Steve Berkowitz is out as senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Services Group, BoomTown reports. In April 2006, Microsoft lured Berkowitz away from Ask.com, where he was CEO, and charged him with running MSN's ad sales, marketing, and business development. Yep, all the stuff that's failed bad enough that Microsoft now wants to pay $44.6 billion for Yahoo. BoomTown said sources couldn't confirm whether Berkowitz is out of the company or just out his job.

Jason Rapp, one of Barry Diller's endless ranks of M&A execs, has lost his job. Or misplaced it, at the very least. A company press release says he'll get "management responsibilities in new growth areas" — but doesn't name them.

Mitt Romney, my choice for president, "suspended" his campaign today. More disappointing? Dave Winer, who will never, ever let you forget his pioneering role in blogging, will continue to blather on about the election in his Twitter feed for months and months. Dude, we get it. You like Obama.

In November, First Round Capital VC and blogger Josh Kopelman bought a pair of ads on Facebook targeted to the Yahoo and Microsoft networks, asking "Leaving Yahoo?" and "Leaving Microsoft?" Clickthrough rates were low. Only 0.3 percent clicked on the Yahoo ads, and the Microsoft ads drew no clicks at all. But after Microsoft's recent $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo, the companies' employees seem more eager to leave. Now, 0.86 percent of Facebook users who saw the Yahoo version of the ad clicked, and 1.19 percent of Microsoft employees targeted clicked on their ad.

A little sunlight is a powerful thing. For a solar energy startup, SunPower doesn't seem to be a big believer in it. Deep in an SEC filing on employee compensation, San Jose-based SunPower buried the news that its COO PM Pai left the company. Forbes figures the departure has little to do with Pai or the company's performance. One source close to the company told Forbes Pai left simply because he refused leave the Philippines to move to San Jose. We know people who live in San Francisco who feel that way.

Would the last Yahoo to leave Sunnyvale please turn off the lights? Glam Media has hired Kiumarse Zamanian, an engineer with several patents to his name, to run its ad platform. Chris Szeto, a key developer of Yahoo Messenger has joined Meebo, the instant-messaging startup. Their new employers would have you think that they left for "exciting new challenges." But the truth is their departures say far more about Yahoo.

This morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the usual polite noises about "integrating" Yahoo's management into Microsoft. The reality? Come on. They're all fired, except for the geeks. If Microsoft had any respect for current management, they would have negotiated a friendly deal instead of launching a takeover. Most of the executive suite will be gone, I bet, within six months if the takeover succeeds. Here are the details on who's in and who's out, starting at the top.

Terry Semel has stepped down as chairman of Yahoo and will leave the board of directors, more than six months after he left his post as CEO of the company. Board member Roy Bostock will assume his role as non-executive chairman. Don't think they let Terry leave without some lovely parting gifts though: Valleywag has learned that the entrance to Yahoo's Sunnyvale headquarters will be renamed Semel Drive "out of appreciation for everything he's done" for Yahoo. Sweet! That's the kind of golden parachute everyone can enjoy!

A source close to Yahoo tells us the time has finally come for unpopular Yahoo HR boss Libby Sartain. "She has never delivered on her promise to make HR vital to Yahoo in the same way as Southwest," our source said. Last summer, Sartain polled a distant third behind Marco Boerries and Gregory Coleman as the most unpopular executive at Yahoo. Coleman's out already; is Boerries next?

eBay employees have just received an email from longtime CEO Meg Whitman announcing her retirement. She joined the company 10 years ago, when it had a mere 30 employees; it now has 14,000. John Donahoe, as expected, will succeed her as CEO. Rajiv Dutta, currently CEO of PayPal, will take Donahoe's job as head of eBay's auctions business. Whitman will remain on the board. Strange, that: In an email to employees, Whitman says it's "time for a new leadership team," and yet all the same faces are staying in place. Here's her full memo to employees.

At last, eBay CEO Meg Whitman is preparing to leave, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's about time, and even Whitman would agree, having said that no one should stay CEO of a company for more than 10 years. That deadline comes in March, and Tuesday's earnings call are as good a time to tell shareholders as any. Her likely replacement, John Donahoe, won't be much of a change: If he is tapped as CEO, power will be ceremoniously transferred one ex-management consultant to another. Is it any wonder eBay is bleeding risktakers and creative talent?

Joost fired its CTO, Dirk-Willem van Gulik, a company flack told NewTeeVee. For a replacement, the Web TV service named Comcast's Matt Zelesko to be the company's senior vice president of engineering. Here's the weird part, though: van Gulik already has a new job.

The CFO of Openwave, the wireless-software company, departed abruptly earlier this week. Jean-Yves Dexmier had only joined the company in August. Openwave has seen much turmoil in its C-suite, as the stock has limped along in the single digits. [Docu-Drama]

Former head of Yahoo Entertainment Vince Broady will leave the company, the New York Times reports. What? An executive pushed out as a result of Scott Moore's ascension? No way.

Brad Garlinghouse's peanut butter memo raged against Yahoo's redundant products. For some Yahoos, farewells are equally repetitive. Scott Gatz, one of Yahoo's R&D managers until he left last month, held a second goodbye party in Sunnyvale today, as boss Bradley Horowitz's Flickr stream shows. Some attendees were puzzled: Didn't this guy leave already? Just imagine what Yahoo could do if it put the same effort into building projects for the future as it did saying goodbye to the past.

TeXtra videoblogger Natali Del Conte leaves San Francisco for New York City next week. She'll become a regular TV face for CNET, appearing on mainstream TV as a tech expert not afraid to say Amazon's Kindle looks like a 1980's PC. Valleywag's weekly happy hour at Moose's — it's been a hit since we started in December — will double as Natali's going-away party next Friday the 18th. Drinking and crying starts at 4 pm and carries on until the place closes. Dress code is "rockstar," whatever that means to you.

Bloody Diller. IAC's Ask.com has a new CEO, Jim Safka, who was swiftly installed in the place of Jim Lanzone. Lanzone was fired by Barry Diller, according to sources. And so yet another talented entrepreneurial type makes way for a Diller yes-man. The cover story is that Lanzone left to accept a position as entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures — a cozy, face-saving sort of holding tank for CEOs in between jobs.

While Microsoft has yet to come up with a search engine that wows consumers, it has successfully wooed Wall Street with its push into online advertising. Alas for Microsoft, it's losing a key dealmaker. Bruce Jaffe, a top corporate-development executive who helped engineer Microsoft's $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive and its $240 million investment in Facebook, is leaving the company. He's been interviewing around the Valley, but last we heard, he's decided to form his own startup. Anyone have more details on what he's up to?

Starbucks has fired Jim Donald as CEO, replacing him with Howard Schultz, the coffee chain's chairman. Changes in the works: Closing struggling stores, slowing store openings, and improving the "store experience." Translation: Dealing with the reality of competing with McDonald's as yet another fast-food chain. [WSJ]

Left in the wake of Barry Diller's acquisitive empire: a flotsam of discarded executives. Doug Lebda, IAC's president and COO since 2003, now joins them. According to an internal memo obtained by Valleywag, Lebda has been appointed CEO of IAC's mortgage and finance businesses, which are soon to be spun off. This can hardly be welcome news to Lebda, who's essentially returning to LendingTree, a business he founded in 1996 and sold to Diller in 2003. Here's the memo.