Web pioneer Yahoo has continued to lose executives after spurning a takeover attempt by Microsoft and  embracing top rival Google in an online advertising deal, with three executive vice presidents, two senior vice presidents and a cadre of other key employees leaving the firm since last week amidst reports of a looming major reorganization at the Sunnyvale, California-based firm. Flicker Co-Founders Among Departing Yahoo Employees Yahoo said this week that Jeff Weiner, the executive vice president of its network division, would be departing the company to work for two venture capital firms, along with executive vice president of the search and advertising technology group Qi Lu, who's departure had been expected as he went forward with a planned to move to China, according to several reports from unnamed insiders at Yahoo who claim knowledge of the matter. Yahoo senior vice president of search Vish Makhijani will be departing the company's San Francisco area operations to take a position at Russia's most popular search engine firm, Yandex, according to the Yahoo insiders. Husband-and-wife Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, the co-creators of online photo-sharing Web site Flickr, which they sold to Yahoo in 2005, said that they are leaving the Sunnyvale firm, along with the company's executive vice president Usama Fayyad, who has led the firm's research organization. Jeremy D. Zawodny, who has worked at Yahoo since 1999 and was responsible for helping to create the company's developer network, announced last week that he planned to depart Yahoo. Yahoo Sees Departures As Typical For Internet Firm Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's senior vice president for communications and communities, will also leave the firm, according to the Yahoo insiders. In November 2006 Garlinghouse wrote a memo criticizing Yahoo for casting too broad a net by attempting to manage more projects than it could handle, a memo that was called  by some the Peanut Butter Manifesto. Garlinghouse also held responsibility for several of Yahoo's core services, such as its Web-based e-mail and instant messaging services, Flickr, and the company's discussion groups, Yahoo Groups. Yahoo may face more similar criticism now as it seeks to stave off further departures while at the same time managing a number of recently launched global initiatives such as mobile Internet search agreements with five telecommunications companies in the Asia Pacific region it signed earlier this week. Yahoo's main portal site was left without its leader and half of the department's deputies with the most recent spate of departures. Yahoo declined to confirm all the the departures. Yahoo said that the departures were indicative of normal attrition in a modern Web media firm. "We have a deep and talented management team across all areas of the company," Yahoo said in a statement. "We continue to recruit outstanding talent," Yahoo said, and added that the departures amount to "the attrition that’s to be expected in the Internet industry." Restructuring Plan Could Boost Schneider Yahoo insiders are noted in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal as having knowledge of current discussions by the Sunnyvale company centering around a reorganization plan that would see several product divisions come under centralized control, with Hilary Schneider, executive vice president for global-partner solutions, likely to play a key role after restructuring. An announcement of the restructuring at Yahoo is being driven by the firm's president Susan Decker, and could come as early as next week, according to the unnamed Yahoo insiders cited in the Times and Journal, who added that no leader for the group had been chosen yet. Decker has helped Schneider on her rise to greater responsibility at Yahoo, and would have her oversee the company's media properties as well as revenue and sales, according to the reports from the unnamed Yahoo insiders. Some Wall Street analysts have said that the rise in executives departing Yahoo are a sign that confidence in Decker, and company co-founder and chief executive Jerry Yang, has fallen - likely because of increased isolation. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates touted the talented engineering pool at Yahoo as being one of the reasons behind his firm's decision to pursue an acquisition, when speaking in February. Yahoo announced last Thursday that it had signed a long-term search advertising agreement with Google, and that it had rejected a proposal from Microsoft, announcements that signaled an end to the software giant's 18-week pursuit of Yahoo. Yahoo Loses Executives Amidst Talk Of Major Reorganization Yahoo's online advertising agreement with Google, which could extend as long as a decade should all renewals take place, will allow the top search engine Google to provide ads alongside search results from the second most popular  search engine Yahoo and on some of its United States and Canada Web properties. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has said that Yahoo's board of directors made a flawed move when it refused Microsoft's takeover bid valued at $47.5 billion at the time, because it was detrimental to maximizing financial gains for Yahoo shareholders. Yahoo will hold its annual shareholder meeting on August 1, during which Icahn is expected to seek to have his alternate slate of 10 board members elected, replacing current Yahoo board members including Yang with directors more agreeable to selling Yahoo to Microsoft. If Icahn's proxy fight were to succeed he would also seek the removal of Yang as chief executive at Yahoo. 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