Like a summer-fair wrestler extricating himself from a sweaty sumo fatsuit, Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang is finding himself in a sticky situation. Yahoo's second-quarter earnings have come out. Without much of a track record as a manager, and an exceedingly short tenure as CEO, it's hard for Yang to take credit for any successes. But having hastily replaced former CEO Terry Semel, he's a handy target for shareholders looking for someone to blame. I listened in to today's earnings conference call and blogged live, after the jump, as Yang gave his first accounting of himself as CEO. Also on the call: President Sue Decker and CFO Blake Jorgensen.

3:00 p.m. Pacific Yang says that Yahoo is trying to "redefine" its relationship with AT&T, which splits broadband subscription revenue with Yahoo. Back when the company was known as SBC, it made sense to rely on Yahoo's stronger Internet brand — but now, AT&T, which thinks highly of its own brand, is no doubt wondering what it needs Yahoo for. With that, and a quick question on monetizing social-networking ad inventory, the call wraps up.

2:55 p.m. Pacific One surprisingly tough question: "How do you get more value out of your assets in Asia?" Yahoo does not fully own its websites in both China and Japan, which makes the question surprisingly pointed. The usual way to get value out of such partial ownership stakes is to sell them. Yang seems to hint, in an exceedingly oblique way, at the possibility of an IPO for Alibaba, the company which owns Yahoo's Chinese portal.

2:46 p.m. Pacific A mostly light question-and-answer session. "Activating an ecosystem in a very fast way is what we're focusing on," says Yang at one point. Well, that clears things up.

2:42 p.m. Pacific Yang takes the call back, sounding a bit more confident than when he started. "There are no sacred cows," he repeats — meaning some longtime properties may get cut. (Yahoo Photo and Bill Pay come to mind.)

2:41 p.m. Pacific "Our financial performance is not what we would like to see long-term," concludes Jorgensen. You don't say? Yahoo's new CFO has already mastered the art of the conference-call euphemism.

2:34 p.m. Pacific International websites are growing more slowly than Yahoo's U.S. properties, because they haven't yet gotten the benefit of Yahoo's new Panama ad system.

2:32 p.m. Pacific I think Jorgensen, misspeaking in trying to say "revenue per search," just invented a really great new metric: "revenue per suit." All companies ought to measure the productivity of their MBAs in this manner.

2:27 p.m. Pacific Jorgensen is debuting on this call as Yahoo's CFO after being in the job only six weeks. He promises "a fresh look" at Yahoo's operations. Translation: Bend over, product managers — here come the bean-counters! He's now promising to "dive into the numbers," which usually means, on these calls, that it's a good time for a nap, unless you're really into share repurchases.

2:25 p.m. Pacific This is just bizarre: Decker describes Yahoo Mail, the email product, as "a dormant social network." Between Yahoo 360, Yahoo Mosh, and the social-networking components of sites like Flickr and Del.icio.us, how many social networks does Yahoo actually need?

2:24 p.m. Pacific Decker says, yet again, that Yahoo wants to be the "partner of choice." Troubling, then, that its third-party advertising sales — ads placed on sites Yahoo doesn't own — actually fell in the quarter.

2:22 p.m. Pacific Yahoo is rolling out extremely targeted "smart ads" first to Yahoo Travel and then to other Yahoo properties later this year. It's also going to be integrating Right Media, an online-advertising marketplace whose acquisition it finalized last week.

2:20 p.m. Pacific Finally, some good news: Yahoo's revenue per search, a measure on which it has long lagged Google, is up "15 to 20 percent," says Decker.

2:14 p.m. Pacific Sue Decker uses a geeky term: "legacy issues." Usually that refers to old, outmoded software, but here she seems to mean management decisions made by former CEO Terry Semel. That's how Silicon Valley execs deliver the shiv — in jargon-laden code. She points specifically to the slow integration of Overture, now Yahoo's search-marketing arm, a hesitation to push laggard executives out, and the establishment of multiple ad salesforces. Could she be obliquely referring to the ungraceful exit of Wenda Harris Millard?

2:12 p.m. Pacific Yang says that he wants to set "a new bar" for Yahoo culture emphasizing "teamwork" and "leadership." Translation: Yahoo's culture currently lacks such things. With that, he turns the call over to president Sue Decker.

2:10 p.m. Pacific While delivering his prepared remarks, Yang badly stumbles over the phrase "a Yahoo that can win." Does that reveal that he doesn't really believe in such a thing himself? He also says that Yahoo is "in investment mode." A translation for shareholders: Hold onto your wallets as Yahoo ramps up its spending on speculative projects.

2:09 p.m. Pacific Yang says Yahoo needs to do more with "insights" — meaning the data it collects on users' behavior. Guess what, Yahoo customers? Your privacy is an illusion.

2:07 p.m. Pacific Yang bemoans that Yahoo's share of activity on the Web is getting smaller. Help, I'm shrinking!

2:05 p.m. Pacific "What's clear to me is so many people want Yahoo to win," says Yang, speaking of his warm welcome into the job. Not sure that that's the best spin, since it just highlights Yahoo's failure to do just that. "Yahoo is too often defined by the competitive landscape," he continues. You don't say?

2:02 p.m. Pacific Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, president Sue Decker, and CFO Blake Jorgensen — a good buddy Decker hired to fill in for her — are on the call.

1:44 p.m. Pacific Yahoo has performed poorly, but as expected. Like a mediocre student whose parents are happy that he's getting Cs, not Ds or Fs, Yahoo met Wall Street predictions of an 11-cent-a-share profit for the quarter. Sales of display advertising — supposedly an area where Yahoo has the upper hand in the battel against Google — hurt results.