• Loathed EVP Ash Patel will head up Global Products group.
• Global Partner Solutions EVP Hilary Schneider will oversee both ad sales and product development for the entire US region and be Patel's peer.
• Scott Moore, who runs the Yahoo Media Group, will report to Schneider. Though he has startup offers.
• Brad Garlinghouse will probably leave by the end of the summer.
• Yahoo Search’s Vish Makhijani will leave the company.
• Front Door head Tapan Bhat will either report to Patel in Global Products or bolt.
• Yahoo SVP for Strategic Alliances, Chris Bolte, will leave the company.

Brad Garlinghouse: The obvious candidate; a former CEO, Garlinghouse wrote a controversial "Peanut Butter" memo calling for Yahoo to focus on fewer products and do them well, a strategy Yahoo has followed. He currently oversees communications properties like Yahoo Mail and Messenger, which are shaping up as the centerpieces of Yahoo's attempt to catch up with Facebook and turn its user base into a social network. The odds-on favorite to succeed Weiner.

Scott Moore: The head of Yahoo's Media Group, overseeing properties including news, finance, sports, celebrity portal OMG and women's site Shine. Not in the running, we think: He was only recently promoted, and he likes living in the L.A. area, where the Media Group is based.

Vish Makhijani: Runs Yahoo Search. No chance; given the performance of Yahoo in the search market, it's not clear why he has his current job, let alone why Jerry Yang would give him a new one.

Tapan Bhat: Runs the Yahoo.com homepage and My Yahoo, among other "front doors." Bhat keeps a low profile, but he recently launched Yahoo Buzz, a Digg competitor which has been well received. The most likely scenario for Bhat: Garlinghouse gets promoted, but Bhat gets handed his communications and community portfolio. We'd like to see what Bhat does with sites like Flickr, whose product development has stagnated. (How long did it take to launch video on Flickr?)

Your thoughts on these Yahoo executives in the comments, and your tips in our inbox, are welcome.

And now for the Kremlinology: Karin Gilford, head of Yahoo Entertainment, seems like the big winner here. Amy Iorio, the widely disliked executive whose team launched women's site Shine, loses out. Moore's mostly winnowing the number of direct reports he has — which should give him more time to call old pals in Redmond. And Rogers? Got out while the getting was good.

While NBC would jump at the chance to fully own MSNBC.com, NBC knows MSNBC.com's value depends on traffic from Microsoft sites. NBC would likely not buy MSNBC.com without guaranteeing access to Microsoft's online audiences.

A more likely scenario would have NBC and Microsoft renegotiating the MSNBC.com joint venture to make MSNBC.com the exclusive provider of news to Microsoft-branded sites, rather than all sites it owns — which would exempt Yahoo News and other Yahoo-labeled sites. One source points out that Microsoft seems plenty comfortable owning competing brands, like MSN and Live.

The other flaw in our theory, according to insiders, is our claim that former MSNBC.com president and current Yahoo media czar Scott Moore remains respected and admired by "many" at Microsoft. "I'd like to meet just one of those many!" former MSNBC.com executive producer Rex Sorgatz commented on our post. And Sorgatz isn't the only skeptic. Other insiders dispute the characterization as well, claiming Moore burned his bridges on his way out of Microsoft.

Microsoft can't run both because back when NBC and Microsoft formed MSNBC.com, Microsoft agreed that the venture would be the only source of news on Microsoft sites. A Microsoft-owned Yahoo News would violate that agreement. One of the two properties would have to go.

Expect Microsoft to keep Yahoo News and sell MSNBC.com to NBC Universal, which already owns 82 percent of the associated cable channel.

Insiders say NBC is eager to take over, and Microsoft should be happy to sell. MSNBC.com is more successful online than its TV counterpart is on cable, but according to ComScore, Yahoo News is more popular. Besides, Microsoft has specific reason to trust Yahoo News managment. It's run by the man many consider to have once made MSNBC.com what it is: Microsoft veteran Scott Moore, who's said to be missed in Redmond.

Scott Moore Moore is the golden child of this merger. Before joining Yahoo, he had a long career running Web properties at Microsoft, including Slate (before the Washington Post bought it), MSN, and MSNBC.com. No one's better suited to bridge the company's cultures. Moore was recently promoted to run Yahoo's whole media group; I wouldn't be surprised to see that expanded to include MSN as well.

David Sobeski Suspicions run strong over the executive who runs Yahoo's Seattle-area office. Alas, his job's not nearly as secure as Moore's. His latest project is DataOS, a large-scale, distributed Web operating system meant to undergird Yahoo's properties. Given Microsoft's propensities for favoring its own technologies, DataOS isn't likely to have a long runway. But if Sobeski lands a top engineering job inside Microsoft, that will just strengthen rumors about why he took the job at Yahoo — some think he's been a Microsoft plant all along.

Gary Flake Formerly Yahoo's head of research, Flake joined Microsoft in 2005, and now runs Live Labs, the company's Internet-software R&D effort. Flake's an obvious candidate to run a combined research team.

This time, of course, it's a good thing. What's Broady's legacy at Yahoo? Brand Universe, Yahoo's 2006 initiative to build sites for entertainment brands such as Harry Potter and Star Wars. That bad idea didn't last long. Neither did Broady's career at Yahoo.

Proximity to lesbians is big news in celebrity gossip world, but for some reason we can't find the story on Yahoo's rag, OMG, which Yahoo executive Scott Moore recently took under his wing. What gives, Scott? We thought you were a "news guy." Or are you suddenly tired of seeing awkward relationships exposed on gossip blogs?

Holley's now in charge of those very same niches — food, health, astrology, and technology — Moore has suggested he plans to drop or scale back. Maybe having a girlfriend in HR was actually a good idea.

Girlfriend Teresa Thomas's, that is. Thomas left Yahoo earlier this year when the relationship heated up, according to a source. Moore denies that's why she left. "We never dated while we worked together, period," he said.

In any event, Thomas never reported to Moore. A shame. Imagine the efficiency of such an arrangement. Moore could let his employees know when they've become useless to him, and then Thomas could push them out ever so delicately. Really, couldn't Yahoo could use more synergies like this?

Naturally, Moore's down with central control. "We couldn't just keep launching smaller sites," he told PaidContent. "We couldn't just keep adding sites like food or tech or that kind of thing indefinitely. We need to chunk things up into larger areas."

If Moore felt this way all along, it's no wonder Yahoo Food GM Deanna Brown left for Scripps to escape him. Still, you have to credit Yahoo for going with a guy who seems to have made things work with Yahoo News and Sports. The counterargument: At News, he had Neil Budde, hired away from Dow Jones, and at Sports, he had Yahoo's big fantasy-league franchise to carry him.

Our source says "really good talent underneath [Moore] tends to suffer." Deanna Brown, for example, left to run Scripps's interactive division — but only after Moore essentially forced her out. "She launched Food for Yahoo under Scott Moore and was completely stifled. She was a talent that everyone around her thought was probably at Scott's level, but he just didn't let her breathe." For his part, Moore now pooh-poohs topics like food as too small for Yahoo, according to PaidContent.

Interesting. Yesterday, we also heard that Neil Budde, the founding editor of WSJ.com and a star hire for Yahoo three years ago, might be finding Moore's management style a bit stifling and may be on his way out, though PaidContent doubts it. Any Moore stories? Yahoos, want to come up for air? Drop us a line.

"He has a huge portfolio now," the former exec said. "That's a really challenging portfolio for anybody. Scott is really good at news, but a lot of the other properties will be a bit more a challenge to him." That's polite corporatespeak for saying he's been given more responsibility than our source believes he can handle. We hear he's relocated at least one trusted lieutenant to Los Angeles to help with the load.

Moore, an 11-year Microsoft veteran before joining Yahoo in 2005, was hired by the disgraced and departed Braun, it's true. But the fact that he outlasted Braun and has continued to rise is a testament to the political skills he acquired at the software giant. Moore will take over much of Yahoo's enterainment division, including music, TV, movies, games, and gossip site OMG, which has garnered little buzz but appears to have overtaken AOL's TMZ in the ratings.

Moore displaces SVP Vince Broady, who remains with the company for now, but without a portfolio. He'll continue to report to Jeff Weiner, who'd best watch his back. They play corporate politics for keeps up in Redmond.