“The key thing was our CEO, Ed Colligan, had the insight that once the [BlackBerry] Pearl came out, the smart-phone business was going to be a consumer business, and Palm was not positioned for that and needed a major transformation, and that’s what we got involved in doing. The whole notion was you wanted to take that cultural legacy of innovation that created the Pilot and the Treo and then apply it to the next customer.”

–Roger McNamee lauds Palm CEO Ed Colligan at our recent D: All Things Digital conference

Now we know why it was Palm executive chairman Jon Rubinstein and investor Roger McNamee on stage at D last month talking up the Pre, and not CEO Ed Colligan: Colligan was on his way out.

On Wednesday, Palm (PALM) named Rubinstein as its new chairman and CEO. Come Friday he’ll succeed Colligan, who is leaving the company after 16 years to join McNamee at Elevation Partners. Apparently Palm, who recruited Rubinstein, a former Apple (AAPL) engineer, to turn the company around has decided it would much rather have him in its highest office than Colligan under whose leadership it was foundering.

In a statement, Rubinstein–who has spent the past two years quarterbacking the development of the Pre and its webOS–welcomed his new role. “I am very excited about taking on this expanded role at Palm,” he said. “Ed and I have worked very hard together the past two years, and I’m grateful to him for everything he’s done to help set the company up for success. With Palm webOS we have ten-plus years of innovation ahead of us, and the Palm Pre is already one of the year’s hottest new products. Due in no small part to Ed’s courageous leadership, we’re in great shape to get Palm back to continuous growth, and we plan to keep the trajectory going upward.”

Reached for comment late Wednesday afternoon, Roger McNamee offered up this rather canned statement on Palm’s leadership transition: “With Ed’s decision to step down, Jon Rubinstein is the natural choice to lead Palm into its next phase of growth. Jon has proven to have exactly the right mix of product vision, organizational leadership and operational capabilities to help Palm regain a leadership position. We are grateful for the leadership role Ed has played in initiating this transformation and getting through the successful launch of webOS and the Pre.”

Palm shares are up 3.75 percent at $12.44 on the news.

This year’s D conference had its share of great lines–tired ones, too (we’re all clear on the subject of Facebook and information sharing, right?). Here’s a selection of the former…

Guys like us avoid monopolies. We like to compete.”

–Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates

AOL is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Web. We don’t get no respect.”

–Jeff Bewkes, president and CEO, Time Warner (TWX)

I will probably never be a CEO again.”

–Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang states the obvious

It’s a company that creates technology.”

–Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answers the question, “What is a technology company?”

Did you have anything to do with the New York Post’s endorsement of Obama?”

–Walt Mossberg to Rupert Murdoch

“Yeah.”

–Rupert Murdoch to Walt Mossberg

I didn’t leave business school to go bankrupt.”

–Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on his first days at Microsoft

You would have loved Windows 1.0, Walt. You would have LOVED it.”

–Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

Microsoft’s philosophy is to ‘do things better.’ And Vista has given us lots of opportunity to do that.”

–Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates

Microsoft Bob? All Bill’s idea.”

–Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer of Microsoft Corp.

It makes revolutionary desserts you never could have imagined!”

–Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recalls the slogan he used to market Coldsnap Freezer Dessert Makers at Proctor & Gamble

C’mon, you CAN’T be happy with the way this Vista thing has gone.”

–Walt Mossberg to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

In some ways the Web is the most important book in the world.”

–Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com (AMZN)

We try to stick to violence against small animals.”

– Activision (ATVI) CEO Bobby Kotick on violence in the company’s games.

I have to determine whether the joy of craplets is worth preserving.”

–Sony (SNE) CEO Howard Stringer on craplets on Sony PCs

Facebook is all about information and helping people share it.”

–Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg demonstrate “I-Have-Nothing -To-Say-And-I-Am-Saying-It” public relations.

‘Sharing information?’ Isn’t that a drinking game? Every time Mark Zuckerberg says it you have to drink.”

–Kara Swisher

Page got one of the two chairs and Schmidt wound up on the floor.”

–Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on meeting with Google’s (GOOG) Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt in his spartan apartment.

All lives are equal.”

–Melinda Gates, co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on D6 Highlights

Betamax 2.”

–Sony CEO Howard Stringer on what his epitaph would have been had Sony lost the DVD format war.

If we were any more successful, we’d be bankrupt.”

–Sony CEO Howard Stringer on the success of Sony’s LCD business.

Hollywood is a community that’s so inbred, it’s a wonder the children have any teeth.”

–Barry Diller, chairman and CEO, IAC (IACI)

People loved their horses, too. But you don’t keep riding your horse to work just because you love it.”

–Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the difference between physical books and digital ones

I could take him.”

–Dell (DELL) CEO Michael Dell on his chances of success in a brawl with Apple CEO Steve Jobs

It’s amazing how elastic the human brain turns out to be.”

–DEKA Research founder Dean Kamen

It’s like Baby Mama, with me as the mama.”

–Intellectual Ventures founder Nathan Myhrvold explains the company’s “invest in inventions” business model.

Windows 95 was a nice milestone.”

–Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on one of the high points of his career

I won’t ever stop until you’re either the biggest thing around, or you’re dead.”

–Kara Swisher on her relentless coverage of Facebook

We think they’re fantastic … But you don’t want anyone to be a monopoly.”

–Rupert Murdoch on Google

Coming from Google, you don’t exactly spend a lot of time at Microsoft.”

–Facebook COO and former Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google Sheryl Sandberg

We’re trying to outbook the book.”

–Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Kindle.

There go the dairy ads.”

– Walt Mossberg on 23andMe’s discovery that colleague Kara Swisher is lactose intolerant

We didn’t buy Alaska to save a couple of elk.”

–News Corporation (NWS) Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch on Alaska as a solution to the current fuel crisis.

Where’s Rupert’s elk-despising gene?”

–Kara Swisher while reviewing Murdoch’s genotype

That’s not serious … he just wants to make himself a few hundred million dollars …”

–Rupert Murdoch on Carl Icahn’s proxy fight for Yahoo

You’re the chairman of the FCC. How did you allow this to happen?”

–Walt Mossberg grills FCC Chairman Kevin Martin on the lousy broadband situation in the states.

No. Better to let history make itself, as it always has, and focus on making news. And it’s likely there will be quite a bit of it coming out of D: All Things Digital 6. With this year’s lineup, how could there not? Microsoft’s Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer onstage together just a month before Gates steps back from his day-to-day duties as company chairman. Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes talking strategy as the media giant prepares to spin off Time Warner Cable and tries to figure out just what the hell to do with AOL. Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ) and FCC Chaiman Kevin Martin appearing separately, but together offering an insider view of the telecom industry as it grapples with issues of Net neutrality, open access and early termination fees. And then there’s Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang and Sue Decker, who’ve been struggling to right a foundering Internet pioneer as it battles Google (GOOG), Microsoft, investor-agitator Carl Icahn and itself.

And that’s just a sampling. Clearly, there’s much to talk about. Much news to be made.

Sure, we may not have managed to arrange another tete-a-tete as historic as last year’s Gates/Jobs interview.

But we did manage to get Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang on the same stage–albeit at different times. Still, no easy feat, that.

And who knows, perhaps we’ll get them onstage together as well.

So join us at d6.allthingsd.com tomorrow for as-it-happens, all-access coverage of the conference. Liveblogs of the sessions and demos. Videos of the speakers. Photos of attendees. You’ll find it all here.

(Photo illustration by Beth Callaghan)