Yahoo! Inc. | The New York Observer

Silicon 'Valley Girl' Gets Tough With Times

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:07:33 -0400

Sarah Lacy is a freelance business reporter and a fixture on the Silicon Valley scene. Gawker media mini-mogul Nick Denton once called her “the hottest reporter in the tech world—ever.”

So when she conducted a video interview for Yahoo with Elon Musk, the futurist in chief behind fledgling electric car company Tesla, she was on familiar ground. Very familiar!

At the top of the interview, Ms. Lacy brings up a Randall Stross column that had appeared...

Yahoo!'s Jerry Yang Steps Down as C.E.O.

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:44:14 -0500

Last night, purple-pushing internet company Yahoo! announced that co-founder and C.E.O. Jerry Yang would be stepping down from his management role, which he's had since June 2007. Mr. Yang will continue to sit on the company's board and take back his old title (we kid you not): Chief Yahoo!.

Jessica E. Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal framed it as follows:

Yahoo Inc. co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang will step down after the...

Yahoo! Pitches Digital Ads with Don Draper

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:16:11 -0400

Yahoo! and Jon Hamm (Don Draper on Mad Men) broke out the whiskey yesterday in celebration of APT, the media company's new digital advertising system (check out the site here). At a press conference in New York, in celebration of Advertising Week festivities, Mr. Hamm joined Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker to talk about how much easier and faster companies can buy online ads with the Web-based service with a drag-and-drop...

Bloomberg Plugs Hybrid Taxis, Yassky

Tue, 22 May 2007 11:00:04 -0400

In case you missed it, Mike Bloomberg was on The Today Show this morning to announce that the city will phase in hybrid vehicles into the city’s taxi fleet over the next five years as part of his overall effort to reduce local pollution.

The mayor was joined by two other guests. One was Yahoo’s Vice President of Marketing, Patrick Crane, whose company donated 10 hybrid taxis to the city.

“And,"...

The Other Maureen

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 10:03:09 -0500

Anybody who shares a name with an elected official, candidate, or press aide, can sympathize with Maureen Donovan whose last name is one letter off from the very busy press aide to congressman John Sweeney (of the infamous 911 calls). Here's Donovan's automated response to from Donovan's Yahoo account:

If you are trying to e-mail Maureen Donovan w/info re: political campaigns, news stories, or visits to NYC, you have the wrong Maureen Donovan! From...

Gore-TV, Yahoo! To Partner Up on Web Videos

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 20:00:00 -0400

On Sept. 20, Al Gore’s Current TV network plans to announce a partnership with Yahoo!, according to two sources familiar with the deal. That coupling will mean a higher profile for the tiny, quirky 24-hour network—channel 103 on the Time Warner dial. Current debuted a year ago to raised eyebrows and predictions of imminent demise. The Yahoo! partnership should drive traffic to Current’s already bustling Web site, where independent video producers post finished programs,...

New York Harbor's Beaches. Yes, You Heard That Right

Tue, 30 May 2006 04:33:27 -0400

Yahoo/AP has a good story this morning on plans to create a beach on the Hudson, at Piers 52/53. The story misses a growing movement led by boaters to revive the city's beaches. For instance, the argument is raging now in Community Board 1 over providing access to a beach on the East River just below the Brooklyn Bridge. This beach exists already, and is about 250 feet long—but barriers make it impossible...

Eden Responds

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 07:48:19 -0500

Daily News editor Dawn Eden writes in response to criticism of a recent piece in her section that, to me, seemed to gloss over the politics of abortion, and that led a reader to apparently discover that the profile subject was spreading misinformation: "Moral rehab for reporters" --I like that. Thanks for the plug, Ben. Regarding Ms. Chapman’s grievances, I stand by Colin O’Brien’s excellent story. As the story states, abortion is not Bridge to Life’s mission....

Hacks of Passion

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 19:00:00 -0500

On a slow night, Anne, a 23-year-old assistant at an art consultancy, will get drunk at home with her friends and, instead of watching a movie or gossiping about men, they'll break into one of their old boyfriends' e-mail accounts. "My friends and I have a few glasses of wine, and it's like, 'Let's go read [his] e-mail!'" Anne said, making an inbox sound like a pirated cable box-free of charge, only slightly criminal...

Eight Day Week

Sun, 03 Aug 2003 20:00:00 -0400

Wednesday 30th

Sit down, folks, because Joan Rivers is doing stand-up again , even if it hasn't always been a picnic. "One time some asshole from the New York Post came in to see a show and later wrote, 'Old stuff! It was all old stuff,'" Ms. Rivers told us. "And I was like, 'Not one fucking line is old stuff, you idiot! It was all new!' That hurt...

Holly's Nine Lives: Lehman's Internet Analyst Rises Above the Bust

Sun, 17 Dec 2000 19:00:00 -0500

It's another down day for Internet stocks, and Lehman Brothers'

star Internet analyst Holly Becker is hard at work in her spare corner office at 3 World Financial Center. Her screens flash a blinking red before her: Yahoo down 5 percent, eBay down 7 percent, Amazon minus 3 percent, AOL down, too. Ms. Becker's face remains coolly placid; her voice, conference-call honed and a little high, registers no emotion as she goes through her paces on her first client call...

Fear of Driving: Merging With the Dark

Sun, 02 Apr 2000 20:00:00 -0400

I have often wondered if Manhattan might be a better place without any automobiles. Trucks, taxis, buses and prom limousines would be permitted, but no personal cars. No obnoxious S.U.V.'s, no ironic 70's gas guzzlers with kitsch dangling from the rearview mirror, certainly no Bugs of any vintage. People would walk around, get to know each other, there wouldn't be that whole double-parking controversy where the police get to do it but no one...

Hacking Away Just For … the Hell of It?

Sun, 20 Feb 2000 19:00:00 -0500

It's a little hard for this preflood lady to understand the kick. Why did this herd of hackers jam up Yahoo exactly? Because it was there? Because they could? Because they were protesting, expressing ire against things running loose in cyberspace, against people ordering socks from J. Crew or making e-trades between folding the laundry and the afternoon siesta? Is somebody mad that somebody else is wired to the mall or can sell that...

A Tout With Clout Gives Cheesy Boost to a 'Mini-Yahoo'

Sun, 19 Dec 1999 19:00:00 -0500

Old-School Eakle Hypes a Client, With Some Help From Dan Dorfman

Richard Eakle is a busy man. He's the president of Eakle Associates, a Fair Haven, N.J., hedge fund advisory firm that counts George Soros among its clients, and he runs a $50 million portfolio he says is up 206 percent this year. A former technical analyst for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, his views and investment ideas have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and...

Envy Hits New York's Web Workers in the Greedy I.P.O. Rush of '99

Sun, 18 Apr 1999 20:00:00 -0400

It's 1999, and the Internet stock boom is flooding Silicon Alley, New York City's "new media" zone, with crazy money. Suddenly, 24-year-olds like Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman are worth more than $50 million apiece on paper since their company, Theglobe.com Inc., went public in November. Twenty-seven-year-old Bo Peabody made a similar paper fortune when he sold Tripod Inc. to Lycos Inc. in February '98. A decade ago, they would have been "Masters of...