So, uh, this would not be your traditional career path for Yahoo engineers.
The Hindustan Times reports that Mohammed Peerbhoy, who is currently in custody in Delhi for allegedly serving as the “media chief” for the Indian Mujahideen, a terror group charged with the September 2008 bombings in the city, turns out to be a former principal software engineer with Yahoo in Pune.
Here’s an incredible, and telling, data point. In a talk yesterday, reports the Financial Times’ Richard Waters, the head of Microsoft Research, Rick Rashid, said that about 20 percent of all the server computers being sold in the world “are now being bought by a small handful of internet companies,” including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Amazon.
How badly does the newspaper industry need new ideas? Here’s the story I often tell when that question comes up. The year was 2005, and I had recently joined the venerable Dow Jones from Yahoo, where I had led the team that helped build the financial portal. My job at Dow Jones was head of all consumer online sites, including WSJ.com, Barrons.com and Marketwatch.com.
When NBC Universal and News Corp. created Hulu, they gave the video portal a valuable but short-term asset: exclusive rights to distribute NBC and Fox shows outside of the media giants’ own websites. Hulu.com has become the fourth-biggest online video distributor. But with exclusivity deal ending soon, Hulu will have to see if it can defend the audience and brand it has built.
Like Napoleon marching into an abandoned Moscow, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have led Google’s advance into traditional advertising only to find nothing to loot. Now begins Google’s long imperial retreat, starting with 40 layoffs. But the real cut here is to Google’s ambitions.
The Web has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to evolve and leave embedded franchises struggling or in the dirt. Prodigy, AOL were early candidates. Today Yahoo and eBay are struggling, and I think Google is tipping down the same path, while Twitter continues to gain momentum.
Social networkers are looking to score some airtime, with 36 percent of them wanting to access their networks via TV screens, according to an ABI Research survey released Thursday. Intel and Yahoo are both looking into the convergence of social networking and TV.
Earthlink is an odd company: It continues to generate more and more cash from the terminally ill (and steadily shrinking) dial-up Internet access business. Its coffers are bursting at the seams. Judging by the company’s valuation, the Street doesn’t see a whole lot of value in the core business. But there certainly is intrigue over the cash–including whether the company will eventually buy the AOL dial-up access business.
If Yahoo’s search engine made it easier to organize a ski trip or research a new cellphone, would you use it more frequently?
The search engine–a distant second to Google in usage–is hoping so. Yahoo announced plans Wednesday to start testing a new research tool that tries to detect when someone is doing a research-related search and offers to save Web pages and notes in a separate document for future recall.
I told you so. Or I told anyone who cared. I even tried to reach the Obama administration in four or five different ways. Do a search on Yahoo right now for “miserable failure” and you’ll find President Barack Obama’s page ranking either in the top spot or the second spot.
Mobile marketing network 4INFO plans to announce Thursday that it has received $20 million in venture funding led by Peacock Equity, a joint venture between NBC Universal and GE Commercial Finance’s media, communications and entertainment business.
Nearly a year ago, Microsoft made an unsolicited $44 billion bid to buy Yahoo. No good came of it: Yahoo’s executives, who appeared chronically allergic to any move that might reward shareholders, wasted a precious year fending off Microsoft rather than finding a way to beat their chief corporate rival, Google.
When I talked the other day with Bill Coleman, CEO of Cassatt and a former colleague of new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz at Sun Microsystems, he said he was initially surprised she would take on such a demanding job. After all, she stepped back from being CEO of Autodesk to be executive chairman, seeming to head toward relative retirement.
Yahoo is to name Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz to the top post, so now comes the time to digest what it means. TechCrunch noted the Internet company’s falling stock price since the announcement, while AllThingsD points out that Ms. Bartz, while a tech veteran, doesn’t have a media background. Time will tell how she does at Yahoo, but some of the things she’s likely to face there are ones she also dealt with at Autodesk, which tapped her for the leadership position nearly 17 years ago.
Intel chairman Craig Barrett held a talk at CES this afternoon on technology in the developing world. On stage with him were NetHope and Save the Children, which are both working to bring IT to places like China, Africa and Bangladesh. But ask Barrett what’s the most important technology to put in a classroom and he’d say “a really good teacher.”
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do: Read more »
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
