Well, that didn’t take long.  Less than two weeks after Yahoo announced that chief technology officer and chief product officer Ari Balogh would be leaving the company, a semi-replacement’s been named: Blake Irving, a former Microsoft exec.

This development doesn’t come as a big surprise; when news of Balogh’s decision to quit first broke, the rumor mill already had Irving assuming Balogh’s CPO role.  Still, this hire looks to represent a significant win for Yahoo.

Irving most recently worked as a professor at Pepperdine University, and before that, was corporate vice president of the Windows Live Platform group at Microsoft.  So he should be skilled at communicating ideas and teaching others, and also have some interesting insights into Yahoo’s new partner.

Carol Bartz acknowledged in a statement, "Blake brings to Yahoo! genuine large scale Internet expertise from a mature company known for world-class technology."  She then forecast, "I am confident that we will increase technological innovation and deliver against our vision to be the center of people’s online lives."

Irving’s first day on the job at Yahoo will be May 17th.  Prabhakar Raghavan, meanwhile, will keep the title "chief scientist" at Yahoo, but will fill the CTO void by reporting to Carol Bartz.