The news in the press this week is that Yahoo! is renaming Overture to Yahoo! Search Advertising Services (that's a mouthful). That's consistent with Yahoo!'s branding approach and hardly surprising.

But the gossip that's making the rounds is different. It seems that Yahoo! is also cleaning house. Michael Harris, SVP of Product? Gone. Paul Schulz, SVP of Marketing? Gone. Others are on the chopping block; many of the best have already found new homes. Microsoft has been recruiting from a hotel across the street for the last week!

I haven't gotten the full details on the motivation, but I'll tell you this; if you own Yahoo! stock (I don't), this is great news. Overture's people are smart and hard working (I know 'cuz I worked with many of them), but, the company culture is... let me say this carefully... not one that will allow them to match the rapid innovation that will be necessary to remain competitive as the industry evolves. I'm sure Yahoo! saw that straight away, and I'm happy to see them fixing it now.