In an effort to jazz up its image, Microsoft Corp. is hiring Jerry Seinfeld, the 54-year-old comedian whose last starring role ended 10 years ago.

As dissident shareholder Carl Icahn warned that Yahoo! is “moving toward a precipice” and “it is time for a change,” Microsoft said today it could renew its effort to buy Yahoo! The catch: First Yahoo! shareholders must vote in a new slate of directors at their Aug. 1 meeting.

Wouldn’t you love to know what you’d earn if you worked for your employer’s biggest competitor?

Microsoft’s employee No. 105 will soon become the No. 1 employee at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest foundation in the world.

In a collaborative campaign to compete with Microsoft in internet-delivered software, Google and Salesforce.com have become increasingly cozy.

Gates men are suckers for smart women.

Microsoft has brought in a Washington lobbying firm, Bryan Cave Strategies, to help in its drive to buy Yahoo.

Bill Gates and Pete Peterson

Bill Gates may have lost top seating on the Forbes billionaires list, but he leads Vanity Fair’s accounting of America’s 50 richest paydays.

The magazine ranked windfalls that came from big deals such as company sales, real estate transactions and stock cash-outs. Gates sold $2.5 billion in Microsoft stock last year.

Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo has put a harsh spotlight, perhaps too late, on the company’s board.

Kara Swisher, writing on All Things Digital this morning, predicts that the directors’ response to the unsolicited buyout attempt may simply be inertia.

Being pursued by Microsoft hasn’t deterred Yahoo from its own pursuits of smaller fry.

Yahoo announced yesterday that it had paid $160 million for Maven Networks, a firm that sells video-management systems for online advertising. Maven’s customers include such major media outfits as Gannett, Scripps and Fox News.