June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo! Inc., the Internet company fighting with billionaire investor Carl Icahn to keep control of its board, said the co-founders of its Flickr photo-sharing Web site are leaving.

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake sold Flickr to Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo in 2005 and stayed with the company until this year. Fake's last day was June 13, and Butterfield will depart July 12, Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong confirmed in an e-mail.

The exits are the latest high-profile departures from Yahoo since Microsoft Corp. made an unsuccessful takeover bid for the company in January. Yahoo, owner of the second most popular U.S. search engine, agreed to an advertising partnership last week with larger rival Google Inc. and said talks of a deal with Microsoft had ended. Icahn favored the Microsoft takeover.

Flickr users can upload their digital photos so friends can view and comment on them. Yahoo added tools for sharing short videos on the site in April. Kakul Srivastava remains Flickr's general manager, Yahoo spokeswoman Terrell Karlsten said in an e- mail.

Yahoo confirmed this week that Jeff Weiner, one of its top 15 executives according to the company Web site, will step down as head of the network division at the end of June. Usama Fayyad, Yahoo's chief data officer, is also leaving, the New York Times reported last week, citing a person familiar with the situation.

Engineer Jeremy Zawodny announced on his blog last week that he planned to leave after more than eight years at the company. He started Yahoo's network of developers and worked on the company's search engine, according to the blog.

Icahn, who accused Yahoo of botching the talks with Microsoft, has put forth a slate of candidates to replace Yahoo's current board in a shareholder election Aug. 1.

Yahoo fell 34 cents to $22.91 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have declined 12 percent since June 11, the day before Yahoo announced talks with Microsoft had ended.

To contact the reporter on this story: Crayton Harrison in Dallas at tharrison5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 18, 2008 16:24 EDT