For as long as I've been in the "business" of online media and specifically finance, the name "Peggy White" has been synonymous with, well, I'm a nice girl and I don't use that word. Let's just say there was never a time I heard of anyone who loved to work for her. No, on the contrary, those in the finance group at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) tended to quit early and often due to her quixotic leadership style and her tendency to fly off the handle at her underlings. And for as long as I've been in the business, I've been wondering, when will they figure it out and get rid of her?

The general consensus in the industry was that Peggy White, the GM of the (despite her difficult nature) very-successful Yahoo! Finance, managed up far better than she managed down. Her group's success was attributed all to her, and she effectively kissed enough tushy (or so the scuttlebutt goes) to keep the top brass oblivious to the unhappiness of those below.

But everyone was wondering, when will it end? How soon will her cover be blown and it become obvious that she is the reason everyone in her group keeps hightailing it to the competition? The answer seems to be, this week. According to a report in PaidContent, Peggy's departure was announced on Wednesday, June 13 -- the details are still unclear but here's one vote with the conviction that, no matter how the official announcement is eventually worded, it wasn't for "family reasons."

Most telling of all: when I searched for a photo of Peggy, I could find one nowhere on flickr -- the photo sharing site owned by her now-former company and littered with photos of every other member of the upper echelons of Yahoo!. There's just no love for Peggy White. Update: The inter-company memo is up at Valleywag, and the commenters there (some who seem informed, others who just seem bitter) blame everyone from Peggy herself to the behind-covering of her boss, Scott Moore.

This BusinessWeek article makes several excellent points about all the recent Google products that have been launched recently by the Internet search giant. Too few of these products have received lasting warm welcomes from potential customers after the media hype wore off, leaving these products to sit on a virtual dusty shelf waiting for an audience.

In actuality, many of these products -- like Google Finance and Google Talk -- are fine offerings. They have just not gained any traction against the competition since being released.  Google Talk, for example, is about as simplistic as instant messaging can get, and those fed up with bloated IM programs would find Google Talk a refreshing change.

However, there are audiences in some form for many of Google's services like Google News, which is very popular. While Google likes to aggregate content in categories and display it in simple form to the audience, this strategy is sometimes successful and sometimes now.