Yahoo chairman Fred Amoroso has resigned from his post and will step down from the board on June 25, a move that should give CEO Marissa Mayer more power and a board she can trust.

Amoroso was appointed chairman in May 2012 following the resignation of then-CEO Scott Thompson and chairman Roy Bostock. That was a particularly painful moment for Yahoo because Thompson was only CEO for four months and the company desperately needed leadership. Amoroso was charged with getting the house back in order.

Business Insider reports Amoroso’s first choice for CEO was Ross Levinsohn, who became interim CEO following Thompson’s departure. But the board ended up choosing Mayer, a charismatic former Google executive. Amoroso went along with the decision, but his hard push to install Levinsohn created a trust gap.

So it’s time for Amoroso to move on.

“When I took the position as chairman, I told the board that my intention was to serve for one year, in order to help Yahoo during a critical time of transformation,” Amoroso said in a statement. “In that time, Yahoo hired a great new CEO, brought on a fantastic management team, revitalized the employee base, and has begun to release top notch new products. With Marissa at the helm and the leadership team in place, this is a natural time for me to transition off the board, consistent with what I said a year ago.”

Mayer has an awfully tough job. She’s trying to turn Yahoo around and make it an influential product and services company again. So far, she’s succeeding. Yahoo’s latest earnings report looked good, and the company recently released several flashy new mobile apps that show how serious it is about owning mobile. She also just helped steal away classic Saturday Night Live content from Hulu.

With Amoroso gone from the board, Mayer can continue her quest to turn Yahoo around with people she trusts. LiveOps board member Maynard Webb will serve as interim chairman while the company decides how to fill Amoroso’s vacancy; Business Insider says Webb probably will not become the permanent chairman.

The most likely choice to replace Amoroso? Marissa Mayer.

Corrected 4/30: Maynard Webb is a board member with LiveOps, not its CEO. 

Marissa Mayer photo via Eduardo Arcos/Flickr

Blake Ross, Facebook’s long-time director of product, will soon be saying goodbye to the company to pursue “new things.”

Ross has been a force in the Bay Area for years. He got his first tech job at 14 working for Netscape. He was one of the cofounders of the popular Mozilla Firefox browser. Later, he joined Facebook when the social network acquired his stealth company Parakey back in 2007.

When he started his six-year stint at Facebook, he was an engineer. He eventually moved his way up to director of product.

He posted his goodbye note to friends and colleagues last night on Facebook. Ross’ humorous note (as obtained by TechCrunch) runs below:

Hey everyone, I’ve decided to leave Facebook. I’m so grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to learn from and grow with you.

I’m leaving because a Forbes writer asked his son’s best friend Todd if Facebook was still cool and the friend said no, and plus none of HIS friends think so either, even Leila who used to love it, and this journalism made me reconsider the long-term viability of the company.

Also because, after scaling a website in a dorm room to a platform connecting a billion people in 196 countries through revolutionary high-efficiency auto-cooling datacenters, you guys will probably never figure out how to sell a Quiznos turkey club on a phone.

In all seriousness, even after switching to part-time at Facebook, it’s just time for me to try new things. I was 14 when I came to the Bay Area to work at Netscape (socially stunted badge pic below). That’s half my life building software in a 10-mile area of Northern California—a rather long stretch considering I spent the first half of my life learning disciplines as varied as standing up, eating, and getting Bar Mitzvahed.

My parting advice: Cherish the launch days. To be surrounded by such bright people, brimming with optimism, forgetting to eat, is a blessing. It’s the kind of manic hopefulness that adulthood is supposed to drain out of you, and I will miss it most.

Launch day is also a great day for Legal to find out what you’re launching.

Guys, thanks for everything. You’ve all brought a lot of joy to this stone cold heart.

Blake Ross photo via Blake Ross/Facebook

Well, we didn’t see this one coming: Microsoft Windows head Steven Sinofsky is leaving the company, effective immediately, the company announced today.

In his stead, Microsoft is appointing Julie Larson-Green, who led program management for Windows 7 and Windows 8, as head of Windows software and hardware engineering. Microsoft chief financial officer and chief marketing officer Tami Reller, who’s now one very busy lady, will take over the business side of Windows. Both will report to Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

“It is impossible to count the blessings I have received over my years at Microsoft. I am humbled by the professionalism and generosity of everyone I have had the good fortune to work with at this awesome company,” Sinofsky said in a statement today.

The news was first reported by All Things Digital several minutes before Microsoft released its official announcement.

Sinofsky was Microsoft’s front-man for both Windows 8 and its Surface tablet, and his departure comes as a shock given that the launches for both products have gone off without a hitch. With Windows 8, he had the almost impossible task of convincing us that Microsoft has finally figured out a way to make Windows work on tablets, and he had an even bigger challenge pushing Surface tablet, Microsoft’s first computer.

“I am grateful for the many years of work that Steven has contributed to the company,” Microsoft said in a statement. “The products and services we have delivered to the market in the past few months mark the launch of a new era at Microsoft…”

Not surprisingly, Microsoft’s announcement makes it seem like Sinofsky’s departure was mutual. But AllThingsD reports that there was also growing conflict between Sinofsky and other Microsoft executives. (If this story sounds familiar, it’s because Apple’s iOS head Scott Forstall got booted for practically the same reason.)

Update: Owen Thomas over at Business Insider reports on another possible reason for Sinofsky’s move: He wanted Steve Ballmer’s job. As someone who knew the ins and outs of managing both Office and Windows, Sinofsky was long thought of as a potential candidate to replace Ballmer as CEO.

Source: Sean Ludwig

Julie Larson-Green

But just because Sinofsky is out, it doesn’t mean that Microsoft’s grand plan with Windows 8 is slowing down. After the Windows Vista debacle, Larson-Green was the one who pushed the Windows team to work together. She was one of the big reasons Windows 7 ended up being such a solid operating system (when last have you heard anyone complain about it?). She had an even bigger role with Windows 8 and its sibling, Windows RT, as head of the Windows program.

VentureBeat’s Sean Ludwig and I had a chance to chat with Larson-Green at Microsoft’s Windows 8 launch event in NYC (after Sinofsky ran away from our camera). Check out our interview, where she wasn’t afraid of bringing up the controversy around Windows 8′s new interface, below.

Photo: James Pikover/VentureBeat