• Mike Murdock

    Disabled vet nominates self for Yahoo CEO

    How sad that no one convincing has stepped up to run Yahoo! Pursued then spurned by Microsoft, the company is looking to replace founder Jerry Yang. Mike Murdock, a disabled Navy veteran, has raised his hand. The name sounded familiar. More »

    1:40 PM on Tue Dec 2 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    4,467 views, 20 comments

  • acquisitions

    Yahoo's sad, sad state

    Another day, another hare-brained scheme to buy Yahoo. This time, the player isn't Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, but former AOL CEO Jon Miller, who now runs a venture-capital fund. But the prospect of a deal seems as far off and fanciful as Microsoft, which spent most of the spring and summer trying to buy Yahoo, coming back to the negotiating table. Miller wants to buy Yahoo, but is having trouble coming up with the money, the Wall Street Journal reports. Is there no one serious who wants to buy this company? More »

    12:20 PM on Tue Dec 2 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    6,838 views, 13 comments

    Most discussed giddieup: what puzzles me is the price he says he can get for yahoo. 20-22. that is almost a 100% premium over more »

  • twitter

    Twitter's bad news is a bad business

    People who use Twitter, a service which posts short updates to the Web and cell phones, love nothing more than to Twitter about themselves, and the medium they've so enthusiastically adopted. If you go by the Twitterers' collective reporting, every event, from an earthquake in Los Angeles to terrorist bombings in Mumbai, is more notable for the fact that people are writing about it on Twitter than for its inherent interest as news. The dominant narrative of Twitter is the rise of Twitter, the latest force to displace the mainstream media and roil the world's information economy. Too bad the real story of the company is one of top-to-bottom incompetence. More »

    9:00 AM on Tue Dec 2 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    13,080 views, 47 comments

    Most discussed sample032: "...Twitter faces large bills from cell-phone companies which charge it for forwarding text messages to cell phones" Someone from Meebo told more »

  • yahoo

    Icahn buys more Yahoo shares, considers H-P exec for CEO gig

    Jerry Yang's least favorite investor bought nearly seven million more shares of YHOO. BoomTown reporter Kara Swisher did my homework for me again: Todd Bradley, head of H-P's $28 billion Personal Systems group, has been added to the list of potential Yahoo CEOs. Just to keep things complicated, the board my appoint an interim CEO to give off the appearance of someone actually doing something at Yahoo.(Photo by AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

    9:35 AM on Fri Nov 28 2008
    By Paul Boutin
    3,161 views, 5 comments

    Most discussed siliconvalleydropout: cheap stocks icahn just couldnt help himself more »

  • yahoo

    If only Yahoo would listen to Kara Swisher, she might stop emailing me

    "Yahoo striking a Microsoft search deal first makes more sense" than closing a merger with AOL, writes overproductive BoomTown blogger Kara Swisher. Tracking the complicated, self-conflicting relationships between Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and Google is like trying to read Prince Valiant without a cheat sheet. Swisher's latest megapost fills in more details, but doesn't lead to anything more definite than "both Yahoo and AOL have to get to the core of what they are and are going to be." Ah, more layoffs.

    3:05 PM on Tue Nov 25 2008
    By Paul Boutin
    2,636 views, 8 comments

    Most discussed cgsofly: [face palm] ugh. Sometimes I wish yahoo and aol would just disappear. more »

  • spamhaus

    Microsoft now 5th worst ISP for spam

    "Spammers and scam artists are abusing Microsoft's live.com and livefilestore.com properties to redirect visitors to sites that peddle fake pharmacy products, porn and Nigerian 419 scams." That's how WaPo security blogger Brian Krebs explains Microsoft's appearance on the list of Top 10 Worst Spam Service ISPs maintained by the non-profit Spamhaus Project. Krebs got a non-denial denial from Microsoft that overlooks the fact that many of the scams have been high-profile examples for months. As Krebs points out, even the directionless dweebs at Yahoo (I'm paraphrasing) fixed this problem on their own sites.

    3:19 PM on Fri Nov 21 2008
    By Paul Boutin
    548 views, 1 comment

    Latest by deluxe2000plus: Directionless dweebs at Yahoo rock ! more »

  • steve ballmer

    Microsoft: "We are done with Yahoo"

    Microsoft's chair-hurling 800-pound gorilla slammed the door on talk of a renewed Yahoo acquisition deal at today's shareholder meeting in Bellevue, Washington. "We are done with all acquisition deals with Yahoo ... We did our best. We've moved on." In business, this often means: We'll be back. For now, though, Ballmer said he'd rather cut a deal to serve Live Search results to Yahoo users — as a vendor, not an owner. Why can he speak with such confidence? Because he's already snapped up Yahoo's key search engineers.

    12:20 PM on Wed Nov 19 2008
    By Paul Boutin
    2,092 views, 10 comments

    Most discussed mew: Microsoft no longer needs to buy Yahoo!. Ballmer probably knew that their original offer would be rejected. By more »

  • exits

    Is Yahoo done with search?

    Among the many windmills Jerry Yang tilted at in his brief career as Yahoo's CEO was his devotion to Web search. It veered on an obsession for him. It played into his decision to resist Microsoft's offers to shower him with cash, first for his whole company, then for just its search business. Is it a coincidence, then, that Yahoo's top search engineer has left a day after Yang stepped down? A tipster tells us Sean Suchter resigned yesterday, and speculates that he may be joining Microsoft. More »

    10:20 AM on Wed Nov 19 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    11,231 views, 15 comments

    Most discussed CurtisHippomedon: Am I to believe Yahoo doesn't have an iron clad NDA with its employees preventing them for working for the more »

  • armchair general

    Fire Yahoo's board!

    After a CEO's ouster, the knives always end up in the wrong person's back. Take how Jerry Yang is being ritually badmouthed now that he's out of Yahoo's top job: Such a nice guy. We all loved him. But he couldn't make a decision to save his life. Now, Yahoo's board of directors is being lionized for giving the nice guy the boot, and heroically engaging in a search for his replacement. But aren't they guilty of the same sins? More »

    12:40 AM on Wed Nov 19 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    4,043 views, 15 comments

    Most discussed TomNocera: Sorry, but CEO's don't have the authority to fire members of the board. Quite the opposite, CEO's are hired by more »