Finally, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is going public with his post-100-day plan: deny, deny, deny. Amidst a tour of Europe to explain his new vision for Yahoo, Yang told the Telegraph that it would be simply incorrect to talk about what went wrong at Yahoo under now-departed CEO Terry Semel's reign.

The House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee voted Tuesday to pass a law that would fine U.S. companies $2 million if they're caught helping foreign governments spy on their citizens. That means you, Google, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith told Forbes. "Google has joined hook, line and sinker with the propaganda regime of Beijing," Smith said. Smith is also the guy dragging Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan back to Congress over the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese newspaper reporter and editor, who was arrested in his home after anonymously blowing the whistle on a government crackdown on media and democracy. Look, guys, we told you that calling Smith's website a "dirty linkwhore" was a bad idea. (Photo by phauly)

Jerry Yang, the founder and current CEO of Yahoo, spoke about the obstacles facing his company during a "fireside chat" at a conference held by Right Media Exchange, an online-ad startup Yahoo recently acquired. Yang concedes the many difficulties facing the Internet company, but with antiseptic corporatespeak that puts a chill on what should have been an intimate and revealing "chat." Fortunately, his comments are so transparent, it's easy to see their true meaning. Choice quotes with honest translations after the jump.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's second hundred days could, conceivably, be worse than the first. He and general counsel Michael Callahan are going to Congress to answer to accusations that Callahan lied under oath about Yahoo's role in Chinese censorship. Sounds like even more fun than getting hammered by Wall Street analysts in a conference call, right? Here's why Yahoo's top brass is set to feel new pain over this old case.

Yahoo exceeded expectations with its third-quarter results yesterday. Panama, Yahoo's new search-ad system, is at long last paying off, if not in the grand ways Yahoo execs promised. And, after dipping 4.7 percent in yesterday's trading, Yahoo shares jumped 9 percent after hours. Why? In short, Yahoo investors discounted the quarter as old news, and focused on management's guidance for the future. They're ready to move on, in other words, and grant CEO Jerry Yang and president Sue Decker the "redo" they asked for. If only the actual company were ready to move on, too. But with its new plans, it appears to be repeating old mistakes.

MarketWatch, ahead of Yahoo's third-quarter earnings, said the company was looking to "start fresh." In other words, kindly ignore the drop in net income, the rise in expenses, the continued problems in display ads the company just reported — that's all in the past. How many fresh starts does a company need — or deserve — before current management is held responsible? One thing I notice in recent rah-rah stories planted by Yahoo PR: Everyone talks about how confident employees are in Jerry Yang. The unspoken message: No one trusts Yahoo president Sue Decker. And why should they, after she pushed out, in short succession, COO Dan Rosensweig, CEO Terry Semel, and popular U.S. display-sales chief Wenda Harris Millard?

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was spotted leaving Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters, according to Fake Steve Jobs. FSJ's blog, written by Forbes editor Dan Lyons is highly satirical, but from what we hear, a meeting between Yang and Zuckerberg right now makes all the sense in the world. [The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs]

As part of Jerry Yang's promised 100-day turnaround of the company, Yahoo recruited some of its best and brightest, in small teams of 4 to 6 people, to cook up bold new tactics to compete with Facebook, Google, and the rest. Yahoo executive Ash Patel oversaw the initiative, which was disruptive to the company's day-to-day work, says a tipster brought into one of the secret skunkworks. Those drafted poured weeks into the effort, he says, with the hope that their ideas might actually get built. No such luck. Yang reviewed the projects — and then promptly sent them into Yahoo's managerial swamps for execution. Which, of course, means nothing's getting done, as usual. What will change that, I wonder?

So unfair: Venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson is handily winning a charity contest whose prize is a lunch with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang. We'd think Wilson, who sold Del.icio.us to Yahoo, could ring up Yang and have lunch anytime he likes. More deserving: The brash, grating Kara Swisher of AllThingsD, who would likely make Yang suffer by filming the entire meal. [AllThingsD]

Is Yahoo due for a breakup? Of course not. A recent report by Sanford Bernstein, a Wall Street research firm, has sent the stock sailing, but in practice, it's a silly idea. How one would actually separate the display-advertising business (worth $25 billion!) from the search business ($15.6 billion) seems questionable, and selling off Yahoo's stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba would mean shutting the company out of Asia's largest markets. Besides, we think Bernstein's analysis undervalues some of Yahoo's assets.

It really doesn't matter that Yahoo's "interim" CEO Jerry Yang doesn't have a 100-day plan. Even if he had a plan to execute, he can't attract the engineers to build it. Why? Google simply pays more, and engineers follow the money. According to MyDanwei, a salary-tracking site, the average Google software engineer makes $107,275 a year. Yahoo engineers take in $92,833 — almost 15 percent less. Wresting market share out from Google's grip faces any number of obstacles, but at some level it comes down to technology and the people that build it. Yahoo simply can't compete. That is, if MyDanwei can be trusted. After all, they still list Terry Semel as Yahoo's CEO. (Average salary calculated using listings under the title "Software Engineer" posted in 2007. An earlier math error in Google's pay has been updated.)

When all else fails, bring in a motivational speaker. For last Friday's management meeting, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker went all out, bringing in Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Glossed over in Kara Swisher's otherwise excellent report was the question: Why would Jobs rally the troops at Yahoo? Swisher treats it as an obvious choice, likening Jobs to Oprah Winfrey. But I think there's more to it than that.

Yahoo has gotten itself into trouble with Sunnyvale and an artist whom the company hired to satisfy a public-art requirement of new corporate property in the Silicon Valley city. It turns out that the grass-cum-wire landscape became more overgrown than intended, so Yahoo took a weed whacker to the whole thing. The butchery "devastated" the artist. Maybe she can get a motivational speech from Jerry Yang as a pick-me-up? [WSJ]

After Terry Semel abruptly resigned as Yahoo's CEO, founder Jerry Yang promised precipitous action — the hackneyed "100-day plan." But now, we hear that his new strategy is anything but swift in execution. Codenamed "Project Apex," the solution to Yahoo's woes centers around building a better version of Google's AdSense. AdSense, of course, is the service that places ads on third-party websites, matching the ads to their content. Yahoo already has a similar service called Yahoo Publisher Network, but it's "a clusterfuck," according to one Yahoo insider. The only problem? Yahoo's tech team thinks they can finish it in three years. Three years! (What's the average tenure of a Yahoo executive today? Will anyone be around to see this through?)

Over at Forbes.com they're pointing out that since September 10, Yahoo's stock price is up 15 percent, while Google's has only risen about half that much over the same period. Of course, the difference here is that Yahoo still hasn't returned to its 52-week high of $33.61, and Google hit an all-time high of $571.46 only two days ago. And yes, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, Google still has twice as much search market share as Yahoo. But still, something must be right in The House of Jerry Yang to get investors buying. Forbes points to new partnership deals, a bargain-priced stock, and rumors that somebody — Microsoft? — will buy the company soon enough. That would explain it. But perhaps there's more to the stock rise than that.

Remember Jerry Yang's 100 Day Plan? The one that promised a new game plan with "no sacred cows?" We're almost to the halfway mark (Day 56, counting weekends, but isn't that what fast-track executives do?) and so far, there's precious little going on. Check out Kevin Delaney's WSJ piece today, which points to barn-burners like adding social networking features to its email and hiring Stone Yamashita partners to help them refocus (disclosure: I have a brilliant relative who works there). Delaney quotes Glen Kacher of Integral Capital partners, who dumped his Yahoo! holdings after meeting with top executives there in August, saying we "decided that the management isn't considering the kind of transformational changes that would be required to improve their position in the market." Ouch.

Victory is sweet. Redoing the org chart so suit your whims? Even sweeter. While Yahoo president Sue Decker may not have the CEO title yet, thanks to a sweeping reorganization, she has practically all the power. Kara Swisher at AllThingsD got a copy of Decker's memo to the staff. As we reported earlier, Hilary Schneider is running all of sales — in fact, anything that even vaguely looks like sales — and ad-sales chief Gregory Coleman is out. What's more fun, though, than that confirmation, is trying to figure out what functions don't report to Decker now. As best we can tell, the outliers, left to cofounders Jerry Yang and David Filo, include legal, HR, finance, and tech. The full memo, after the jump.

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, tired of playing ambush journalist with her handheld videocamera, tries her hand at pretending to be Dan Lyons, the fabulous Forbes fabulist behind "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." Sort of. Except here, she's Fake Jerry Yang, a faux version of Yahoo's CEO, not Fake Steve Jobs The best bit comes when Swisher imagines Yang's reaction to Brad Garlinghouse, the controversial Yahoo executive who called for major changes in what's now called "The Peanut Butter Memo."

Yahoo has turned over its corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal, to Chad Johnson, the NFL superstar and wide receiver. Why the long bomb to spice up the usual corporate blather? Why, it's a promotion to advertise a video contest promoting Yahoo Sports and Chad Johnson himself. We hope Jerry Yang, the mild-mannered CEO of the beleaguered Web property, is reading. He could learn a thing or two from the blustery sports personality known as Ocho Cinco: If you can't actually lead, at least sound like you do.

Alibaba.com, the Chinese Web portal in which Yahoo owns a 40 percent stake, is reportedly prepping for an IPO. And the smell of money draws activists in the same way blood in the water draws sharks. In a revelation ill-timed for Yahoo, which is hoping to realize more value from its stake in Alibaba, a critic accuses Alibaba of being "the New York Stock Exchange of shark fins," according to a story in BusinessWeek. One small problem for Yahoo's shark-fin sharpies, however: the practice, while distasteful to many, is not illegal in China, where Alibaba's based. Still, new Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who played a key role in negotiating Yahoo's investment in Alibaba, is surely eager to see an Alibaba IPO go off without a hitch. That alone may prompt him to pressure Alibaba to cave into activists' demands and stop the trade.