Mitch Lazar, Managing Director and General Manager of Yahoo Mobile Europe, is leaving Yahoo after about five years.  According to Tricia Duryee, Lazar admitted in a message to some colleagues that he doesn’t know what he’ll do next, either, which makes the situation look rather worse for Yahoo.

Still, Lazar tried to portray Yahoo (along with himself) in a positive light.  He wrote, "We didn’t have much of a business when I joined, but we now have over 100 mobile search and ad deals around the globe with the genesis of those beginning right here in the UK."

Lazar even said, "Between those and the distribution deals with Nokia and the OEMs we really created an exciting leadership position for the company."

There’s no word yet on who will replace Lazar within Yahoo.  Given the way Carol Bartz has been trying to simplify the company, it’s possible we’ll just see some other execs’ responsibilities shuffled as a way of filling the hole.

UPDATE: A Yahoo representative was good enough to email WebProNews, and he wrote, "Mitch Lazar is leaving Yahoo! to pursue other opportunities and we wish him the best in his future endeavors. Rich Riley, SVP, Yahoo! Europe, is now responsible for Yahoo!’s mobile efforts across Europe."

New enhancements include the ability to  build standalone applications for Java, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, as well as to create mobile web sites accessible through any mobile browser. The company released developer previews of these enhancements.

"Yahoo! Blueprint solves the most challenging problem plaguing today’s mobile landscape — now with one click, you can write once and have mobile services run across a critical mass of devices and operating systems, potentially reaching millions of users," says Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Yahoo! Connected Life. "We believe Yahoo! Blueprint is simply the best way to create mobile Internet services — and we expect will change the world of mobile development moving forward." Perhaps this is part of the reason for Joanne Bradford’s optimism about Yahoo!’s future.

Yahoo! is currently in discussions with Apple to figure out how to make Blueprint for the iPhone available to other developers. In other mobile Yahoo! news, the company released a social network address book application for the iPhone today as well.

Yahoo worked with the MMA to establish the mobile advertising guidelines, which allow Yahoo’s advertising partners to improve the user experience, launch global mobile advertising campaigns and lower production expenses.

"Yahoo! has been at the forefront of the global mobile advertising industry since 2004, and we realize that the adoption of industry best practices and guidelines are a critical factor in the success of the mobile advertising industry," said Michael Bayle, GM, Global Monetization, Connected Life, Yahoo!.

"We worked closely with the MMA to develop guidelines that benefit our global advertisers and consumers alike and will continue to do so as the industry develops best practices for additional mobile marketing practices and formats such as games, video and search."

The MMA EMEA mobile advertising guidelines were created to allow mobile advertisers to reach users while ensuring that advertisements display properly on the majority of mobile devices without compromising the user experience.

"Companies like Yahoo! that demonstrate leadership in developing and supporting a single consistent global guideline for mobile advertising will help to drive the evolution of the mobile advertising industry and create a consistent and positive consumer experience on mobile phones," said Laura Marriott, president of the MMA.

"The EMEA guidelines were developed to establish a common global advertising framework including aspect ratios, banner dimensions, file formats and so on."

Fifty-five percent of participants said they would be willing to buy a Google or Yahoo branded mobile device, and just 21 percent said they would not. Twenty-three percent said they were undecided.

One area the survey did not address is which brand of mobile device consumers would prefer to own Google or Yahoo? That would be an interesting piece of information to examine.

Al Nazareli, CEO of The EQUS Group, notes: "In addition to these findings, we also found that 69% of consumers currently use mobile search tools on their mobile phones.

"Because search functionality is so highly utilized by mobile phone users, Google and Yahoo! are uniquely well-positioned to enter the mobile device market and may have an advantage over other consumer brands looking to enter the space."

But first, Yahoo, HTC, and Microsoft want you to know how much they rock for doing this, and Legal wants to be clear that any product names used in the press releases are protected by United States intellectual property law. None of them, apparently, have read my rant about press release writing.

So here’s what’s going on, told to you as I translate on the fly the press release-ese:

Yahoo has a gamma version of Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 available on Windows Mobile powered devices, a step that will change mobile Internet forever and ever, amen.

The following numbers are tricky, so please pay attention: It’s available on 75 Windows Mobile devices, 175 different mobile phone models, 100 of which are now in production.

"Consumers have been clamoring for us to bring Yahoo! Go 2.0 to Windows Mobile devices since we launched the service less than two months ago," exaggerated Marco Boerries, senior vice president of connected life, Yahoo!, who continue on for a while about the millions of people and devices in abject destitution without it, and how Yahoo has FINALLY brought "the open Internet to the mobile phone" for the first time ever.

John O’Rourke, general manager, Microsoft Corp. reiterates how exciting all of this is, and mentions that news, email, and photo sharing are now available on the go, accessible super fast by the power of Grey Skull.

The most important partner in this is HTC, the most amazing, stupendous, electrifying provider of Windows Mobile™-based smart devices there is. HTC’s devices will come preloaded with Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo oneSearch®, the combination of which acts as a kind of personal genie granting all of your wishes instantly.

Peter Chou, chief executive officer of HTC wants you to know he’s working for you and for you only, keeping your friends from dumping you because you’re too busy to hang out with them anymore. "With high resolution displays and breakthrough designs," he says, HTC’s products are the ideal platform for Yahoo! Go 2.0," and they’re really, really happy about it, times infinity plus one.

In addition to the aforementioned ecstasy, Yahoo! Go 2.0 for Windows Mobile offers other things sure to make your head explode into a million tiny bits like a Flickr Widget, a Local & Maps widget, and don’t forget the News, Sports, Entertainment, Weather, and finance widgets streaming news via RSS.