If Yahoo's in management turmoil for the foreseeable future, at least until the company hires a new head of its product group, then which execs might be shaken loose? All over the Valley, yesterday, you can bet competing firms, headhunters and venture capitalists were digging through their contacts databases. It's tough. I asked an exec at a rival internet media company who were Yahoo's secret stars. "That's the sad part," he answered. "All the secret stars I knew are GONE." With that caveat, here's the poach list; we've included some departed execs to make up the numbers. Spillane, Weiner, Horowitz, Moore...

Arguably the best product guy at the company was Andy Spillane. VP of Yahoo Mail for past couple years reporting to Garlinghouse. They refused to allow him to run the product team remotely when family issues prevented him from relocating from the east coast. Strange since he was a proven winner who had been bicoastal since his first day there. He's still in the corporate directory reporting to Garlinghouse, but he was asked to voluntarily "step down" from his Mail role and rumor has it he's a goner.

From Yahoo's media units, Doug Hirschinvented Yahoo Movies, went to Facebook, has since moved on from that. Also highly regarded by former colleagues: Brian Grey, who ran Sports, and went to Fox.

Jeff Weiner was a golden boy, after managing the development of Yahoo's independent search engine. He seems to have a good rep, internally, for managerial and technical competence. And Yahoo took pains, yesterday, to tell the press that its problems with search advertising predated Weiner's responsibility for the much-delayed Panama project. But Weiner will have to report to a new head of audiences, a position he might once have expected to fill, and he's had Panama taken away from him; so he must be poachable.

Brad Horowitz, says Marc Canter, is the only Yahoo exec who matters. Which isn't strictly true: he's the only Yahoo exec who matters to the web gurus who work in Yahoo's blogger appeasement group, and their friends. Horowitz does the fun stuff at Yahoo, hiring web personalities, dreaming up new schemes, and annoying the product teams. As long as he has Semel's favor, and as long as that favor means something, unlikely to leave such a cushy job. Memo to Brad: I saw the photo of you and Semel, eating sushi, on the evening Yahoo eased out Dan Rosensweig and Lloyd Braun. The caption: Chilling after a long day re-orging! A little too corporate casual, in tone, for the somber occasion. Might want to edit that.

Scott Moore, formerly with Microsoft, was one of the few competent execs with Yahoo's Hollywood operation, and took on more responsibility as Lloyd Braun's authority ebbed. Any new boss is likely to shift power back to Sunnyvale; but Moore likes the L.A. lifestyle.

Contact information for this author is not available.