Yahoo feels like a nation that won its independence only to see all its leaders immediately flee the country. The latest emigrants: Flickr cofounders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield. Their departure is unlikely to stall Flickr, but it gives a terrible impression of Yahoo as a company in further disarray.

TechCrunch broke the news of the departures. Valleywag has Butterfield’s resignation letter, where he alludes to Yahoo being a company that had expanded beyond its core "tin" production to the degree he felt "my ability to contribute has dwindled to near-nothing." Aside from Yahoo’s woes, the departures might also be due to the co-founders coming to the end of a deal with Yahoo, as Thomas Hawk speculates.

It’s difficult to know how seriously Butterfield means what he says in the letter. If it’s really that Yahoo has expanded too much — well, Flickr was one of those expansions. A good one, of course — and one Yahoo backed to the degree of shutting down Yahoo Photos last year.

Techmeme has more discussion on the departures from across the web. Via News.com, see also what people on Flickr are saying about the move (the Flickr blog still has no news — get with it, Yahoo!).

Yahoo Loses Jeff Weiner But Probably Won’t Replace Him from us covers the departure of high-profile search czar Jeffrey Weiner last week. Our Yahoo Employees archives detail many other departures.

Related Topics: Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Employees | Yahoo: Flickr

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan