Is Yahoo founder Jerry Yang feeling more heat after the Microsoft bid went away last weekend? Is Bill Gates just confusing things?

Maybe it's just the static coming out of the bitter bankers behind both sides grinding their axes after Microsoft walked away from its $47.5 billion bid last weekend. This, after Yahoo's Jerry Yang reportedly insisted on more.

Both companies' PR machines have been cranking up in the past few days, busy being the "people familiar"-sourced stories. (Generally speaking, you get Microsoft's side in The Wall Street Journal, and Yahoo's side of things in The New York Times.)

Come Monday, with Yahoo's stock diving by 17 percent, Yang did an interview with Reuters, sounding every bit the lover who, after dumping the boyfriend, realizes the mistake and wants him back.

Yang told Reuters that he had "mixed feelings" about the weekend outcome, after investors showed their disappointment over the break-up of negotiations by sending Yahoo shares down 15 percent.

Now, with Yahoo's stock still at least $3.00 below where it left off Friday, Yang's critics are growing louder.

Take The Wall Street Journal's biting commentary today. In a piece headlined, "Jerry Yang's Scorched Earth,"
Holman Jenkins Jr writes:

 

Mr. Ballmer didn't count on Jerry Yang, whose idea of what his company was worth became inflated by the perception that Microsoft needed it so much. When Mr. Yang said Microsoft's offer "undervalued" Yahoo, he meant it underestimated Yahoo's value to Microsoft, not to anybody else.

In a fashion, he outsmarted not only Mr. Ballmer but his own Yahoo shareholders and board. Having discovered how much Yahoo was worth to Redmond (and no one else), he set about destroying that unique value by ceding Yahoo's position in search to Google through an outsourcing deal.

All this so Jerry Yang can fulfill his dream of having an independent Yahoo whose halls he can continue to walk as the revered "founder."

 

Ouch.

(It's not as if Microsoft gets a pass in the piece. Jenkins raises again the Split Microsoft argument. If the brainiacs in Redmond are looking for a way to really shake up the competition, while keeping an eye on spending, maybe it’s time to do it: Split the company.)

Then, Bill Gates  went and told a pool of reporters in Japan that Microsoft would be open to other possible tie-ups, then later said the company would go it alone, all while The Wall Street Journal was reporting that Microsoft and Facebook had been chatting recently over a possible deal. (The Motley Fool has a funny take on Gates' attempts at a poker face in all this.)

Yang's got shareholders in an uproar, Microsoft has the upper hand in the post-breakup he-said, she-said, and Google's still watching from a distance. The beat goes on.