Now that Google is to run the most profitable parts of Yahoo search advertising, what's a Yahoo search scientist like Qi Lu to do? Leave the company. Sources tell BoomTown that Lu is also mapping his way out of Big Purple, following following the Flickr founders, Usama Fayyad and Jeff Weiner. It's a big blow. One former Yahoo employee who yawned over Fayyad's departure tells us: "Now Qi Lu, on the other hand. People would go to war for him."

Yahoo's VP of platform engineering Eric Boyd is leaving Yahoo after ten years at the company, according to a source. Boyd, pictured here with friend Kyle and actress Kate Bosworth at the premiere of card-sharp thriller 21, made a name for himself as a member of the MIT card-counting team the current box office smash is based on. At Yahoo, he helped developed the user database, mail systems, My Yahoo portal, and most recently, the company's OpenSocial project, reporting to do-little EVP Ash Patel. What might have convinced him to go? I mean, besides the whole Microsoft thing?