shareholders.

Meanwhile, The New York Times seems to be taking sides, with this "wet kiss" (as Swisher describes it) on the forehead of the beleaguered and battered Yang. The Yahoo CEO is given the opportunity to call Icahn nasty names like a "fox in the henhouse", while maintaining his gentlemanliness with follow-ups like "'I don't mean to impugn anyone's personal integrity." Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin is all too happy to contribute: "Let it never be said that Mr. Yang lacks manners," he writes. Swisher, meanwhile, reverts back to her thesis that it's a dirty game that Yang, Ballmer and Icahn are playing, and that "Yang meant to impugn Icahn and meant to be rude, which is exactly what he has to do to save his job."

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