The Los Angeles Times carried a report about lost perks in Santa Monica, the home of the Yahoo Media Group: no more reserved parking for executives; no more fruit, bagels, and muffins; no more coffee cards (just brew-your-own Starbucks). But the best part wasn't the new cutbacks; it was the old dish on Braun's supposed excesses.

Never mind that most of the juicy gossip still told about Braun — an umbrella stolen from the employee store! a request for a corporate jet, turned down! a lavish office with its own patio — may not be true.

Braun, who joined Yahoo in 2004 with the express mission of bringing some Hollywood flair to its media operations, came to represent everything wrong about the company under ex-CEO Terry Semel. But the early parts of his career there were spent just organizing Yahoo's media properties, like Yahoo News, Finance, and Sports, into a single group. Along the way, he rapidly ran against resistance from the Silicon Valley's engineer-centric culture. When Valleywag launched in early 2006, Braun's departure seemed imminent; it ended up taking most of the year.

The infighting became legendary — like the time Yahoo's homepage producers, who then reported to rival executive Jeff Weiner, didn't bother to link to expansive Oscar coverage produced by Braun's group. Even Braun's facial tics became fodder for speculation.

So what was Braunism, this ideology that requires such ritual denouncements? Chiefly, it was the notion that Yahoo should become some kind of newfangled movie studio, producing original videos to distribute to its hundreds of millions of users. (One of Braun's ideas, really: a newscast with puppets. It was not greenlighted.) The production efforts proved expensive, and nothing Braun launched attracted a lasting audience. Meanwhile, Google was making a mint by merely indexing other people's content and hosting blogs and videos created by users.

But the strategy was Semel's as much as it was Braun's. So why do Yahoos pick on Braun? As a TV producer, he ended up as a recurring joke in Seinfeld, a show he oversaw. And his colorful malapropisms make him easy to caricature. He makes a good story. Which is why, even now, he comes up in stories about Yahoo mending its ways.

Yahoo turns 15 next month. The site first went live, on a Stanford Unversity server, in January 1994. The years since fall neatly into two halves: the first, its dizzying rise from a campus trailer to $100 billion goliath; the second, its equally stupefying fall. Here's a recap of the past decade and a half.

1994


Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo create Jerry's Guide to the Web, a directory of links to websites, in January. In April, they rename it Yahoo.

1995
Yahoo incorporates in March. Sequoia Capital, a VC firm which invested in Apple and Cisco, buys in. In August, it starts selling ads. The Web is now a business.

1996
Yang and Filo appear on the cover of Wired; Yahoo goes public, beating most of its Web rivals to the punch. But the early stock offering also means Yang and Filo are now subject to the whims of shareholders. Yahoo Japan, a partly-owned subsidiary, launches.

1999


Yahoo spends billions of dollars on GeoCities and Broadcast.com, acquisitions that later prove a waste — save for turning Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban into a billionaire, allowing him to buy the Dallas Mavericks and become an ongoing source of entertainment.

2000
Yahoo's market cap peaks in January above $100 billion. The stock begins a long slide after the dotcom bubble pops. In June, it signs a deal to have Google provide its search results. In retrospect, this is where everything started to go wrong.

2001
After a three-month search, Yahoo hires Terry Semel, the former head of the Warner Bros. studio, as CEO.

2002
Yahoo announces plans to buys Inktomi, a search engine.

2003
Semel follows the Inktomi buy with Overture, which sells search advertising, in a strategy to beat Google.

2004
Yahoo hires Lloyd Braun, a former ABC executive, to run its media operations. Hilarity ensues, as Braun proves laughably unsuited to the job and the online medium, and Yahoo's push into Hollywood-style content production proves a flop.

2005


Yahoo has secret talks to buy Flickr, the photo-sharing site. That deal happens. Microsoft has secret talks to buy Yahoo. Nothing happens. Yahoo reaches the peak of its post-bubble influence — but the surge proves illusory.

2006
Microsoft has secret talks to buy Yahoo. Nothing happens. Lloyd Braun "quits."

2007
Microsoft has secret talks to buy Yahoo. Nothing happens. Semel resigns. Yang replaces him.

2008
In a phone call in late January, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer bids $44.6 billion for the company — sort of. Semel quits the board that night. Yang and the board dither. In February, Yahoo lays off 1,000 employees. Microsoft eventually walks away. Corporate raider Carl Icahn buys shares, raises a stink, and gets three board seats. Yang steps down as CEO, pending a search for his replacement. In December, Yahoo lays off another 1,500 employees — 10 percent of its workforce. There's talk that Microsoft might be having secret talks to buy Yahoo. Nothing happens.

(Photo of Yang and Flickr's Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield by Ross Mayfield)

Yahoo's Santa Monica campus, which was built under Semel and Braun's tenure is now a News Corp. outpost, and while BermanBraun signed Web content deals last summer, I've yet to see as much as a press release from the pair since. Microsoft can be forgiven for biting on Michael Eisner's pitch hook, line and sinker, but struggling Yahoo should really know better. (Photo by Getty/Jean-Paul Aussenard)

Moore, an 11-year Microsoft veteran before joining Yahoo in 2005, was hired by the disgraced and departed Braun, it's true. But the fact that he outlasted Braun and has continued to rise is a testament to the political skills he acquired at the software giant. Moore will take over much of Yahoo's enterainment division, including music, TV, movies, games, and gossip site OMG, which has garnered little buzz but appears to have overtaken AOL's TMZ in the ratings.

Moore displaces SVP Vince Broady, who remains with the company for now, but without a portfolio. He'll continue to report to Jeff Weiner, who'd best watch his back. They play corporate politics for keeps up in Redmond.

Just like Christmas in July, New Year predictions deserve a mid-year refresher — especially since Valleywag wasn't here for New Year's. Valleywag predicts that by the end of 2006:

• Rocketboomers Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon finally give into the sexual tension and get hitched. Media critic Jeff Jarvis reprises his role from "Moonlighting" by appearing on Rocketboom to explain it all. Rocketboom's ratings tank.
• Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, feeling threatened by a tidal wave of journalists predicting that he'll step down by December, barricades his office in November and insists on running the company from within. Sharp-eared employees can hear him urinating into bottles, wiping down his keyboard with sanitizer, and muttering, "The way of the future. The way of the future."
• Oracle founder Larry Ellison rediscovers his giving spirit and pledges a $200 million donation to Stanford, one week before the deadline for Forbes' next "Most generous billionaires" list.

The rest is after the jump.

• "Long Tail" breaks free of its scare quotes by Halloween.
• Blog mogul Jason Calacanis, realizing that AOL has given him the entire budget left over from the Access department, starts paying his circle of friends for "doing what they already do." Competitor Nick Denton starts eating lunch with Jason for $80 an hour.
• Three hours after YouTube and Facebook merge, the entire student population of America walks out of class in a rush to update their FaceTube profiles.
• After Lloyd Braun greenlights three expensive shows against everyone's advice, the Yahoo Media Group head finally gets fired. Weeks later, the shows go live, and Braun's "Puppet News Nightly" quickly becomes America's favorite Internet show.
• Dave Winer joins the Black Panthers, changes his name to Faqih, and leaves blogging for the promising medium of hand-out flyers.
• The Valley goes carb-counting-crazy when portly Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak loses 120 pounds and publishes his diet book, "Slim Down the Woz Way."

Photos: Amanda and Andrew by Scott Beale, Jeff Jarvis by Mary Hodder

In case you guys hadn't heard, the work is finally finished on the permanent YMG space in Santa Monica. We've been moved around to a couple of different permanent spaces in the last year, but we've finally moved into Lloyd's vision of the future of the Yahoo! Media Group. And in that future, former TV execs will treat internet employees with as much contempt as his network staffers undoubtedly suffered. (I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this.)

Here are some quick highlights of the new work space:

• The 6th floor is the exclusive domain of the executives. Regular employees' security badges won't open the doors, and the receptionists up there make it clear that none of us peons should be up there.

• Cubicle walls have been shortened to about 4', so now you have no privacy, and it's pretty much impossible to do ANYTHING louder than typing without completely distracting or annoying your neighbors. Having to whisper while on conference calls is particularly fun. I'm not sure why we didn't just get desks.
• We used to have a nice, big breakroom with a few tables, and some games and a flatscreen TV. It served as a lunchroom and lounge (a lot of us watched the World Cup in there); but that's gone. Apparently we're not supposed to get together with co-workers anymore.

I bring this stuff up because in spite of a lot of chaos in the last few years, Yahoo! has been a cool, creative place to work; now it's pretty obvious that Lloyd & Terry [Semel, CEO] think that there's no excuse for us to actually enjoy our jobs. I guess the message is that we all just need to shut the fuck up and get back to work. (On stupid shit like The Nine.) Anyone else that's going to move down here from Sunnyvale is in for an ugly surprise.

Let's bring TV to Yahoo" might not get laid off after all. Yahoo Media Group head Lloyd Braun must be cheering over the new Pepsi-branded show hosted by Yahoo, "The 9." This daily show features a pretty woman discussing popular news items from around the Internet. (This, of course, has never been done.)

Good news for Braun, whose job seemed in danger when Yahoo announced it would avoid original video productions. Yahoo must have considered this outside-sponsored show a worthy exception, so the Media Group slipped this show onto the site and got its first episode featured on the front page (pictured).

The only question is who deserves the credit for this coup. Is it Braun, or is it his recent hire Vince Broady? When Broady joined Yahoo to lead several Media Group departments, those in the know said he "runs circles around Lloyd."

The 9 [Yahoo]
Earlier: Why Vince Broady might steal Yahoo Media Group [Valleywag]

Lloyd's daughter started as a lifestyles intern last week in Santa Monica. Internships at Yahoo! are highly coveted, especially in the business and marketing units. It seems that daddy's little girl may not have the chops to compete with all the top MBAs, so they stuck her in the lifestyles division.

Nepotism is common in TV, so maybe Lloyd's previous experience is helping him after all.

Yahoo landing Vince Broady is HUGE. The guy is a big swinging dick. Founder of Gamespot and one of the biggest sources of revenue for CNET. Basically, this guy can run circles around Lloyd. I don't think Lloyd's stock is rising at all — if I were Lloyd I'd be sprucing up the resume.

Vince is an asshole, but he's a brilliant product guy — unlike Lloyd. And he rejoins his Gamespot cofounder Pete Deemer, who is VP of products at Yahoo.

Meanwhile, a commenter writes that Lloyd Braun brought David Katz to Yahoo, and that Katz's new Yahoo Studios falls under Braun's domain. So while Lloyd isn't out of the woods yet, he's got his original content studio. Now, Lloyd, just don't make that puppet-anchored news show and you're safe.

Earlier: Hot tip: Lloyd Braun back in business [Valleywag]

I work in the NY office of Yahoo (media sales) and just got word that Lloyd's group just went through a reorg. Shawn Hardin is gone. A new guy from CNET is going to run Entertainment and Games. Scott Moore to run Lifestyles in addition to his current duties (includes News & Finance). David Katz to head a new group called Yahoo! Studios - fashioned as an internal programming and production house for original content. Hmmm...so much for abandoning original content.

What? Oh...Lloyd's not heading Yahoo Studios? But... wasn't that...why Yahoo hired him?

Lloyd Braun background: Yahoo's media boss: so out [Valleywag]

Please don't make it look like television... This medium better look like something new.... If what we're doing looks like television, that would be a huge mistake.

Lloyd Braun's resumé before joining the Yahoo Media Group:

• Chairman of ABC Entertainment Television Group
• Chairman of Disney's Buena Vista Television Productions
• President of Brillstein-Grey Entertainment (film and television talent management firm)
• Legal representative for actors, directors, and writers (including Seinfeld writer Larry David) at Silverberg, Katz, Thompson & Braun
• Inspiration for television character Lloyd Braun on Seinfeld

Don't sweat it, Lloyd. In a week or two, TV will be cool again and you'll be just fine.

Breakfast with Yahoo [Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine]

Got introduced to Mr BBC, Mr Yahoo and Mr Other Important Suit. Mr BBC was a Guido RSS subscriber and everyone else's boss, Mr Yahoo had windswept hair and looked like he had badly overdone the sunbed. Clearly had no idea where he was or why. Perhaps he was fire damaged. Judging by the simpering of Media Tarts around them, these were important suits.

Who in the world could Mr. Yahoo be? A certain Yahoo Media Group head is reportedly hanging in Britain this week.

How blogging will save the world [Guido Fawkes' blog]

We created Yahoo Tech to make life a little less complicated for our users.
— Lloyd Braun, head of Yahoo Media Group

Easy: For "our users," substitute "my boss." You know, the one pictured above, who tapes his passwords to his laptop.

Yahoo! Tech Launched [iMedia]

So when ABC goes and launches a global Internet game, wouldn't Lloyd lock that down for Yahoo? Somehow, neither he nor his company are mentioned in ABC's own news story.

What, again, is Lloyd actually doing at Yahoo?

'Lost' Game Lets Fans Hunt for Clues [ABC News]

Time to update the "Leaving any day now" scoreboard:

Might McNealy step down at Sun? [Mercury News]

• Sorry about the outage last hour. I was wrestling Steve Ballmer and we snapped a cord.
• Tipsters: If you want to be credited by name, let me know when you tip by e-mail. If you're aching for a self-inflicted firing, I won't stand in your way.
• Jason Calacanis: You were in San Francisco for a day and didn't call? The hurt runs deep, Jason. The hurt runs deep.
• Speaking of which, I could use a mole in AOL.
• Why hasn't anyone talked about Lloyd Braun (pictured, last seen looking quizzical) lately? In Hollywood (and he never really left Hollywood), the only thing worse than bad press is no press.

"Original content is the salt and pepper on the meal," he said. "It is certainly not the engine driving this."

Salt and pepper...car engine...too many images, Lloyd! Turn your brain off before it hurts someone!

Then there's the gleeful peanut gallery. For example, AOL exec Jason "two booms under my belt" Calacanis gets all nostalgic for those 90s days of "user-generated content" and the transformative medium.

And PaidContent blogger Rafat Ali just loves Lloyd's line, "I didn't fully appreciate what success in this medium is really going to look like." Yes, Lloyd has just admitted what we're all saying — HE HAS NO BUSINESS DOING THIS JOB.

Earlier: Lloyd Braun becomes (more) useless to Yahoo [Valleywag]
1996 or 2006? [Jason Calacanis]
Oops, never mind [PaidContent]