In explaining Carl Icahn's raid on Yahoo, pundits bring up his efforts to shake up tech and media giants like Motorola and Time Warner. But I think there's a better analogy in Icahn's past: TWA. Icahn's attempt to gain a board seat or broker a new deal to sell Yahoo to Microsoft will not send Yahoo soaring; if left unchecked, he will run Yahoo into the ground as surely as he did that troubled airline. Icahn's bid, and the support it is drawing from large Yahoo investors, seems premised on the notion that he can bring Microsoft and Yahoo back to the bargaining table. That seems unlikely.

In what amounts to a public job application to Motorola CEO Greg Brown, Numair Faraz, former assistant to Razr creator Geoffrey Frost, slams the company and former CEO Ed Zander for astounding ineptitude. Catch the full story over at Gizmodo or see our 100-word version below.

Motorola, mortally wounded, is spinning off its handset business in slow motion. CEO Greg Brown expects the deal to go through next year. There's no Razr on the horizon to spur sales, thanks to former CEO Ed Zander's overreliance on the model. In San Francisco cofeeshops, the popular theory is that Apple's iPhone killed Motorola. Nonsense. Motorola killed Motorola. The population of the Bay Area is 7.2 million; despite the appearance that every man, woman, and child here now has an iPhone, Apple will be lucky to have sold that many by now.

Ed Zander is stepping down as CEO of cell-phone maker Motorola on January 1. He will be replaced by current president and COO Greg Brown. Zander plans to "go do the things that my wife and I have wanted to do now for years and years." One analyst calls the move a "slight positive" for the company. In its most recent quarter, Motorola had a 94 percent drop in profit — maybe it is time for some fresh blood, but promoting Zander's No. 2 hardly seems like the trick. (Photo by AP/Damian Dovarganes)

Motorola CEO Ed Zander claimed that his company considered buying Navteq, the mapping-services company rival Nokia snapped up last week, but decided to pass. "We are not in the applications business," said Zander. Right. That explains, of course, why Motorola bought Good Technology, an email software company, last year. We have another theory: Bitches just jealous.

Pity Ed Zander, who's learning that timing is everything. The Motorola CEO today had to confess to Wall Street that his company's cell-phone sales were off again and the business was looking likely to run a loss for the year. He arrived at Motorola from Silicon Valley in January 2004, hailed as a tech visionary. As sales of the Razr took off, Fortune asked if he was "the greatest CEO in America — or simply the luckiest." Neither, it turns out. Here's where Zander went wrong.

Rumors that Ed Zander may step down as CEO of Motorola caused the stock to rise nearly 2% today. Whether or not the rumor is true, it demonstrates investors are no longer confident in Ed Zander's leadership of the chip and cell phone manufacturer. It also shows the growing power of the grassroots shareholder campaigns of Eric Jackson, who recently took on Terry Semel at Yahoo.