In an entirely punctuated memo posted to Yahoo's corporate blog and the SEC, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang — or his ghostwriters — declared that yesterday's agreement to give corporate raider Carl Icahn three board seats and avert a proxy fight allows Yahoo "to get back to the business at hand." But while Yahoo will soon enough be able to focus on doing what it does best — losing market share to Google and talent to startups — Yang and the board still have one more task at hand: filling out its expanded board with Icahn-approved nominees. Bet that one of the names will be fired AOL chairman and CEO Jon Miller. Though not included on Icahn's original slate of alternative directors, Yang mentioned Miller by name in his memo as a potential new board member.

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher spends an epic 1,367 words on Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's complete personality makeover — and her pivotal role therein. The key words:

With the Icahn business settled, Jerry Yang can move on to more important questions: For example, is he going to the Beijing Olympics? A week ago, he hadn't quite made up his mind.The dithering was utterly characteristic for the perennially indecisive Yahoo cofounder. But you'd think he could commit to a no-brainer like attending the Games. Yang is a Taiwanese native, and no fan of the Communist regime — China's jailing of a blogger, aided by Yahoo China's handover of email records, led to a humiliating session where he was called to the carpet in front of Congress. But the Beijing Olympics is a seminal event in the rise of Asia, where Yahoo has significant investments — one of the few areas where it has an edge on Google.

There will be no proxy fight at Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting this August 1. Today, Yahoo and corporate raider Carl Icahn agreed to end the fight by awarding Icahn three seats on an expanded, 11-member board. Icahn, who owns 5 percent of Yahoo, told the Wall Street Journal he still wants Yahoo to sell — either the whole company or just its search business at the right price — but that "I share the view that Yahoo's valuable collection of assets positions it well to continue expanding its online leadership and enhancing returns to stockholders."

If Jerry Yang records a video for all the Yahoos and the best feel we get for it is a clever comment from Wabewalker — "You would think that they could shell out a few hundred bucks for a Teleprompter rather than having Jerry (excuse me, jerry) bob his head like a drinking bird" — well, then clearly Valleywag's Yahoo tipsters aren't doing their part. You know what to do, people — capture the video and send it in.

Legg Mason portfolio manager saved Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's job this morning, and far be it from the always-exclamatory Yang to hide his relief. Yang recorded a companywide video address, and reading a transcript filed with the SEC, we can't help but wonder if Yahoo's lawyers missed a few exclamation marks. "Hi guys," the transcript begins — but we're betting it sounded more like "Hi guys!!!!11!!!!"

Legg Mason portfolio manager Bill Miller controls 4.4 percent of all Yahoo shares and he's formally declared his plans to vote them for CEO Jerry Yang and the current Yahoo board. In a statement, Legg Mason says it doesn't buy corporate raider Carl Icahn's claim that Microsoft would only offer to buy the company again if it could negotiate with a new board.

In a memo filed with the SEC, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock made what we can only hope will be their final case to Yahoo shareholders as to why they should vote against Carl Icahn's alternative board at the company's August 1 annual meeting. (While Yang also signed the memo, you can tell Bostock's actually the one who wrote it, because it uses capital letters.) Their key points:

An AOL team of negotiators is in Seattle right now, trying to sell the business to Microsoft for a price somewhere between $10 billion and $15 billion. An AOL source told Silicon Alley Insider the probability that a deal gets done on this trip is "low/medium." Perhaps in an effort to speed the proceedings and ignite a bidding war, another source told Reuters that AOL-Yahoo merger negotiations — on since April — "have taken on new urgency." If such a bidding war goes down, bet that AOL goes to Microsoft, which has more cash than Yahoo. More importantly, CEO Steve Ballmer will refuse to get left at the altar by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang again.

Will either Jerry Yang or Steve Ballmer still be in their CEO chairs this time next year? Both have thoroughly embarrassed themselves in their handling of Microsoft's on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again acquisition talks with Yahoo. The tide of public opinion, at long last, may be turning Yang's way. In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times, he has at last articulated a reason for being CEO: Without him, he argues, Yahoo would be lost.

Do Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock disagree on whether Yahoo should ever sell its search business to Microsoft? Citing several sources, BoomTown's Kara Swisher says she knows what Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang wants, period:

Two internal memos from Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang dropped yesterday: one for all the Yahoos and one for all the Yahoo's bosses. Neither are disgraced with one single Microsoft-esque capital letter nor any of the blind optimism that plagued Yang and Yahoo president Sue Decker's earlier memos. In one of yesterday's, Yang writes: "proposals and attacks by microsoft and carl icahn leading up to our meeting are likely to get even more contentious. i know this could is distracting at the very least." Now, one might argue Yang's grammatical miscue in the second sentence stems from a physical weariness only too obvious in recent photographs of the CEO. But given Yang's taste for poetical punctuation, we like to think the "this could is distracting" refrain is actually Yang's attempt to offer the Yahoos a mimetic clue — a warning, even — of the days of confusion and anarchy shortly ahead. Decide for yourself, though. Both of Yang's memos are below.

In a letter to Yahoo shareholders, corporate raider Carl Icahn writes that he's never seen a company "distort, omit and twist" facts quite the way Yahoo did in a statement the company released Saturday night. Yahoo said it had rejected Microsoft's latest offer to buy Yahoo's search business. In the statement, Yahoo said Microsoft made an ultimatum and gave Yahoo only 24 hours to accept or reject the deal. Naturally, Microsoft agrees with Icahn's assement. In a release titled "Microsoft Sets the Record Straight," Microsoft says that it only proposed a new search deal after Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock called Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and asked for one. Microsoft says it worked a proposal up by late Friday and sent it, asking Yahoo to confirm in 24 hours whether or not the proposal was "sufficient to form the basis for the parties to engage in negotiations over the weekend on a letter of intent and more detailed term sheets." "This discussion," reads Microsoft's statement, "has been mischaracterized as a take it or leave it ultimatum, rather than a timetable in order to move forward to intensive negotiations." Yeah, we're lost, too. Microsoft's full statement, below.

Reason No. 8347 why we're glad we're not Jerry Yang: We like weekends away from work. Yang never gets them anymore. On Saturday night, Yahoo released a statement letting the world know it rejected yet another Microsoft offer to acquire Yahoo's search business. Kara Swisher reported the terms of that deal today. $2.3 billion a year for outsourcing search — why didn't Microsoft offer that in the first place, without corporate raider Carl Icahn holding a gun to Yang's head? That seems easier. The bullet points, below:

What's Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang thinking in these photos from Reuters? Carl Icahn has no plan B. Microsoft is both confusing and sort of mean. Mean! The Google guys sitting across the table are trying to relate, but can't. They're talking about Richard Branson's beach house again. Don't know they know I wanted to be invited? Life is hard. It's Jerry's Fucking List, people!

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who says shareholders shouldn't give corporate raider Carl Icahn control of the company because he has no plan other than to sell to Microsoft, got a boost from an unexpected supporter: News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch told reporters at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley retreat that "in six months, (Microsoft) will walk away." The crusty mogul added: "There won't be a deal. There's bad personal feelings."

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is not resigning today, a Yahoo source told Silicon Alley Insider, debunking a rumor that's been flying around Wall Street — given stock traders' software predilections, probably via Yahoo Messenger. Just yesterday, Yang told the Wall Street Journal: "I think that I can bring stability back to Yahoo, and I want to get on with building the company." Why the rumor? Everyone knows Yahoo stock would go up if Yang resigns, so it's likely someone who wanted to make money selling Yahoo shares. What whispers do reveal: Investors really, really want Yang to resign, and are desperately ready to believe it. Given the number of Yahoo employees we know who'd like to dispose of their options, we wouldn't be shocked if this one started in Sunnyvale.

There's desperate — and then there's "paying $15 billion for second-place has-been social network MySpace" desperate. Not even Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, under pressure from a mixed-up Microsoft, angry shareholders, and crazy-old-coot corporate raider Carl Icahn to do some kind of deal, is that desperate. Yang is taking so much heat for blowing merger negotiations with Microsoft, botching the company's reorg, and losing top talent that he's probably going to lose his job come August 1, when the company holds an annual shareholder meeting. But despite all that, a source close to the company told Reuters that Yang refused a bailout deal with News Corp. that would have combined Yahoo with MySpace because "News Corp. sought a value of as much as $15 billion for those assets." At long last, we're happy to credit Yang for a smart move!

The AOL-Yahoo deal Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang spent the Fourth of July weekend trying to cobble together won't happen. At least, not in time for Yang to present it on August 1 to Yahoo shareholders as an alternative to Carl Icahn's Microsoft-Yahoo promises. The deal would have combined Time Warner's online property AOL with Yahoo and given Time Warner 10 percent of the new company. But Yang's problem is once again the price he wants for Yahoo. Specifically, Yang believes Yahoo's recent search deal with Google boosts the company's revenues so much, it makes it worth more than Time Warner has so far said its willing to pay. Ah, the delicious irony, a Google deal that was supposed to keep Microsoft away ends up driving Yahoo right into its arms.

Wait a minute: Now Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo again, provided the current board gets dumped? We could have sworn we heard Microsoft executives from Steve Ballmer on down talking about how the company had moved on. Right. If this is moving on, then Julia Allison is over Kevin Rose. I'm starting to believe Jerry Yang's version of the deal.