Gawker
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caption contest
"We can see Google from our campus!"
Is Jerry Yang the Barack Obama of Yahoo? Most employees at the flailing Web giant associate their fearless leader with hopelessness, not hope. The person who created these fliers, featuring Yang and cofounder David Filo, is either a wickedly vicious satirist, or a hapless true believer. Can you suggest a better caption in the comments? The best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: trisomy21, for "But I need the Mac to find Cyprus on a map!" (Photo by Yodel Anecdotal)
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By Owen ThomasComment by achates: There's still a lot of affection and respect for Jerry and David at Yahoo!, regardless of what VW may think.... 6 Responses | Other threads
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Start Wearing Purple
Why Yahoo's purple marketing fails
Yahoo's new marketing push tells us to "Start Wearing Purple." A website created for the campaign features a video of various grungy-looking people, including Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, wearing purple and hollering. We'd show you the video, but it's not very different from a clip a tipster found of Yahoo cofounder David Filo and top exec Ash Patel dancing awkwardly to a Kelly Clarkson cover. The pair flail around like they're in some kind of bizarro-world Apple iPod commercial. That's the problem with Yahoo: It thinks it's an iPod — universally loved and carried around. But it's really a Mac — a fine product nevertheless rejected by many. More » -
yahoo
When all else fails, change the logo
Yahoo's stock may be tanking, employees abandoning ship, Carl Icahn divesting his shareholdings, and the company relying on once-hated rival Google to better profit from the site's traffic, but someone on the Sunnyvale campus has been working hard on a new logo! It's got the same jauntily jagged baseline, but dispatches with serifs for rounded linecaps. And, like much of the company's internal branding, it's finally purple. The story goes that co-founders David Filo and Jerry Yang painted the walls of the company's original office a cheery purple and yellow because it was the cheapest paint at the store. The paintjob also served to distract early employees from the fact that the roof in the office leaked. In other words, CEO Yang has a long history of slapping a cheap coat of paint over severe structural issues in the hopes of boosting morale.
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By Jackson WestComment by xhooter: Seems like they're looking for remedies in the rong places. Despite the many problems with their products, I don't think there's... more » | Other threads
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yahoo raid
Angry investors: Yahoo turned down Microsoft offer of $40 a share in 2007
A judge has unsealed documents in a shareholder lawsuit against Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal reports, and the allegations, now posted online, are explosive. Chiefly, that Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo at $40 a share in January 2007. Then-CEO Terry Semel turned Microsoft down, seeking to strike a commercial partnership instead. Slow progress in negotiating that deal made Microsoft executives impatient, leading to its unsolicited bid at $31 a share. While the plaintiffs, two Michigan pension funds, are presenting that history, it actually explains much about Yahoo's resistance to Microsoft's recent advances. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Michael_White_III: Yahoo should just sell to Micrsoft...stop playing hard to get. They both need each other to compete with Google! more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Report: Bill Gates personally quashed Microsoft-Yahoo merger
Why didn't Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer follow through on his threat to take his $33 per share offer for Yahoo to its shareholders? Because Microsoft chairman Bill Gates tapped the brakes, reports Kara Swisher. "Numerous sources" say Gates didn't want a Yahoo merger as a way to solve Microsoft's online problems, but figured as CEO of the company, Ballmer should have free rein. More »
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Comment by ClickHere: I think Gates wanted to give Ballmer free "rein." more » | Other threads
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microsoft
Cowed by shareholders, Yahoo's board now pushing for full merger
Like the rest of us, Yahoo's negotiators don't understand what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer means when he says Microsoft wants to acquire just Yahoo's search business. Board members, fearing corporate raider Carl Icahn and his friends, would now prefer a full merger. Microsoft would be down with such a deal, except CEO Ballmer and company worry Yahoo cofounder Yang and Filo still won't accept a bid for less than $37 a share. We don't buy this excuse, if only because we've heard Yang and Filo don't have much say over negotiations anymore. Not after the high-fives.
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Comment by xhooter: Rather than raising his bid price or launching a tender offer, Ballmer drops the bid. This frees Icahn to... more » | Other threads
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once you're lucky, twice you're good
F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"
LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick is a prankster, as evidenced by his Halloween costume last year, when the new Googler dressed up as Facebook to mock his coworkers' fears of the social network. I'm told that in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, there's an anecdote about Fitzpatrick submitting an expense report — successfully! — for "hookers and blow" when he worked at blog software startup Six Apart. That was likely a reference to the early days of LiveJournal, when users made ridiculous accusations that Fitzpatrick was spending money meant for servers and bandwidth on "hookers and blow." We'd love to hear more, but alas, Fitzpatrick only got 8 out of 294 pages, according to the book's index. Here's the page for "D" through "F": More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by BobDope: The way to do this is a naming convention where your servers are named things like hookers and blow. more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Yahoo's real leadership problem: David Filo
Everyone's piling on Jerry Yang, saying Yahoo's founder-CEO needs to go. Why? The weak stock that provoked Microsoft's unsolicited bid may have been the result of his absentee ownership over the years. But Yahoo's deeper problem is the rot in its technical prowess. And that has everything to do with the quieter cofounder, David Filo. Filo has stayed behind the scenes, but wields considerable power over Yahoo's infrastructure. Requests for more hardware go through him, for example. When Yahoo executive Jeff Weiner joked in an internal all-hands movie about not going through IT because it was "too much paperwork," the audience surely laughed because they knew exactly what he meant. More » -
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jerry yang
Yahoo can find its way, but only if it stops searching
Jerry Yang's spin campaign about why the Microsoft bid fell through is transparent. He's not trying to cajole Steve Ballmer back to the negotiating table; he's trying to cover his rear and appease indignant shareholders. The only reason he's so open about accepting a new bid from Microsoft, I think, is that he's not expecting another one to come. Ballmer has more or less said he thinks that Yahoo is worth less and less every day; last Saturday, when Yang flew up with cofounder David Filo to meet with Ballmer one last time, was as close as the two will ever get to agreeing on Yahoo's worth. The thing is, unless Yang makes some dramatic shifts, Ballmer may well be right. More » -
acquisitions
Yahoo's $37 demand talks, Microsoft's $33 offer walks
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer heeded our advice and walked away from a bid for Yahoo. Did he dodge a potentially career-ending bullet? "The talks broke down this afternoon after a face to face meeting in the Seattle area that included Microsoft CEO Steve ballmer, Microsoft exec. kevin johnson, and Yahoo co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo." [All Things Digital] (Photo by Yodel Anecdotal)
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By Jackson WestComment by Carlos: Yeah, we'll be seeing yahoo at 5 before it's all over with. Saved from a moronic decision by hubris:... more » | Other threads
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caption contest
On the firing line
Yahoos David Filo, Jerry Yang, Sue Decker and Blake Jorgensen watching All Hands, the Movie last week. Suggest your caption in the comments; the best will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner: WagCurious, for "Don't smell evil." (Photo byYodel Anecdotal)
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By Jackson WestComment by ScalaWag: @Owen Thomas: Yay, the star! Now gold epaulettes, please.[en.wikipedia.org] more » | Other threads
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clips
Yahoo makes even tipping Valleywag look complicated
Yes, the leaked copy of Yahoo's All Hands, the Movie we received this afternoon features a scene where Trent Herren of international operations discovers client strategist Ian Kennish is a Valleywag leaker. But leave it to the folks in Sunnyvale to think we have some special, complicated web site for leaks — when really, all you have to do is send us an email. Full video, including infrastructure EVP Ash Patel cleaning the cube of incredibly messy co-founder David Filo, after the jump. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by anotherinvestor: Another $100,000 of shareholder money down the drain at Yahoo more » | Other threads
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geeks gone wild
Why is Yahoo cofounder David Filo getting hit by a ball? Faceball, that's why!
Let Google and Facebook play ultimate frisbee. Yahoos like balls, and they like them in the face. Their game is called Faceball. How it works: Two players sit in chairs ten feet apart and take turns throwing inflated beach balls at each other's faces. One point per facial, and no ducking. This goes on for five rounds. John Allspaw and Dunstan Orchard developed Faceball in April 2007 and ever since, Yahoos — from CEO Jerry Yang on down — have loved it. When it came time to plan the launch of Flickr Video, there was little debate as to what to do. A Faceball tournament was held on April 9, 2008. In the picture above is your winner, cofounder David Filo. Below, a video (on Vimeo, not Flickr, oddly) from Faceball creators Allspaw and Orchard describing their game, as well as more photos (on Flickr) from the tournament. More » -
schadenfreude
Tech titans out $21.4 billion so far this year
Missed earnings, recession fears, and dodgy deals are eviscerating the stock portfolios of tech titans like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt. Here's the damage. More » -
jackpot
Yahoo founders made $1.6 billion today and you didn't
Yahoo founders David Filo and Jerry Yang own 80,833,066 and 54,110,564 shares of Yahoo, respectively. At Microsoft's offer price, the pair have made almost $1.6 billion since yesterday's close and stand to cash out more than $4 billion total if the deal goes through. More amazing? Ousted CEO Terry Semel stands to cash out more than $650 million — not a bad reward for reviving Yahoo and then running it into the ground. We doubt the scurrilous, unfounded rumors that Semel is a Scientology OT 6, but it would explain a lot. Here's our chart of the top Yahoo shareholders and how much their Yahoo's holdings are worth at Microsoft's price. More »
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Comment by vulturesquadron: @abmw: Six month contract? Almost any consultant hired on a T&M basis is a crook. more » | Other threads
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exits
Who's in, who's out at Yahoo after a Microsoft takeover
This morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the usual polite noises about "integrating" Yahoo's management into Microsoft. The reality? Come on. They're all fired, except for the geeks. If Microsoft had any respect for current management, they would have negotiated a friendly deal instead of launching a takeover. Most of the executive suite will be gone, I bet, within six months if the takeover succeeds. Here are the details on who's in and who's out, starting at the top. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by tech-yahoo: You guys have no idea what you are talking about. In the tech engineering, yahoo only has two solid managers:... 1 Responses | Other threads
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superficial
Michael Moritz, what are you doing with your shoes?
Pictured this morning on the TechCrunch40 stage, four men worth a total of a kajillion dollars or something along those lines. From left, Yahoo founder David Filo, wearing the safe and unimaginative Silicon Valley uniform, YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley in his jeans-and-jacket casual yuppie attire, Ning and Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, who goes for the novel tracksuit and khakis combo, and Sequoia Capital uber-investor Michael Moritz. Oh, Michael. He's Welsh, so he's always dressed a bit more snappily than the normal tech layperson, which is a good thing. But what on earth is he doing with his shoes? Hoping to change into slippers and a cardigan like a powerful Mr. Rogers? Or just nervously squirming in his chair before the crowd? VCs already have a reputation as ADD-addled fidgeters, this isn't going to help. (Photo by jspepper) -
reorg
Sue Decker takes over Yahoo
Victory is sweet. Redoing the org chart so suit your whims? Even sweeter. While Yahoo president Sue Decker may not have the CEO title yet, thanks to a sweeping reorganization, she has practically all the power. Kara Swisher at AllThingsD got a copy of Decker's memo to the staff. As we reported earlier, Hilary Schneider is running all of sales — in fact, anything that even vaguely looks like sales — and ad-sales chief Gregory Coleman is out. What's more fun, though, than that confirmation, is trying to figure out what functions don't report to Decker now. As best we can tell, the outliers, left to cofounders Jerry Yang and David Filo, include legal, HR, finance, and tech. The full memo, after the jump. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by elvenjewel: @Hollywood: Okay, last word here. Obviously, you are going to do whatever you are going to do. However,... more » | Other threads
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yahoo
Sumo bout now seen as pinnacle of Yahoo founders' careers
NICK DOUGLAS — Dear startup founders, this is what to look forward to: promoting environmentalism by dressing up "camo sumo" and smooshing yourself against your co-founder. I'd say "the loser is their dignity," but good on them for making Yahoo feel great about caring about the Earth for a week. At least Yahoo founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, unlike their CEO Terry Semel, didn't have to arm-wrestle Tom Cruise. Pick a favorite to win, then check out the full photo set. More »
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By Nick DouglasComment by Davion: http://www.levchin.com/paypal-slideshow/18.html more » | Other threads
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