Yahoo’s your daddy?

Score it Geeks 1, Hollywood 0.

After six years at the helm, ‘Tinsel Town’ Terry Semel has left Yahoo to be replaced by the former Chief Yahoo, Jerry Yang. (No tears for Terry, though — he leaves at least $450 million richer.) So the grand experiment of bringing experienced Hollywood management to babysit those cranky Yahooligans draws to a close.

The reason? The geeks at Google kicked Yahoo’s collective assets. They won on the merits, by being smarter, by understanding that what people really want isn’t flashy new Web content but simplicity and speed — which Google delivers in spades.

Of course, the game isn’t over yet. And now Yahoo has its own geek running the show. But all is far from calm in Y-land. New CEO Jerry says his first priority is to stop the outflow of talent and recruit hungry new hotshots. Good luck. The menu at the Google HQ will have to get pretty lean before Yahoo stands a shot of luring the best and the brightest.

Yahoo also has a new ad serving technology — the much-delayed ‘Panama’ — that’s supposed to generate more revenue per ad. So far, Yahoo says ad revenue is up by around 10 percent — good news by most companies’ standards, grounds for dismissal at the Googleplex.

But the talk around the water cooler is that Yahoo has a big red “Acquire Me” sign on its back. Look for Microsoft, Google, News Corp., or some other corporate monolith to line up with their knives and forks, ready to carve out a slice. Heck, maybe even Time Warner would be willing to give it a shot, now that it’s finally got the taste of AOL out of its mouth.

Ought to be an interesting year for the Y-ners. But not necessarily a good one.

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