As congratulations rain down on new Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, her predecessor, Owen Van Natta, is left under a cloud. Van Natta left Amazon.com for Facebook when it was barely out of an Ivy League dorm, and turned it into a company with plans to take over the world. Then he got demoted. Then he abruptly left. Why? Because he wanted to be a CEO someday. But his ambitions did not match his talents, Mark Zuckerberg now implies. In Zuck's words: "With bringing in a COO, we just decided it was the right time for him to go and do that." Somewhere else. Ah, then we shouldn't call it a firing.

Barry Diller's battle with Liberty Media head John Malone for control over IAC could be over in a week, Diller told a crowd at a Variety event yesterday. "It's very odd that two people who don't want to give up control of anything are giving control to a judge in Delaware," he said. "The wonderful thing about Delaware is they do it quickly. They make a decision quickly." Some shareholders might wish for the same alacrity from Diller.

Why did Sheryl Sandberg leave Google to become Facebook's COO? Let's be real: Even if Facebook one day grows into its $15 billion valuation, it's unlikely to unseat the world's dominant player in online advertising. Sandberg had a great gig running AdWords, the engine of Google's profit. Her job had only two drawbacks: sales chief Omid Kordestani and Shona Brown, head of business operations. Sandberg disliked those two executives enough to be open to Facebook's approach. Mark Zuckerberg, a suggestion on how to spend a very small part of Microsoft's $240 million: Send Kordestani and Brown thank-you gifts.

Sequoia Capital is famous for firing founder CEOs. Its latest victim: Serge Faguet, who's out as CEO of TokBox, we hear. The video-chat service raised $4 million from Sequoia last year. (Photo by Noah Berger/New York Times)

The New York Times writer who blew up "rockism" from an industry term to a mainstream idea has left the paper. According to Radar, Kelefa Sanneh has already gotten a job at the New Yorker, home of the best living music journalist Sasha Frere-Jones. I can only hope Sanneh gets to write a too-witty-for-the-New-Yorker blog like Frere-Jones's. [Photo from Zoilus]

Yahoo senior vice president Tim Cadogan left the company today. "Maybe Yahoo really is serious about cleaning up its act?" our tipster asks, telling us staffers received this email today:

About.com's Scott Meyer was forced out as CEO of the New York Times-owned website after his senior staff threatened to quit unless he left, a tipster tells us. NYT CEO Janet Robinson had wanted to keep Meyer on, even though his reports ridiculed him as a biz-dev type who was clueless about the Web. That he left without a replacement indicates how deep the revolt went. For NYT Digital chief Martin Nisenholtz, who's running About.com for the time being, the gig is temporary, and involuntary. "Martin definitely doesn't want to run About," says our source — though he also pressed Robinson to do something about Meyer. As for replacements? Ron McCoy, the company's chief digital architect, and an early pioneer of search-engine optimization, is the heavy lifter at About.com, but he's not a candidate for the CEO spot: He flies in from Atlanta, and is said to be uninterested in management.

About.com, the '90s-vintage mess of protoblogs the New York Times Co. paid $410 million for three years ago, has lost its CEO, Scott Meyer, left. The departure is characterized as "amicable"; the circumstances, curious. The Times has been rumored to be shopping About.com, though the company denies it. Regardless, Meyer is not being replaced. Instead, Martin Nisenholtz, the digital chief at the Times, right, will run it directly. There are two interpretations here.

Group presidents Thomas Kendra and Greg Butterfield are out at Symantec, according an SEC filing. Kendra joined the company four years ago and earned $4.2 million last year. Almost half of that came as the last payment in a 2006 signing bonus, a detail perhaps indicating poor foresight on the part of CEO John Thompson.

A month after we first heard rumors that Libby Sartain, Yahoo's unpopular HR chief, a tipster now tells us Sartain is "quitting." To the last, Sartain has been more skilled at generating press clips for herself than results for Yahoo. In the most recent issue of Human Resource Executive — yes, such a magazine exists — she said:

Until recently, Nick Welihozkiy lived a double life: Sales manager at LinkedIn by day, athlete training for the hammer throw in the Summer Olympics by night, with the support of the company's management. That has come to an end: His boss abruptly fired him amidst the recent upheaval at the IPO-bound startup. Welihozkiy was seen by many as the heart of LinkedIn's culture, and have taken his departure hard. Even so, LinkedIn's marketers continue to exploit Welihozkiy's image: He appears prominently on the company store's homepage, dressed as Clark Kent turning into Superman, with a link to his LinkedIn profile. He hasn't updated it.

Why is top talent fleeing Yahoo? Not because of Microsoft. BoomTown reports that back in late 2006, Yahoo launched "Project Engage," which included handing out retention packages full of option grants and restricted stocks units (RSUs). And guess what: Those packages didn't fully vest until February 2. That's the day after Microsoft announced its bid, sending Yahoo's shares skyrocketing just in time. Could Microsoft have timed its bid any better to bleed Yahoo? Says one Yahoo executive: "Everyone was just biding their time for the RSU to vest," one Yahoo exec said. "The Microsoft bid just gives everyone an excuse to leave." (Photo by cmccartney)

Once Mark Zuckerberg's right-hand man, Owen Van Natta is leaving Facebook in a couple of weeks. Van Natta, who openly aspired to be CEO — of Facebook or another company — was demoted from COO to vice president of revenue operations last summer. While he downplayed it at the time, it was a clear signal Van Natta was getting no closer to the executive suite. One question: Will Facebook buy back Van Natta's shares at the company's $15 billion valuation? Private companies sometimes do that for departing executives. Whether Facebook extends that lucrative courtesy to Van Natta will be the best indicator of ator of how friendly his departure was.

The departure of Brian Valentine, a 19-year Microsoft veteran before he left in 2006, has always been a bit of a puzzle. In August of that year, Microsoft management told his staff he was taking a new job within the company after shipping Windows Vista. A month later, he left for Amazon.com. Now, Amazon.com has cleared things up with a belated SEC filing: Microsoft lied to its employees. Here's the timetable:

A tipster writes of the cuts at Yahoo: "Maria Hinge, the VP for emerging European markets, got laid off on Friday. She's credited with rolling out services in Turkey, Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic. However, her reports always thought she was more adept at 'rolling' with the European management team." Come on, people. "Rolling?" Does anyone actually say that? Next we're going to hear that Toby Coppel was swinging with the flippity-flop.

Microsoft will promote Andrew Lees to senior vice president and task him with gaining a stronger foothold for Microsoft in the consumer market for mobile devices. That means taking on Apple's iPhone. According to the WSJ, Lees replaces Pieter Knook, who shuffles into retirement on today's news. Perhaps this is because Knook last year allowed Steve Ballmer to say "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

A tipster tells us Yahoo senior directors George John and Subhhash Bhatia didn't finish the day employed yesterday. John, our tipster writes, wasn't a particularly harmful presence. Bhatia, however, ran his "division completely into the ground, forcing managers and engineers to flee to other parts of Yahoo — anywhere but under him. It's a pity that it took layoffs to let him go." Psst, Subhash. If you have a guess as to who the tipster is, this means you shouldn't ask him for a reference.

While accusing Yahoo News GM Amy Iorio of tiresome nepotism, our last tipster said Iorio's sister, Denise Iorio "has no clearly defined job function and doesn't work on any distinct property." Seems Yahoo caught on. Denise Iorio caught the sharp end of the ax yesterday, a tipster tells us. Friends and neighbors, that means you shouldn't believe her when she says she's on an extended maternity leave.

We hear that Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo's advanced-produts czar, has finally fired Salim Ismail, the head of Yahoo's Brickhouse incubator in San Francisco. Today's layoffs likely provided a convenient excuse to get rid of Ismail, a suavely incompetent liar. Ismail, a failed entrepreneur turned failed manager, was good at one thing: Getting press for products his group had not yet launched. We told you so.

Former Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan has quit AOL exactly three months after being named EVP of global advertising strategy. Morgan sold ad-targeting firm Tacoda to AOL in September for $275 million. Now he's planning on getting back into startups. He might even take investment from AOL, he told PaidContent, which characterizes the departure as "cordial." We're surprised in one sense — Morgan was telling people last fall how excited he was to take the job — but not in another. In an internal memo, AOL COO Ron Grant called Morgan an "entrepreneur at heart" and frankly, their kind isn't welcome long at AOL. Morgan's departure follows Kathleen Kayse's. Kayse, AOL's former EVP of digital media sales, left last week.