The gloves are off! The fight's on between corporate raider Carl Icahn and the Yahoo! board with Icahn selecting an alternative board in a bid to take control of the company. The list of heavy hitters, including Icahn, are running on the platform that Yahoo should sell to Microsoft which withdrew its $47.5-billion takeover offer this month.

Certainly, it looks like the the end is nigh with shareholders suing the company accusing it of covering up details about the Microsoft bid. The shareholders' attorney Joel Friedlander says it has been running an "agenda to sanitize the public record and maintain a cloak of secrecy regarding unflattering evidence of breach of fiduciary duty."

Those details include the "poison pill" of a severance plan in the event of a Microsoft takeover and a conversation between Yahoo! Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

As The Economist points out, time is probably running out.

"Even assuming that Mr Yang and his board now feel the pressure, would Microsoft come back to the table? Mr Ballmer, its boss, may just be playing the game tactically, but his frustration appears to have been real. Engineers in both companies have been griping about a combination. In the bigger battle against Google to attract and retain the brightest geeks-ultimately the crucial factor in the search wars-the uncertainty of an acquisition cannot help. Mr Yang had better become very co-operative indeed, and quickly."