With Yahoo! Inc.'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) recent management shakeup, will any other big changes be coming soon? The bad taste left in the mouth of many investors over the lavish pay package given to former CEO Terry Semel while Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) was beating up his company and taking all its lunch money is not going away soon. Even more unsettling is the fact that company co-founder Jerry Yang stepped in as CEO over savvy and well-respected Sue Decker (who did ascend to the role of President). All those changes were needed, although it's way too early to see if the new team will be able to rescue Yahoo! from the deep shadow of Google.

Yahoo! EVP Jeff Weiner has been cited in unofficial circles as one of the main people responsible for the slow rollout of Yahoo!'s potential savior, Project Panama. Created specifically to take on Google's auction-style keyword ad placement, Project Panama was launched in semi-glorious fashion late last year but exact details on its performance have been a bit hard to find so far. How is it performing beyond of the platitudes from management we continue to hear? How is the platform contributing to Yahoo!'s bottom line more than the previous Overture keyword system? Inquiring minds need to know.

Project Panama needs to show powerful results in the new quarter or a few more Yahoo! folks could be shown the door. Although Yahoo! is not making ground against Google's search-based advertising leadership, the least Project Panama could do is take the search viewership Yahoo! does have and maximize revenue in a measurable way that shareholders can plainly see. If not, Semel will need to be the first of several pushed out.

Yahoo!'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) Project Panama is the web giant's attempt to re-thread its entire text-based advertising system to emulate Google's AdWords system. Google's system lets advertisers compete on customer relevancy and click-through rather than on advertised keyword bid price. Obviously, Google's relevancy model is the clear winner here, after Yahoo!, which spent over a billion smackers to buy Overture years ago, has admitted that keyword bidding just doesn't work as as well -- the customers (not the advertisers) have to be in charge.

Yahoo!'s new text advertising system went live in the U.S. during the last calendar quarter of 2006 and is looming on the horizon to be launched in the UK (and other markets) soon. Yahoo! still receives quite a bit of traffic to its network (search not so much) and wants to monetize more of that with advertising methods that actually work well. Hence, Project Panama. Should Google be scared that it may now have heightened competition in the web search space? Not unless Yahoo! can grab market share away from Google in web search, which I do not see happening. But, Yahoo! will glow a little brighter, which is the injection of life the company needs right now.

Yahoo! recently told its UK advertising partners to get ready for Panama: "Our new Sponsored Search system will be rolled out in the UK soon, beginning with advertiser migration later this quarter. We will be contacting you with more specific information as the rollout date approaches." Will this be enough to get Yahoo! into some kind of spotlight again with customers? Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel has said many times recently that Project Panama is "doing very well" in the U.S., but he has not given much on specifics, yet. At some near-future time, YHOO shareholders are going to want to know all about this. It won't be Yahoo!'s curtain call if it does not perform that well, but the added pressure may give even more employees a reason to flee.

Yeah, Terry, we know all about Project Panama by now. We know that it's Yahoo! Inc.'s (NASDAQ:YHOO) attempt to get back in the web search market by creating (or duplicating) Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) system of ensuring the text ads placed next to web searches are relevant and affordable based on how popular they are.

Instead of Yahoo!'s "highest bidder wins" process of search it inherited with the Overture purchase years ago, Yahoo! has finally smartened up and has seen that customer relevancy wins hands down over advertisers' preferences.

So, when Yahoo! chief Terry Semel is "all smiles" due to Yahoo!'s new search system is, all I can say is that it's premature. Time will prove if Yahoo!'s new search platform works to the tune of Google's system, which is tremendously successful and was designed with, gasp, the customer in mind -- not the advertiser.

Now, I truly hope that Yahoo!'s Project Panama becomes a wild success and works as equally well as Google's search advertising system because we need another great player in this space. Competition is a great thing for any industry, and right now, Google's commanding lead scares some.

We probably won't know if Yahoo!'s long effort has paid off for the company for at least a few quarters. By then, Semel may be able to throw his proverbial hat in the air. Right now, however, it's still way too early to party.