Yahoo Biggie Quits
Jeff Weiner, a key Yahoo executive, a Semel holdover second, they say, only to CEO Jerry Yang, isn’t waiting around to collect on any controversial severance plan; he’s leaving Yahoo reportedly to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at both Accel Partners and Greylock Partners where former reports dwell. Weiner headed Yahoo’s Network Division. Usama Fayyad, the head of research and strategic data solution, a k a data mining, is also leaving.

Firefox 3.0 Due
After three years development and testing, Firefox 3.0, Internet Explorer’s nemesis, is supposed to be released Tuesday, June 17. It’s supposed to block phishing scams based on StopBadware.org and Google tips. Mozilla is praying for a record number of downloads. Opera Thursday put out the latest release of Opera 9.5, a k a Kestral.

Vista’s Screwed
A survey of 372 IT people, mostly Americans, done by Sanford C Bernstein analyst Charles DiBona last month indicates that Vista isn’t selling and, in fact, will take Microsoft revenues down $395 million or two cents a year in the fiscal year beginning in July. Apparently only 26% of the companies contacted expect their PCs to be running Vista by 2011, down from 68% a year ago. The hardware requirements are too high, limiting Vista to 10% of the PCs they already own, and its features aren’t compelling.

Why Apple Bought PA
PA Semi, the boutique PowerPC chip house that Apple puzzlingly bought without much explanation in April is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods, according to what Steve Jobs told the New York Times Monday in an interview. He did not say whether that meant Apple would abandon the ARM core it currently uses or whether it will make Intel happy and use the Atom.

HP & Acer Settle
HP and Acer have settled their patent litigation, which involved three federal lawsuits and two investigations by the International Trade Commission. HP filed suit 15 months ago demanding that Acer gear be stopped at the border; Acer then filed two sets of counterclaims.

Sun Herd Thins Again
John Gage, Sun employee number 5 and its chief researcher, head of its science office – the guy who coined the Sun tag line “The Network is the Computer” – a seemingly nonsense slogan Sun used to wish it could shake – has finally left the building after 25 years. He’s going to Kleiner Perkins to be a VC focused on green technology investments. Sun co-founder Bill Joy has a berth at Kleiner, one of Sun’s original backers. A few days ago Sun, which is cutting maybe another 2,500 jobs, lost his chief salesman Don Grantham to HP.

Verari Sets Up Leasing Arm
Verari Systems has set up a leasing unit, the Verari Financial Services Group underwriting hardware, software, data centers, professional services, heck, even buildings promising competitive terms, trade-ins and pay-as-you-grow plans.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
Gartner VP and chief analysts Bryan Lewis claims the reason behind the “design issue” that led to Microsoft’s billion-dollar recall of all those Xbox 360s last year was because it got chintzy and designed the graphics chip itself to avoid paying an ASIC house tens of millions of dollars. It wound up back at the ASIC house, which EE Times thinks was ATI.

Conspicuous Consumption
Google co-founder and president of technology Sergey Brin is apparently not a “green.” In these days of $138-a-barrel oil, talk of “finite supply” and carbon counts he has put down a $5 million deposit on a private trip to the International Space Station in 2011.

Jobs Watch
As anyone who’s seen any of the pictures of the event knows, Apple CEO Steve Jobs looked like shit when he announced iPhone 2.0 Monday, which made everybody remember that he was operated on for a rare pancreatic cancer a few years ago after failing with alternative remedies – a fact Apple took a long time to disclose – and, since Steve Jobs is Apple, it inspired papers like the Los Angeles Times to ask after his health. Apple told the paper Steve has being suffering from a “common bug” for the last couple of weeks and was on antibiotics.