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Yahoo Inc. on Thursday postponed a looming showdown for control of its board, giving itself more time to prepare a defense - or negotiate a sale to Microsoft Corp. that would cause activist investor Carl Icahn to call off the mutiny.

The showdown pitting the slumping Internet pioneer’s board against Icahn and other unhappy shareholders was supposed to come to a head at the Sunnyvale-based company’s July 3 annual meeting.

But Yahoo is dragging out the drama by pushing the meeting back to an undetermined date in late July, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is the second time Yahoo has postponed its annual meeting, usually held in May or June. The previous delay, announced in March, gave Yahoo more time to explore alternatives to Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid, which was withdrawn this month in a pricing disagreement.