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Yahoo! parts! ways! with! CFO!

Microhoo resurrection swansong

Update: This story has been updated to include quotes from Carol Bartz's Yahoo! reorg blog post

Yahoo! has told the world that chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen is leaving the company. The struggling web portal announced the news this morning with an SEC filing.

The announcement comes less than a day after Jorgensen told an investor conference that Yahoo! had not ruled out the possibility of striking some sort of internet-search pact with Steve Ballmer and Microsoft.

"We want to do it for the right reasons and the right economics," he said, according to Bloomberg.

Earlier this week, reports indicated that new CEO Carol Bartz was preparing to reorganize the company's management structure. And this morning, Bartz announced the reorg with a blog post this morning - though she did not mention Jorgensen's departure.

"So today I’m rolling out a new management structure that I believe will make Yahoo! a lot faster on its feet. For us working at Yahoo!, it means everything gets simpler. We’ll be able to make speedier decisions, the notorious silos are gone, and we have a renewed focus on the customer," she wrote.

Details were few, but she did announce the creation of a new Customer Advocacy group. "After getting a lot of angry calls at my office from frustrated customers, I realized we could do a better job of listening to and supporting you. Our Customer Care team does an incredible job with the amazing number of people who come to them, but they need better resources. So we’re investing in that. After all, you deserve the very best.

"We’re also leaning on this team to make sure we’re all hearing the voice of our customers (consumers and advertisers)."

On Monday, Hearst announced the hiring of Neeraj Khemlani, the vice president and general manager of Yahoo News. And yesterday, Yahoo! confirmed the departure of Marco Boerries, who oversaw Yahoo!'s mobile efforts as head of the company's "Connected Life" division.

Prior to Jorgensen's Microhoo resurrection yesterday, Bartz had seemed to downplay the possibility of an agreement with Microsoft. During her first Yahoo! earnings call, the former Autodesk chief called search "a very valuable part of our business. Understanding the intent and goals of our users as they seek information online is extremely useful to our franchise in many ways."

But she did not directly address the possibility of selling Yahoo!'s search biz to Microsoft or entering some other search agreement with the company.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! has announced several new search-related ad tools in recent weeks. Last week, it tossed video ads into its search engine. And this week, it introduced new tools that allow advertisers to target web display ads according to a user's search activity. ®

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