• caption contest

    And in the end the stock you take is equal to the mess you make

    How many ex-Yahoo managers does it take to reproduce a classic Beatles album cover? From left to right: Salim Ismail, Chad Dickerson, Scott Gatz, and Bradley Horowitz. All four were, at some point, responsible for parts of Yahoo's advanced-products group, including the Brickhouse incubator in San Francisco. The band reunited last night at the 21st Amendment bar in San Francisco's South of Market district to bid Dickerson farewell; he is leaving Yahoo to become CTO of Etsy, the Brooklyn-based marketplace for hipster-friendly handicrafts one must nod politely about. Ismail is attending to Confabb, the startup he failed to sell before joining Yahoo; Gatz is now running GayCities, a queer-travel website; and Horowitz is now at Google. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments The winner will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: Naughty Jason L. Baptiste, for "One bubble Pete Cashmore would like to pop."

    4:00 PM on Fri Aug 1 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    1,746 views, 20 comments

    Latest by Snorbalp: If the pizza guy would floor it, he could take out that tool doing the robot. more »

  • we read twitter so you don't have to

    Bradley Horowitz a Yahoo double-agent inside Google?

    What, exactly, is Yahoo's former VP of special projects Bradley Horowitz doing at Google? Innovating! If by "innovating" you mean spending his 20 percent time playing classic arcade games.
    Bldg 44 has a vintage Defender video game. I own high score: 65000. Like riding a bike. Best perk ever.
    A "laissez-faire mess" indeed. Doesn't Horowitz know that with an emulator he can play Defender at his desk and at least appear to be working? (Photo by jakrapong)

    2:20 PM on Fri May 16 2008
    By Jackson West
    1,510 views, 3 comments

    Latest by giddieup: glad to see the high paying workers are earning their paycheck doing quality work. more »

  • journalist math

    Average laid-off Yahoo made $90,000 a year

    Severance pay and "related cash expenditures" will cost Yahoo between $20 million to $25 million, the company said in an SEC filing. Given that Yahoo laid off around 1,000 employees, crude math with these figures suggests laid-off Yahoos walked off with an average severance package of $20,000 to $25,000. Call it $7,500 a month for three months of severance pay. Annualized, that makes being a laid-off Yahoo a $90,000-a-year job. More »

    9:22 AM on Mon Feb 18 2008
    By Nicholas Carlson
    4,129 views, 11 comments

    Latest by BartKela: Frankly, I hope that your OC-80 tipsters were amongst the ones to get RIF-ed. I would be thrilled if I didn't more »

  • 100-word version

    Horowitz says goodbye to Yahoo

    Former Yahoo VP Bradley Horowitz left the company for Google Tuesday. Yesterday, he posted a 1,200-word explanation. Here's the readable version. More »

    5:44 AM on Fri Feb 15 2008
    By Nicholas Carlson
    5,920 views, 13 comments

  • online video

    Yahoo Video relaunches, and hints at video on Flickr

    Yahoo Video has soft-launched a new website, in a move which speaks to both the potential of Yahoo and the company's utter disorganization. It has all the necessaries in the age of YouTube and Hulu: clips created by amateurs and professionals, playlists, and "exclusive" content. The latter, if true, is refreshing: Thanks to syndication deals which allow the endless regurgitation of video from site to site, most of the Hollywood-born clips on the Web are numbingly similar. The site also has a tantalizing promise: Video on Flickr. More »

    10:06 PM on Thu Feb 14 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    2,493 views, 5 comments

    Latest by snidleywhiplash: Flickr was a natural to become Yahoo's YouTube, but once they got merged into Yahoo, the inevitable creative paralysis set more »

  • rumormonger

    Bradley Horowitz from Yahoo to Google?

    Microsoft's bid for Yahoo has many eyeing the exits. But we hear that Bradley Horowitz, the VP in charge of Yahoo's advanced products group, has been plotting his escape long before Steve Ballmer's bear hug made it trendy. Since late last year, he's been interviewing at Google. It's not clear if he'll actually get the job, though. Google's hiring process is legendarily slow, but Larry and Sergey can get things moving on candidates they're keen on. If Horowitz was really wanted at the Googleplex, wouldn't he be working there by now? Or was Google just waiting to oust Chris Sacca, making room for another voluble professional conference attendee? Update: Bradley, we misunderestimated you. TechCrunch reports Horowitz is working on one of Google's most vaporous projects: its OpenSocial widget platform, alongside Excite founder Joe Kraus.

    5:10 PM on Tue Feb 12 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    2,365 views, 3 comments

    Latest by xhooter: I thought he did a good job at Yahoo. He was the sponsor of the Hack culture at Yahoo, more »

  • exits

    Yahoo fires Salim Ismail, far too late

    We hear that Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo's advanced-produts czar, has finally fired Salim Ismail, the head of Yahoo's Brickhouse incubator in San Francisco. Today's layoffs likely provided a convenient excuse to get rid of Ismail, a suavely incompetent liar. Ismail, a failed entrepreneur turned failed manager, was good at one thing: Getting press for products his group had not yet launched. We told you so.

    4:35 PM on Tue Feb 12 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    3,132 views, 5 comments

    Latest by Edinburgh: What advance products? Incubators of what? Endless useless products that go no where while getting a fat salary? Whoever come more »

  • exits

    Scott Gatz's long goodbye

    Brad Garlinghouse's peanut butter memo raged against Yahoo's redundant products. For some Yahoos, farewells are equally repetitive. Scott Gatz, one of Yahoo's R&D managers until he left last month, held a second goodbye party in Sunnyvale today, as boss Bradley Horowitz's Flickr stream shows. Some attendees were puzzled: Didn't this guy leave already? Just imagine what Yahoo could do if it put the same effort into building projects for the future as it did saying goodbye to the past.

    10:19 PM on Mon Jan 14 2008
    By Owen Thomas
    516 views, Comment

  • rumormonger

    Scott Gatz escapes Yahoo Brickhouse

    Rumor has it Scott Gatz, the brain behind Yahoo's search strategy earlier in the decade, more recently heading up part of Bradley Horowitz's Advanced Products Group, will leave Yahoo at the end of the year. Our source, who claims to have failed in trying to hire away Gatz in the past, tells us Gatz always professed to be happy at Yahoo. Apparently that's changed. Why? More »

    4:00 PM on Mon Dec 10 2007
    By Nicholas Carlson
    2,088 views, 1 comment

    Latest by macbeach: Could the reason be that the company hasn't done anything interesting since... I can't think of anything. The only thing the company more »