First Bytes: Microsoft, Facebook, San Fran Muni-Hacker Update

-- Two days after Yahoo reached a truce with financier Carl Icahn, Microsoft announced a major executive shakeup and said it is ready to move beyond its Yahoo bid. In a letter to employees, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the software giant doesn't need Yahoo to succeed. "Yahoo was a tactic, not a strategy," Ballmer wrote. "We want to accelerate our share of search queries and create a bigger pool of advertisers, and Yahoo would have helped us get there faster. But we will get there with or without Yahoo."  [Kara Swisher]

-- Meanwhile, in the tech equivalent of hara-kiri, Microsoft exec Kevin Johnson, who was a central force behind the company's failed bid for Yahoo, has decided to leave the company to run Juniper Networks. So where does this leave Ballmer? Answer: In charge of Johnson's brief -- both of them -- and the ball in his lap. [Microsoft]

-- Facebook's 24-year-old chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the company's annual developer's conference. It was boring. [AP, Portfolio.com]

-- San Francisco Muni-Hacker Terry Childs wanted to make the city's metro-government computer network "implode." Then S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom got involved. [San Francisco Chronicle, NYT]

-Sam Gustin