Valleywag
kevin rose
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Not Booth Babes
The 15 hottest CEO wives
Lucy Southworth made the cut at AOL's Asylum blog, even though hubby Larry Page isn't the CEO of his company. If you don't want to click through Asylum's pop-up interactive preso, I searched our photo databases to find real-world shots — not Photoshopped promo pictures — of Asylum's two other Valley-related picks. Both have a certain something once considered unsightly on a trophy wife: careers. More » -
exits
MySpace China CEO quits, with Rupert Murdoch's wife in the wings
Why doesn't News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch just make it official? His wife, Wendi Deng, serves as "chief strategist" for MySpace China, the media conglomerate's Internet outpost in her homeland. MySpace China CEO Luo Chan has just quit. Just promote her already, Rupert! You're not going to have any luck recruiting an outsider to fill the spot, when it's obvious Deng runs the show. And you'll never hear the end of it from her until you do. (If you're not familiar with Deng's colorful history before she married Murdoch, you should read up on it, courtesy of a pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal article.) -
strategery
Murdoch on Microsoft-Yahoo: "There won't be a deal"
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who says shareholders shouldn't give corporate raider Carl Icahn control of the company because he has no plan other than to sell to Microsoft, got a boost from an unexpected supporter: News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch told reporters at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley retreat that "in six months, (Microsoft) will walk away." The crusty mogul added: "There won't be a deal. There's bad personal feelings." More » -
yahoo raid
Yahoo refuses to pay News Corp. $15 billion for MySpace
There's desperate — and then there's "paying $15 billion for second-place has-been social network MySpace" desperate. Not even Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, under pressure from a mixed-up Microsoft, angry shareholders, and crazy-old-coot corporate raider Carl Icahn to do some kind of deal, is that desperate. Yang is taking so much heat for blowing merger negotiations with Microsoft, botching the company's reorg, and losing top talent that he's probably going to lose his job come August 1, when the company holds an annual shareholder meeting. But despite all that, a source close to the company told Reuters that Yang refused a bailout deal with News Corp. that would have combined Yahoo with MySpace because "News Corp. sought a value of as much as $15 billion for those assets." At long last, we're happy to credit Yang for a smart move! More » -
stocks
Wall Street Journal makes Yahoo more expensive for Rupert Murdoch
The Wall Street Journal's report that Microsoft is looking for partners to dine on Yahoo's carcass à la carte — a group which includes Journal owner News Corp., whose media-mogul boss, Rupert Murdoch, has long flirted with swapping MySpace for a chunk of Yahoo — triggered after-hours trading that boosted Yahoo's stock well above $21 a share, keeping it from dipping below the $19 it was trading at before Team Redmond's initial buyout offer was announced. We can only hope the story was sourced better than TechCrunch's earlier stock-boosting rumor. -
deals
Microsoft looking for a third to get in on the Yahoo action
Microsoft's latest plan: acquire Yahoo's search business and convince either Time Warner or News Corp to snatch up the rest. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock had a meeting scheduled Monday to discuss the plans, but Ballmer called it off at the last minute, reports the Wall Street Journal. Yahoo sources took the cancellation to mean Ballmer couldn't persuade News Corp's chairman Rupert Murdoch or Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes to do the deal. They're probably right about Bewkes. Word has it he's hoping Yahoo will buy Time Warner's AOL, not the other way around. As for Murdoch, he's been willing to hand over MySpace for Yahoo stock since at least last year, but perhaps like us, he's wondering why anyone would make a move for Yahoo shares right now, when they don't seem to be going anywhere but down. (Photo by xamad) -
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facebook
Murdoch calls Facebook a "flavor of the month" as MySpace falls to second place in traffic
News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch told an audience at the Cannes ad festival yesterday that Facebook, "done a great job of being the flavor of the month the last six months of last year." Murdoch went on to dismiss the site as a simple "directory" and, comparing it to News Corp's own MySpace, said "they've not monetized as well as us." If that's the case, Murdoch has a low estimation of Facebook's money-making prowess indeed. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whose company paid $900 million for the right to sell the ads for MySpace in 2008, said last month it still hasn't figured out a way to profit from the deal. -
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d6 live coverage
Rupert Murdoch spits for 23andMe? This we can't swallow
CARLSBAD, CA — In her bid to rob her new boss of all remaining dignity, conference organizer Kara Swisher has arranged to have gene-analysis startup 23andMe map aging media mogul Rupert Murdoch's chromosomes at the D6 conference, AllThingsD's John Paczkowski tells us. Come on. At 77, does he have any left? Leave the man's DNA alone, you mean lesbian! Swisher's DNA is also being tested, as is that of Googlers Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. Brin's wife, Anne Wojcicki, is a cofounder of 23andMe; Brin provided the company a loan to get it off the ground. In a real-world DNA experiment, Wojcicki is expecting the couple's first child. -
d6 live coverage
Why Rupert Murdoch should defrag Bill Gates -- and the rest of tech
CARLSBAD, CA — The other night, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam and I were talking about what he'd learned about Bill Gates's brain. Our conclusion: Like an overstuffed hard drive, he needs defragging — the utility that rebuilds a drive bit by bit to put it in proper working order. Buried in software wizardry, Gates has lost touch with what people want to do with technology. But why pick on Gates? None of the speakers at the D6 conference, held in this Southern California seaside town, have shown they have much in the way of ideas. More »
11:23 PM on Wed May 28 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,845 views, 12 commentsLatest by angrykeyboarder: You mean to tell me the guy who told the story of that "ominous" visit from the defense department wasn't more »
