Some Yahoo shareholders are mad, some are sad and some have a remarkable handle on the English language.

Despite the odds going into today’s annual meeting, Yahoo’s board and CEO Jerry Yang won a huge endorsement from shareholders. Yang alone won more than 85 percent of votes cast despite calls by some for his ouster.

But that didn’t dampen the festivities at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. Here are a few choice quotes from the meeting, where investors were invited to lament over failed deal talks with Microsoft, rich compensation for executives and Yahoo’s stance on Internet censorship.

“I’d like to see timesheets posted on the Internet for the work of the directors as well as the executives of the company,” said Dirk Neyhart, a retired stockbroker from Berkeley, California, who said he holds less than 1,000 shares of Yahoo.

“I would be more than happy to submit timesheets for the work that I have done in the last 6 months. It’s been about 26 hours in the course of a 24-hour day,” said Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock.

“There was never a compelling offer put on the table. That never occurred in this process,” Bostock said on Microsoft.

“Carl is a smart guy. He is a good guy despite some of the things that are written about him,” Bostock said on billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn.

“I think you have overpaid in terms of executive compensation, overplayed your hand with Microsoft and overstayed your welcome on the board,” said Eric Jackson, holder of 250 Yahoo shares and head of a coalition of investors with 3.2 million shares.

“I think the board’s decision was a correct one (on Microsoft). As an investor, I was kind of sweating along with them as they went through their deliberations …  I think Microsoft is the wrong corporation (for Yahoo),” said Richard Lammerding, 71, of Cloverdale, California, who with his wife, says he owns 1,200 shares.

Lammerding also labeled Microsoft an “over-the-hill, green-tentacled octopus from Redmond. My support and my wife’s support is with this board and this management team.”

(Photo of Yahoo investor Henry Lee leaving annual shareholder meeting: Reuters)

If for some reason you assumed that Yahoo’s deal with Carl Icahn would quiet the chatter about a deal, you were mistaken. The conference call to discuss quarterly earnings made that clear.

Past distractions, future possibilities, it was all there for listeners. The only problem is that for all the chatter on the call about deals, there was no real insight offered about what Yahoo might do.

Here’s a look at what Yahoo’s executives said about M&A during the call:

• Frankly, I think Yahoo’s ability to perform is especially impressive in light of the extraordinary events surrounding the company this year. It has been nearly six months since Microsoft made an unsolicited proposal for Yahoo and everyone here, the board, management and over 14 thousand Yahoo’s around the world have continued to work for one central goal, maximizing value for our shareholders.
• Significantly, we have also actively explored a number of alternatives to maximize value for the company, and we remain open to value creating transactions that provide real tangible value.
• I don’t want to speculate on any potential transactions or spin-outs that might have been mentioned in the press. I will say that we have examined various alternatives for Asia and will continue to do that.
• We have looked at just the about every alternative you could imagine as far as looking at how do we best position the company to go forward either through transactions and/or financial options. At this point, we clearly are still looking at what the best ways for us to continue to drive shareholder value. We don’t have anything specific that we will talk about but clearly, we view that we continue to have very strong balance sheets and we have ability to generate cash, so we’re going to take that in act as we think about what’s the best way to move forward.

OK, we get it. Yahoo wants to maximize shareholder value … whatever that means.

There was much written in the sports pages (and in some cases the business pages) about Tiger Woods’ decision to miss the rest of the golf season and undergo reconstructive knee surgery.  

His absence is a big deal for sports fans – not to mention marketers and TV networks. After all, he is the biggest American sports machine since Michael Jordan.   

 ”Much like Michael Jordan did (Woods) has the power of drawing in the more casual viewer or participant to the sport,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Thomas Shaw told Reuters. “He has the ability of driving some participation. It gets people excited to get out and dust off the clubs and play some.”

This hasn’t been lost on advertisers. Woods ranked second on Forbes’ Celebrity 100 list, bringing in $115 million in 2007. He promotes General Motors’ Buick line of cars, Nike, Gillette and Accenture. He also began his first licensing venture this year with Gatorade Tiger, which media outlets reported as being worth at least $100 million.

Of course, nobody is about to abandon Tiger just because he’s taking the season off. But his layoff could alter some near term plans. General Motors is one company, for instance, that will have to change course, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Buick is being forced to drop one of its advertising efforts, which has been hyping a Buick promotion and contest. TV ads, print ads and a slew of Internet ads have been highlighting a “Tee-Off with Tiger” promotion that gives entrants a chance to win the opportunity to have Mr. Woods caddie for them while playing a round of golf in October.

The TV networks will also feel some pain from Tiger’s injury. He’s carried the sport with viewers for the past decade. As the New York Times put it:

Network executives and sponsors were not visibly panicking Wednesday that Tiger Woods would be gone from golf for the rest of the year as he recovered from reconstructive knee surgery. But their disappointment was palpable.

As the newspaper points out, the numbers make clear that Tiger has a bigtime impact on ratings. It says that in 88 tournaments over the last five years, Woods finished in the top five. During those, final round TV ratings hit an average of 4.4. In those events in which he did not finish in the top five, ratings averaged just 3.4 percent.

Keep an eye on:

• French financier Vincent Bollore said on Thursday that figures for his advertising company Havas were very good so far this year and added that Havas had not been impacted by the global credit crunch (Reuters)
• Google and Yahoo face intense U.S. Justice Department scrutiny of their deal to share some advertising revenue, and the heat will likely increase under a new administration (Reuters)
• Mario Puzo’s estate filed a $1-million lawsuit against Paramount Pictures for allegedly cheating “The Godfather” author’s heirs out of proceeds from a Corleone-inspired video game (LA Times)
• Billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s new blog, The Icahn Report, would go live Thursday afternoon (USA Today)

(Photo: Reuters)

So Microsoft is now proposing a new deal: This one could be some sort of partnership or joint venture for search-related advertising to take on Google Inc, the New York Times reports.

Just one problem. Carl Icahn doesn’t appear to be hot on the idea. Reuters, citing a person familiar his with the financier’s thinking, reports that this latest talk about an partial Microsoft-Yahoo alliance could prompt the billionaire investor to press Yahoo to further pursue a deal with Google.

“Microsoft is trying to get the milk without buying the cow, and if you look at Icahn’s history, he has never been used that way,” said this person. “He does not want to see Yahoo pushed into some joint venture with Microsoft and is not going to be used to push Yahoo into it.”

Icahn launched a proxy campaign last week to replace Yahoo’s board, saying it acted irrationally in refusing Microsoft’s $47.5 billion bid.

Icahn’s presence further complicates the Yahoo situation. He’s accumulated 59 million shares and options in Yahoo and has the support of Paulson & Co, a $30 billion hedge fund that has amassed a 3.4 percent stake in Yahoo, and other investors upset by the board’s handling of negotiations with Microsoft.

That gives Icahn a lot of pull in Yahoo’s future, whether that’s alone, with Microsoft, with Google, with whomever — yet a source tells Reuters that Microsoft hasn’t held discussions with him.

Maybe Microsoft and Yahoo want to pick up the phone and give Icahn a ring.

Keep an eye on:

• Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is stressing his company’s independence after a report that the social networking site might be sold to software giant Microsoft, which is hunting for ways to beef up its Internet business (Reuters)
• Fox Networks is launching an international online ad network focused on financial news and advice, with help from the Wall Street Journal Digital Network (Reuters)
• Leading U.S. cable television chiefs say the industry has been “recession-resistant” in spite of fears that it would be tripped up by the housing market downturn and slowing U.S. economy (Reuters)

Remember those scary movie close-ups of a fly caught in a spider’s web, or some tourist who steps into quicksand, or another variation of the same? How with each twist and turn to get free, the captive enmeshes themselves deeper into the trap? 

We’re starting to get that uncomfortable feeling about Yahoo as it dodges the embrace of Microsoft while trying to orchestrate a partnership with Google that won’t encroach on its own business. The New York Post says today that a deal with Google, already at the “any minute now” stage for almost a month, could be sealed next week.
    
Some of the moves could provide a boost down the line, like a new ad-trading partnership with WPP Group, the world’s second largest advertising services company. 
    
[N.B. WPP chief Martin Sorrell said last week it was a shame Yahoo and Microsoft couldn’t work it out, since their break-up just leaves Google the biggest kid in the playground]
    
But Yahoo does not have that much more time to prove it can go it alone. Yesterday, Yahoo stood up to billionaire Carl Icahn, who officially launched his proxy fight to deliver the company back to Microsoft. That means there must be some resolution by the time Yahoo’s shareholders meet on July 3. (Reuters)

Keep an eye on:    
* “Gossip Girl” can’t save ratings for the CW network. (WSJ)
    
* Fox embraces Less Is More principle, cutting ad time for two new shows. (Hollywood Reporter via Reuters)

* Microsoft to save cheap laptop program for the world’s poorest schoolchildren. (WSJ)

(Photo: Reuters)

Some might detect the faintest note of irony in the fact that Carl Icahn has nominated Mark Cuban to be one of Yahoo’s directors as part of his proxy fight against the company. It was Cuban, after all, who sold the now defunct Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5 billion+ at the peak of the dot com boom.

Cuban, now known best as the enthusiastic owner of the Dallas Mavericks pro basketball team, seems to be relishing the opportunity to take on Yahoo’s rival Google. He wrote on his blog Wednesday:

“Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google?”

Playing the air flute sure comes close.

Picture: Amazon.com