Kara Swisher broke today’s big news (on Twitter, no less) that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will step down as soon as the board finds a replacement for him. Yang’s internal memo to Yahoo staff and Yahoo’s official announcement said the move was a joint decision between he and the board.

Owen Thomas at Valleywag pulls no punches (it *is* Valleywag, after all) in explaining the 5 reasons why Yang is done at Yahoo. Rafat Ali at paidContent is even more plainspoken, suggesting some names Yahoo’s board should consider “now that [it] has finally found its balls to try and replace Jerry Yang.”

What does this mean for Yahoo? Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider doubts that Microsoft will make another bid for Yahoo, but says: “A search deal, however, is a different story. Any negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo will likely be on hold until Jerry’s successor takes control. But we then expect serious search-partnership negotiations to begin in earnest.”

Facebook launches verified apps program
Facebook has launched the Application Verification program it announced at its F8 Developer Conference over the summer. The net result will be badged ‘trusted’ third party applications which are given higher visibility over the dross that turn many users off Facebook apps altogether.

Adam Ostrow at Mashable says Facebook is resurrecting the platform after burying it in the redesign: “Essentially, coupled with the current fbFund finalists, Facebook is resurrecting the platform, which has been largely hidden to passive users (folks who ignore the apps completely) since the social network rolled out its redesign. It’s all been very methodical – first, bury the applications under a special tab on user profiles, then, dole out funding to the best app developers, and finally, offer everyone else a way to get their apps back in the game. Ultimately, it might get Facebook where they want to be – a platform offering several hundred high quality apps, as opposed to tens of thousands of useless ones.”

ReadWriteWeb‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick welcomes the move but thinks it may be too little, too late: “This verification process should have been in place when the platform launched, though there were so many apps coming through the pipe at the time that such a program might not have been tenable. Now enthusiasm has declined greatly so a vetting program may be less of a challenge. Honestly, though, Facebook has far more potential than the app platform at least is realizing and its problems run deeper than a verification program is going to solve.”

Google voice search on iPhone reviews are in
Google’s much anticipated update to its iPhone search application has arrived, and the initial reviews are all… well, a bit surprised.

Frederic Lardinois at ReadWriteWeb is amazed that it actually works. John Gruber at Daring Fireball unpicks the interface, criticising Google’s iPhone optimisation of search results. [Update: of course, Gruber's critique is one of search using MobileSafari, rather than the iPhone app itself - still interesting though! Thanks to @frosty for picking up on that. Update 2: Well, he got there in the end - Gruber thinks Google's voice search is interesting, "though more gimmicky than useful overall".]

Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch, while impressed, is a bit miffed that the update doesn’t open up voice searching for contacts, meaning it’s still impossible to make a hands-free call on the iPhone unless you use another third party app, Say Who.

Googler Matt Cutts provides 9 tips to get the most out of the new app, and writes thought-provokingly about how it’s changed the way he searches the web.

Motrin backlash by the numbers
Jeremiah Owyang posts a very helpful round-up of the Motrin Moms backlash across a number of social media platforms, complete with illustrative charts and graphs. He writes: “As much as I’m interested in what folks are saying, allow me to provide an aspect that most others aren’t: short term numerical numbers. (it’s the analyst in me)”.