David Hirsch, one of Google's earliest salespeople, is leaving the company after eight years to advise startups, Silicon Alley Insider reports. His track record is mixed: He helped launch Google's attempts to broker print ads, an effort which has met with little success. But having joined the company early enough that he was mostly vested at the time of its IPO, he's surely got a big enough bankroll to get startup founders interested. Our favorite tidbit? Hirsch previously worked at Snowball.com. Snowball, now part of News Corp., bought that domain name from a gay porn site.

Julia Allison, the ex-girlfriend of Jakob Lodwick, agreed to chat with her sadmirers on sister site Gawker. In the comments, she revealed the real reason why the attention-seeker was fired from his own company Vimeo:

Steve Souders, the guy who wrote the book on making websites faster, will leave Yahoo next week for Google. He probably just wanted a new title. How long can you take yourself seriously when you hand out business cards that read "Chief Performance Yahoo"? Either that or Souders, who had been with the company since 2000, realizes that making Yahoo's websites run faster is like improving the efficiency of the Titanic's steam engines.

Yahoo career-advice columnist Penelope Trunk took on a familiar topic today: "How to deal with getting fired (from Yahoo.)" Her boss, she said, told her the column didn't pull in a high enough CPM — the rate advertisers pay. Stock talk draws pricier ads than job advice. So far, all business. But then came the gratuitous insult: When Trunk asked if there were any other opportunities at Yahoo for her, the Yahoos recommended she try Lifestyles, a Yahoo division for food, horoscopes, and the like.

AOL finished up its $340 million Quigo acquisition yesterday. To celebrate, Quigo CEO Mike Yavonditte will head for the door. He'll spend the next six months pretending to work as an adviser to Curt Viebranz, president of AOL's Platform A advertising division.

Matthew Szulik is out as Red Hat's CEO. CNET reports that the widely admired Szulik is stepping down because of his wife's health problems. But don't worry, open source cultists, the man replacing Szulik, Jim Whitehurst, has years of experience ... in the airline industry. As Delta Airlines' former COO, Whitehurst carefully guided the airline back from bankruptcy. Which is just like running a company with 28 percent revenue growth.

Once upon a time, Charlie Giancarlo was Cisco's crown prince, the heir certain to CEO John Chambers. As chief development officer, he oversaw a vast swathe of future products. But his power was recently cut back, with R&D responsibilities handed over to a council of executives. Now Giancarlo has resigned, and he's joining Silver Lake Partners, the tech-buyout fund. Not for long, though, we'd bet. Private-equity funds like Silver Lake and Elevation Partners are proving convenient places to park CEOs-in-waiting. Think of Giancarlo's career move as a temporary exile as he searches for a new kingdom.

First, former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel banned Rachel Glaser from the corporate jet. Now the annoyingly loud talker is out of the corporation. The senior vice president will leave the company in 2008, reports Kara Swisher, who's an expert on loudness. On her way out the door, Glaser could hold it open for VP of media engineering Bharath Kadaba, also soon to depart. A source told Swisher that Yahoo is just trying to cull its executive herd. Not a bad idea, considering that as recently as September, that pack included 300 vice presidents and several dozen senior VPs. But there's likely more to Glaser's departure, at least, than simple economics.

We'd heard rumors Jobster was close to replacing Jason Goldberg as its CEO, and the Seattle P-I now confirms them. Jeff Seely, another Seattle entrepreneur who just sold online stock-buying site ShareBuilder for $220 million to ING Direct, will take over the online job board on January 7. His first order of business: Raising more money, I suspect.

As we previously reported, Neil Budde, the founding editor of WSJ.com recruited to run Yahoo News three years ago, plans to leave the company. This from PaidContent, the same source which had earlier scoffed at the rumor. Reportedly, new Yahoo media chief Scott Moore never made room for Budde in his new organizational chart. What, Scott Moore pushing out a highly respected underling? Never heard that one before.

Looks like all those problems in the big empty known as Second Life — the virtual world's confounding user interface, poor graphics, and high attrition rate — aren't going to get fixed anytime soon. Word comes via tipster that Linden Lab chief technology officer Cory Ondrejka, the dude who ostensibly runs the virtual world's tech, has left over "differences in opinion." The official line from founder and CEO Philip Rosedale states that Ondrejka is leaving at the end of this year "in order to pursue new professional challenges." As Rosedale poetically put it, their paths lie in different directions. Ah, the road not taken — like a path to a meaningful business. Anyone have more deets?

Neil Budde, the founding editor of WSJ.com recruited to run Yahoo News three years ago, plans to leave the company, a source tells us. The rumor comes as Scott Moore ascends to a new role, adding Yahoo's entertainment sites to his current news and finance gig. Sources tell us Moore, while he has his hands full, is at least aware of Budde's bad news. Not that it comes at a good time. Says one tipster: "To [Moore's] credit he's a very good news guy, but he also had Neil Budde working for him." Can anyone confirm what Budde's up to next — and whom Moore might find to replace him?

Jakob Lodwick, no longer Barry Diller's secret weapon, is out at Vimeo, the IAC-controlled online-video site he founded. So what's next for the notorious fame-seeker?

If there's one lesson to be drawn from the CNET fiasco known as Gerstmangate, it's that honesty isn't always the best policy. Jeff Gerstmann's controversial departure from CNET's GameSpot, allegedly for his critical take on an advertiser's product, overshadowed another videogame industry exit. Game developer Harvey Smith, known for his role in the critically acclaimed Eidos Interactive franchise Deus Ex, has left Midway after giving what one executive referred to as his "public resignation" at the Montreal International Games Summit. Smith referred to his latest project, Blacksite: Area 51, as "fucked up" when explaining its poor reception. He said he wasn't excited about Area 51 and "with a year to go, the game was disastrously off rails." Far too honest an assessment for an industry which makes its living off fantasies.

Former Vimeo CEO Jakob Lodwick wasn't fired for showing the world Julia Allison's breasts, smoking too much pot, or whoring himself on a bilious New York gossip blog. Not really. The real reason we think Lodwick got fired? Vimeo's position on ComScore's top 10 U.S. online video properties. Or, rather, its nonposition. Vimeo, as apologist and fanboy Nick Douglas puts it, was a "beautiful but flat-lining site." Remember, goofballs Steve Chen and Chad Hurley founded YouTube after Vimeo. The Google-owned site reached nearly 50 million people in October 2007. Vimeo is almost up to 245,000. That's not good enough for IAC and Barry Diller. Vimeo may be a superior product, but its absence from this chart indicates looks aren't everything.

We now hear that Jakob Lodwick, the fame-seeking oddball who started Vimeo, didn't quit the IAC-controlled video site — he was fired. And probably not for his views on Web development, either. Anyone know more?

We never know for sure if the commentards are who they claim to be. But one prodigious poster with the new account "gamespot" is telling what reads like a credible insider story — it's written in editor-speak — of what happened to ex-CNET GameSpot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann, supposedly fired for low-scoring an advertiser's new game. "Gamespot"'s posts are in need of a 100-word-versioning, but it's Friday so forgettabout it here's the whole thing pasted in. I've bolded the newsy parts.

"As of an hour ago, I am no longer affiliated with IAC/InterActiveCorp/Connected Ventures/Vimeo. No hard feelings!" writes Jakob Lodwick on his blog. A shame. Lodwick's work at the Barry Diller-controlled online-video venture was our only excuse for paying attention to him and his can't-stop-watching trainwreck of a relationship with notorious nobody Julia Allison. Aside from your work at Diller's answer to YouTube, what will take the guilty out of our pleasure now, Jakob? Update: Back to guilty-pleasure status with Lodwick. The latest rumor is that he was fired.

Jeff Gerstmann, the former CNET GameSpot reviewer whom the rumor mill claims was fired by CNET for angering an advertiser with a negative writeup about one of their games, responded to my Facebook poke. Besides being a journalistic first for me, Jeff's message made me laugh.