At Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley media mogul retreat last year, Yahoo's (YHOO) then-CEO Jerry Yang got caught in an embarrassing position: Photographed with his head down on a table, sitting next to Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

This was in the heat of the Microsoft-Yahoo-Google deal drama, after Yahoo and Google announced their search deal but before the Feds squashed it.

Anyway, the odds of a similar disaster this year are much smaller.

First, because if Jerry's there at all, it's to goof around and not negotiate any deals.

And second, because photographers are -- in the FT's Ken Li's words -- "kenneled into one area" this year beyond the duck pond at Sun Valley.

"Lunchtime for the moguls by the duck pond," the WSJ's Julia Angwin tweets. "Photogs used to be allowed to shoot through the bushes, but not this years."

Photo: Reuters

(Disclosure: Allen & Co. is an investor in The Business Insider.)