Do we still have to pity Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang? Or is it, at long last, acceptable to simply hold him in contempt? With Microsoft backing corporate raider Carl Icahn's replacement board of directors, and major investor Gordon Crawford also lining up to support Icahn, Yang's time at the company is coming to an end, and he seems to know it. Yet he's trying to stay on anyway. Like any leader facing certain failure, Yang has begun to indulge in pure make-believe. Here's a short list of Yang's Yahoo fantasies.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang spent the holiday weekend with his company's Goldman Sachs advisers, devising a plan to present shareholders during the company's annual meeting on August 1. The goal: Craft an alternative to a company breakup or buyout at the hands of Microsoft, which would likely come at the cost of the entire Yahoo board's jobs, including Yang's. To escape such a fate, Yang and his bankers zeroed in on Time Warner, hoping to acquire its online property AOL in exchange for $10 billion worth of Yahoo stock. It's an old plan, brought up again last week after first surfacing in April.

When Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang became CEO last year, BusinessWeek found a senior executive to anonymously sing his praises. "I was so wrong," that source now tells the magazine. "This thing can be saved, but not by the current management team." That executive is now gone from the company — our money is on BusinessWeek's source being the ever-chatty Brad Garlinghouse. Plenty of Yahoos are trying to join him. One tech recruiter said he gets several Yahoo resumes a day. Even if Yahoo turned itself around, the appearance that Yahoo is a sinking ship likely already outweighs reality, said Stanford behavioralist Roderick Kramer: "Once there is even a perception of an exodus, the dynamic becomes insidious and takes on a life of its own." (Photo by Misserion)

Why is Jerry Yang clinging so desperately to Yahoo's search business, when Microsoft has made no secret of its willingness to buy it for billions of dollars? Sheer stubbornness, it seems. Heather Hopkins, an analyst at traffic-trends researcher Hitwise, has run the numbers, and found that Yahoo Search, while a decent standalone business, doesn't contribute much to the rest of Yahoo. Google accounts for far more traffic to almost all of Yahoo's properties. Ah, but perhaps that's where Yang's stubbornness comes from.

In a presentation filed with SEC earlier this week, Yahoo's board tried to convince Yahoo shareholders that "the record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition." But Yahoo shareholders don't buy it. You shouldn't either. Why? Remember the five weeks between when Microsoft made is offer public on February 1 and March 10, when Yahoo execs finally agreed to meet. One major shareholder tells us:

The last time Yahoo shares traded before Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced an offer to buy Yahoo, they cost $19.18. Today, for the first time since that offer, Yahoo shares sank below $20 to a low of $19.59. Even with the credit markets a complete mess, if Yahoo shares drop much further, we could soon wake up to news that some private equity firm tech's thriving investment banking sector borrowed enough cash to take Yahoo off the market and clean house — with or without Jerry Yang's consent.

Yahoo shares are almost below $20 in morning trading and as the company approaches its August 1 annual meeting, Yahoo's directors have finally begun to fear for their jobs and their reputations. They're negotiating with Yahoo's major shareholders and, along with agreeing to renew talks with Microsoft and approach AOL for acquisition, some on the board are offering to promote CEO Jerry Yang into a non-executive chairmanship and fire Yahoo president Sue Decker. Reporter's reporter Kara Swisher reports that shareholders and some board members have already come up with a wish list of names for the top jobs.

Perhaps you remember the morning of February 1, 2008, when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made public his intentions to purchase Yahoo at $31 per share. Or maybe you recall Ballmer's angry letter on April 5, demanding Yahoo answer to Microsoft's offer. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board of directors would prefer you not. According to a shareholder presentation the group filed with the SEC — part of its campaign against Carl Icahn's alternative slate — Yahoo's board wants Yahoo shareholders to believe that "the record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition."

Yahoos like Ash Patel personally. They just think he's an inept manager, uninspiring leader and kind of lazy. But good fortune and Jerry Yang's disregard for his own reputation among the troops have conspired to make Patel the head of a new Global Products group and he's determined to take the opportunity both prove his doubters wrong and save Yahoo. Just as soon as he gets back from his vacation, which we hear he's beginning today. (Photo by Sandip Bhattacharya)

When we noted (only reporters' reporter Kara Swisher reported it) that Yahoo president Sue Decker's last reorganization included promoting longtime Yahoo Ash Patel to head of a new Global Products group, probably the nicest comment came from therealsunnyvalequeen, who wrote: "Ash is a good technical leader, but cannot possibly do what they have now asked of him." BoomTown's Kara Swisher reports several Yahoo executives echo the sentiment. Apparently tone-deaf Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang does not.

In an open letter to shareholders, CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock assure abused shareholders that they're the only ones who truly love you. They know that Microsoft offered to buy your shares at a premium, and then tried to be just a friend with search benefit, offering $1 billion check and an $8 billion investment. But don't listen to Carl Icahn who says they haven't been good to you — he just doesn't understand that what you share goes deeper than stock price drops.

When Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang first heard that Microsoft was withdrawing its offer to buy the company, he reportedly high-fived his fellow negotiators — co-founder David Filo likely among them. The moment palm struck palm, if frozen in time, perhaps captures Yang at his zenith, a triumphant founding entrepreneur and Valley icon warding off Microsoft invaders from North. One Yahoo employee even celebrated Yang's fight with a spoof on the film 300, subbing Yang in for Leonidas and having him scream "Yahoooo!" instead of "Sparta!" My oh my has Yang's reputation tumbled since. The latest bump: a parody of Coldwell Banker Real Estate commercials featuring Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin discussing how "Yahoo Is Now Our Bitch," below. The employee who made the 300 parody? He quit.

A tipster points us to a used Bombardier Global Express for sale in Oregon, similar to the one pictured here. Owned by JAY Aviation, it's likely Jerry Yang's private jet. And before you start thinking this means the beleaguered Yahoo CEO won't be flying much after stepping down, rumor has it that this amounts to a trade-in, as Yang is allowed to continue using it while it's being offered for sale — and is looking to buy a new plane. How much will the jet set you back? The Global Express line sells new for around $45 million. Where has Jerry visited in posh, private comfort these last few years? Thanks to planespotting hobbyists, photos from stops around the world are plentiful. After the jump, details of the technology appurtanances from Ethernet jacks for in-flight Internet browsing to a somewhat anachronistic VHS deck.

Yahoo started as Jerry's List and through good times and bad, its employees have held a special spot for co-founder Jerry Yang in their purple-bleeding hearts. Till just about now, it seems. Says one former Yahoo:

Board members, employees, shareholders and now Congressional lawmakers wonder whether Yahoo CEO made the right call outsourcing Yahoo search ads to Google. Yang is in Washington to answer their concerns, meeting with Senator Herb Kohl (D.-Wisc.) and Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) yesterday. Later this week, he'll meet with Representative Joe Barton (R.-Texas), who earlier wrote a letter to Yang asking him to explain how the deal won't "have an anticompetitive impact on the online-search market, including the pricing of online-search advertising."

Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang became the company's CEO one year ago today. Highlights include spending the first 100 days pondering the company's "sacred cows," a reorg or two, February layoffs, and of course, failed merger negotiations with Microsoft. On the bright side, Yang and his wife Akiko Yamazaki had a second daughter recently — as good an excuse as any for Yang to "spend more time with his family." (Photo by Yodel Anecdotal)

The latest Valley guessing game: Who will be Yahoo's next CEO? Jerry Yang's days seem numbered; if he does not win reelection to the board at Yahoo's annual shareholder meeting, now pushed back to August, he will almost certainly have to step down as boss, too. Overeager to throw a name out — likely in the hopes of currying favor if one of their guesses turns out to be right — the likes of Kara Swisher and Michael Arrington are suggesting a series of candidates. Dan Lyons gets it right in a blog post, writing as Fake Jerry Yang: None of them are likely to fly. None are likely even to be interested in the job.

Why did Yahoo turn down Microsoft's offer and — to the disappointment of shareholders, employees and board members — go for Google's instead? Because Google will allow Yahoo to continue selling some search ads to its display advertising clients, while Microsoft would have insisted its sales team handle all Yahoo search buys. Allowing its display advertisers to purchase "integrated media" — search and display together — is very important to Yahoo. But is it important to Yahoo's customers? According to our sources on Madison Avenue, not really. Or, at the very least not yet.

With Fake Steve Jobs on sabbatical, Fake Jerry Yang has picked up the slack to chime in on Joe Nocera's scathing open letter in the New York Times. Shortly before the vulgarities is this little gem, which says more about the New York media landscape than it does about the Microsoft-Yahoo-Google three-way:

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera's open letter to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang over the weekend nicely captured Yahoo shareholders' rage over the whole Microsoft mess. But will they stop fuming long enough to read all 1,500 words? A version they'll be able to finish before their lawyers get done filing the next shareholder lawsuit, and Yang will be able to finish before the next top executive's resignation letter hits his inbox, below.