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At least Yahoo can’t complain this week about Google grabbing all the headlines.

While Google has been dishing out the usual morsels of news - tweaks to Google Video, YouTube and Google Office - everyone else can’t stop talking about Yahoo. First Terry Semel got dissed at the shareholders meeting, although his job looked secure. Then he was out, just in time to avoid another disappointing quarter.

Now it’s growing evident that the bigger force driving these events is a plan to put Yahoo on the block. Why else would appoint a founder as CEO, foregoing the chance to bring in an experienced CEO from outside (even though, as Semel said, Yahoo had “long been talking about … a smooth transition.”) The shrewd Rupert Murdoch sees a chance to trade up from MySpace and its plague of controversies to a more respected Internet name.

If Yahoo’s board is, as rumors have it, decides to seek a suitor and take over after the Internet giant after 13 years of bachelorhood, the question is not so much when as who. So with the markets entering its sleepy summer season, let’s take some time to handicap those potential suitors. The following is pure speculation: Think of it as a shotgun-wedding pool, as opposed to a death pool.

Private Equity Firm Odds: 7-1 Strategic sense: A- Certainly not the most likely scenario right now, but to my mind the one that would probably serve Yahoo the best in the long run. Yahoo’s corporate culture and structure are a shambles, and repairing things while keeping revenue growing and innovation alive will be nearly impossible with current leadership and board direction.

Private-equity takeovers are ideal for these kinds of clean-ups. They eliminate infighting and focus on implementing a smart plan quickly. There is significant risk: A restructured Yahoo may lose its innovative edge and alienate its longtime users. But as things stand now, that seems to be the path Yahoo is on anyway.

Comcast or AT&T Odds: 5-1 Strategic sense: B It used to be big ISPs felt they needed a Web portal to lure in customers. As broadband content matures and the “triple play” of telephony, television and the Internet starts to blur together, the idea is back in fashion. Comcast has a burning desire to become a destination for media consumers. But AT&T has longstanding ties with Yahoo through its SBC acquisition. They’ve been quiet suitors so far, but we may see one or both elbow their way to the front of the line.

Microsoft Odds: 4-1 Strategic sense: B- The obvious argument for a Microsoft-Yahoo combo is that it would create overnight a sizable competitor to Google in online advertising. If it happens, though, get ready for a lot of sound bites about how tying two bricks together doesn’t make a life raft. Integrating both companies may prove so distracting that neither one could focus on the task at hand: beating Google at its game.

News Corp./MySpace Odds: 20-1 Strategic sense: C- Much less likely to happen without an old-media style executive like Semel to bridge the cultural gaps. In fact, Murdoch may have shown his hand by leaking this deal because Semel’s departure makes it less likely. It would benefit Murdoch a lot more than it would Yahoo - but come to think about it, that probably increases the chances it will happen.

GE, Disney or CBS Odds: 40-1 Strategic sense: D Let’s hope this doesn’t happen. In the merger-mania of 2007, a company decides this is their best chance to have a sudden footprint in the Internet, where ad dollars are migrating. Well okay, maybe some Google shareholders are hoping this will happen.

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So finally Peter Adderton, the much talked about CEO of Amp’d and the company he started have parted ways. Rumors of his departure have been making the rounds for sometime, but now it is official. We even confirmed it with the company.

“Peter and Amp’d have officially parted ways,” a spokesperson told Katie. The parting happend this weekend, and the senior management including Bill Stone (President), Sue Swensen (COO) and Doug Dobie (CMO) are in charge right now of the company that filed for bankruptcy recently.

Why did the change happen? “We wont comment on anything beyond this.” The big question is: did Adderton drive away or did he take a helicopter ride into the sunset.

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Infinera , a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based start-up, went public yesterday in what is turning out to be one of the hottest public offerings in recent months. Even though the optical gear maker is still bleeding red, the company managed to raise about $182 million by selling 14 million shares at $13 a pop. This morning, the INFN is trading at around $22 a share.

The IPO by the 6 1/2-year-old company had been widely expected, and many had expected to do well. Why?

Because it makes gear that helps reduce the operational expenses that go with managing and running fiber networks. Infinera, makes an optical chip, and then builds a specialized box that is sold to carriers like Level 3 and Global Crossing. ( Read Andrew Schmitt’s piece on where they fit in the optical landscape and why?)

Nevertheless, from a personal perspective it has been a thrill to see this company evolve from an idea to a publicly traded company. That is one of the biggest upsides of the new blogging medium – you can follow a story from start to finish on a rolling basis.

Infinera is one of the handful of start-ups I have followed from cradle to the finish line – Google, Skype, and Vonage are the other three. (Current list includes Joost and Kyte, and another stealth mode company. Facebook should have been on the list.) The common trait amongst all these companies is the audaciousness of the idea, and the unrelenting desire of the founders to just march to the beat of the drum only they hear. Some have happy endings, other’s don’t.

It was back in March 2002, my long feature on Infinera, The Light Brigade , appeared in the Red Herring, even though I had spent many months talking to the three co-founders: Jagdeep Singh, Drew Perkins and David Welch.

Their idea of building an optical chip was too outrageous that they kept it on the down low. The conventional wisdom was that it couldn’t be done, and no one, and I mean no one believed that it could be done.

Still, the company raised huge amounts of cash, with Vinod Khosla, then at Kleiner Perkins, Alex Balkanski of Benchmark Capital and Cypress Semiconductor’s TJ Rodgers being the early backers. You have to remember this was at a time when the telecom industry was collapsing, and the question of the day was: who is bankrupt now?

Even back then, the company had a specific timeline and a game plan that would do an NFL coach proud. They shared milestones, and as the years went by, they managed to execute on their plans.

The initial euphoria aside, the company still has its work cut out – it has to keep growing its sales, stem its losses. Infinera recorded revenue of $58.2 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2006, and a net loss of about $90 million. That compares with revenue in 2004 and 2005 of about $600,000 and $4 million, and net losses of about $66 million and $65 million, respectively. In the first quarter of 2007, the company had sales of $49.2 million and a net loss of around $20 million.

The fact that Level 3, one of their biggest customers is also an equity owner should be of concern to one-and-all. Level 3 (including Broadwing) accounts for nearly 75% of their revenue. This pay-to-play tactic was something that went out of control in the last telecom bubble. Infinera has signed up a lot of new customers, and has over $125 million in deferred revenues.

As the months go by, much of what they will do will be part of public domain. It will be an interesting to watch if this team can turn a single chip into a company that can continue to beat the giants at their own game.

Our previous Infinera coverage.

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So you think you are a smart investor, the kind who always beats the market, and tells your friends and family what stocks to invest in, and what stocks to sell. You think you can out perform the money managers and investment advisers who collect hefty fees. If yes, then you might be interested in a new service from New York-based start-up, Covestor, likely to launch sometime tomorrow.

Here is how it works:

You sign-up for the service, and plug-in your online brokerage account information and your portfolio shows up on the site, and the system creates its relative performance to the broader indices, sector indices and also creates a risk profile. It’s not a fantasy game; instead it is your real portfolio, where real money is at work.

The site, while no-frills has all the elements you would see on say Morningstar fund screen. You can see a person’s holdings as percentage of their portfolio, with relevant charts and other relevant data. Lets say, you are good at picking broadband stocks; others on Covestor can track your investments. There are shades of social networking, with a built-in reputation system. There are other features that help you gauge the quality of investment information you are getting from a person.

If the “covestors” agree with your investment style, then these covestors can allocate say a small portion of their own investment dollars to mimic your investment style. The more successful you are, the more followers you get. Think of yourself as their virtual money manager – an attractive proposition for those who take (very vocal) pride in their investing prowess. It is not that different from a blog, where unique voice or view points lead to a ‘following.’

“The idea came to me, when I heard from my contacts in the investment business, that hedge funds were asking research firms to put their ideas on the web so that they can track them,” says Richard ‘Rikki’ Tahta, who has co-founded the company along with two other co-founders, Perry Blacher and Simon Veingard, a few months ago. They have raised $1 million in funding from angel investors.

Tahta is a repeat entrepreneur who has been involved with four start-ups in the financial information sector. “With the advent of zero commission brokerage accounts, the friction of replicating six people in my own portfolio has vanished,” says Tahta, pointing to new offerings from Banc of America. One of the first thoughts that crossed my mind after hearing Tahta describe his company: isn’t this a system ripe for being gamed, especially when the site is a tear away success, and the portfolio’s following becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The followers’ actions can have a negative impact on a highly illiquid stock, pushing it higher, making the system prone to manipulation.

“Since you actually need to spend to build a reputation, and all your information is with the brokerage, the potential of gaming the system is pretty low,” says Tahta. I still remain unconvinced – and that’s a challenge Covester will have to overcome before it can be deemed a success.

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Why did CBS decide to spend $280 million to buy Last.fm, a UK-based music community that faces many challengers, and other risks such as the rapidly transforming Internet streaming royalty structure? A vexing question, it has been on my mind ever since I read the news in the Los Angeles Times.

I have been in touch with some folks who know the media business quite well, and they believe that amongst other things Last.fm could be CBS’s hedge for its terrestrial radio operations. CBS, thanks to the Tiffany Network, is widely viewed as a television company. Many overlook the fact that it owns 144 radio stations in 50 markets, a business that brought in about $397 million in revenues in the first quarter of 2007, and an operating income of $156 million.

However, radio sales saw a decline of 9% (maybe because CBS sold off 39 radio stations) and operating income declined 4% when compared to the first quarter 2006. The terrestrial radio business has been feeling the heat, losing the attention battle to iPods and the Internet based music services.

The situation isn’t going to get any better, as music continues to be available everywhere. A whole generation is growing up and turning a deaf ear to the traditional radio. Last.fm, however, is moving in the opposite direction – growing, mostly because of its social features.

It is a community of like-minded (or same taste) music lovers that continues to grow. To distort a cliché, let a billion radio stations boom. CBS could start making money with the obvious business of selling music, but the real thrill would be if CBS takes this (to use another cliché) wisdom of crowds, and turned it into a tool for programming its on-the-air play lists. (Rags outlined this theme in his post, Can social tools save plain ole radio?) (Also, Internet is the Deejay.)

If people-curated news sites like Digg can find traction, why not a people-powered radio. A Last.fm Top 20? If Les Moonves and his able lieutenant Quincy Smith play their cards right, Last.fm could become the underpinning for CBS Radio sometime in the future.

Of course all that is in the future, once the glow of the deal has turned into a shade of reality. CBS will have to work hard to not disturb the core DNA of Last.fm. There are already some rumblings, and some Last.fm community members equate CBS’ presence to cat among pigeons.

Smith, who is leading CBS’ charge into interactive waters, told me that they have no plans to muck around with Last.fm or its community, emphasizing in his ever-so-colorful manner that CBS wants to do the reverse – take Last.fm’s DNA and graft it onto the big brother.

“If the ‘Man’ buys a social network, key is to keep our influence away from it.” As long as he and his bosses remember that, the hedge for CBS Radio could actually pay-off in the long run.

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You’ve got to hand it to Amazon.com. For bulls and bears alike, the stock keeps making as many sudden and unpredictable turns as a Harry Potter novel. And it inspires as much debate as a passionate screed from Al Gore or Christopher Hitchens.

Of course, the plot turns have been much more enjoyable for the bulls in recent weeks. After reporting its earnings for the first-quarter, traditionally a sleepy one for retail, the stock rallied 40% in two days. Amazon did in the quarter what few were expecting - it showed it was serious about pushing down margins that had been eroding for quarters.

Many observers, including myself, believed that surge was just a short squeeze that wouldn’t last long. We were wrong: The stock has pushed further to $73.31 last week, another 17% gain, largely on the back of its decision to sell DRM-free music tracks.

Few stocks can make moves like that without raising eyebrows. But we all know that’s just Amazon being Amazon - the stock operates according to its indigenous logic. As it turns another page to open up a new chapter, now is a good time to ask: Is Amazon finally too expensive? To answer that, it helps to review its short history:

In 1994, Jeff Bezos stared into a browser and saw a way to radically simplify the way we all shop. The idea let him take company public; but as the stock soared and Amazon expanded, the debt piled up. Bears predicted losses piling up until they drowned the company, but Amazon turned profitable in 2002, single-handedly kindling a tech recovery in the ashes of the dot-com bust.

But the bears wouldn’t admit defeat: Amazon wasn’t a technology company but just another retailer, they said - worse, a retailer with grimly low profit margins. But Amazon forged into new technologies, many successful (S3, Web services) and some not (Unbox). The 80% gain in Amazon’s stock in the last three months should shut down the Amazon’s-just-a-retailer argument, but also amplify the debate over its stock’s value.

You can see the whole epic in a glance in its one-decade stock chart. It almost looks like Amazon’s headed back up to the territory it charted during the last bubble.

Valuation-wise, Amazon is about as pricey as it’s been ever since it turned a profit. It’s trading at 55.7 times its forward earnings, even after analysts have repeatedly upped their profit forecasts. In early October 2003, right before the stock began a slow but rocky slide from $60 to $25, its P/E ratio was only slightly higher, at 58.9.

I like Amazon as a (technology) company, and think its underlying operations are strong and poised for more growth. For that reason, I am glad to see it’s not being beaten down by the bears anymore. But also for that reason, I hope it doesn’t surge much farther away from a sober valuation.

If it does, it would give the bears and the shorts another excuse to pummel the stock. But I suppose it would also open the door to yet another sequel in Amazon and Bezos’ excellent adventure.

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