Since you’re reading this site, it’s likely that there’s little news for you in this one. But it does let you see the inside YouTube HQ, a giant bunker in San Bruno, Calif., that used to be the home of The Gap. There’s minigolf and a tiki bar!

The segment also features a lot of YouTube viral clips, including Greyson Michael Chance, whom I’d never heard of before, but he’s apparently going to be the next Justin Bieber.

Oddly or not, I can’t find the ABC clip on Google’s video site itself. So you’ll have to watch it on ABC’s mugly proprietary player.

And here’s Chance, a 12-year-old, doing Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi.”

When BoomTown was kibitzing with SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg about where to meet up this week for a chat to catch up, we decided to forgo the obvious and instead choose the complete Silicon Valley cliche of the moment.

Destination: Redwood City and the now-infamous Gourmet Haus Staudt.

As in, the beer garden behind the German grocery store where the iPhone 4G prototype was snatched off a stool from a birthday-celebrating Apple (AAPL) engineer by person still unknown and sold to the now-police-shookdown Gizmodo gadget site.

In other words, just like going to the Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) or Google (GOOG) garage, but fun and with German beer.

We chatted with a very delightful bartender, who filled us in a bit on the night–about the birthday party, about the funky place being popular with tech folk and about how most patrons believe the smartphone was stolen.

There is a lost-and-found behind the bar, he said, and pretty much everyone returns items left by ale-addled customers.

And, let me just say, if the conspiracy theory types who think Apple planned the whole thing saw this charming, but dowdy, joint, they’d think twice about some fiendish plot by CEO Steve Jobs.

This is a perfect place to lose an iPhone or anything else you can imagine.

In any case, we’ll see how it all plays out in the days ahead.

Until then, although no video was allowed, but here are some lovely snaps from my in-my-possession-despite-the-giant-glass-o-beer 3G iPhone to enjoy (click on the images to make them larger):

Unassuming Front:

Window With Gnome and German Hat-Wearing Lion (Also Beer, Natch!):

Dave Points Out the Obvious:

Dave and the Sign:

More Sign (Nine! No, 11! No, 13 German beers on tap!):

Stools of No Return:

Gemütlichkeit-filled Dave und Bier Nicht Mehr:

Last night, I tweeted: “Good god, pls stop egregiously using this poor lost iphone dude for cheap traffic…sadly, I have to link to explain: http://bit.ly/cK28zb.”

The link led to yet another post on the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media, which bought a stolen prototype iPhone 4G from a still unnamed man who filched it after an Apple (AAPL) engineer left it in a Silicon Valley bar by accident.

This short post, one of many taking advantage of the engineer’s mistake, noted it was his birthday and included the obnoxious line: “Of all the days that you can lose Apple’s secret iPhone…”

Or, to put in a way the maturity-challenged crew at the gadget site might understand: So funny I forgot to laugh.

While people can debate about how Gizmodo behaved related to breaking of the story of the phone, there’s no good argument to be made for the site continuing to make hay from this unfortunate guy in the process.

As I also posted on Twitter: “I love how they act like they are on that poor dude’s side, as they flay him for public consumption. Fascinating if it were not so appalling.”

Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber pretty much summed it up best in a post yesterday when he wrote of Gizmodo’s hypocrisy:

“…Publishing the name, photographs, and personal information of the Apple engineer who lost the phone is irrelevant to the story. It was the dick move to end all dick moves. Gizmodo is, ostensibly, a gadget site. The interest of their readers in this saga regards the phone. Publishing his name did not clarify in the least bit how they obtained the phone. The people whose identities I’d like to know are those who obtained and then sold the phone, not the guy from Apple who lost it. There is no interest served by outing him other than taking sociopathic glee in making a public spectacle of someone who made a very serious but honest mistake.

This, I’m deeply offended by.”

Me too.

Of course, such a thing would not even register with Gizmodo, given that it is the same fact-challenged crepe hanger that was lowering Apple CEO Steve Jobs into the grave before he was, you know, dead.

So to expect it to stop the relentless focus on the engineer seems too much to ask, even if it is the decent thing to do given that this man might lose his job and has definitely lost his dignity.

In any case, of course, this debacle has morphed into fodder for late-night joking on television this week, as in the video below of David Letterman reading his “Top Ten List” on “The Late Show.”

Here’s one plus: At least Letterman is funny.

Last night, I jetted east to Washington, D.C., for an unusual confluence of events: The 25th anniversary of the .com Internet domain name and the Federal Communications Commission’s release of the much anticipated National Broadband Plan.

Both are set for tomorrow in the nation’s capital and both concern the impact of the Web on the United States in the past and the future.

Incredibly, .com was almost .cor, for corporate.

And the first .com address handed out–Symbolics.com–belonged to a now-defunct Massachusetts computer company.

(It signed up via the domain registrar, Network Solutions, which was bought by VeriSign in 2000. The Symbolics.com domain was sold in 2009 to Missouri-based XF.com, which “operates commercial real estate and premium domain properties.”)

In honor of the anniversary, VeriSign (VRSN), which administers the .com registry, is hosting a policy forum in D.C. It includes a keynote address by former President Bill Clinton, as well as some panels.

I will be moderating the one in the afternoon titled “The Next Generation.” The panelists, looking to the future, include, among others: Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post; Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO of the U.S.; and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures.

There will be another gala event to honor Internet innovators in San Francisco in late May.

While the growth of .com was slow until the browser became popularized–numbering under 15,000 in 1992–there are now close to 85 million .com domains. This commercial one is clearly the most important of the designations, both financially and perceptually.

Still, despite how much impact the Internet has had globally, spurred mostly by innovation in the U.S., this country still remains woefully behind in high-speed access to the Web.

While it is easy–and fun–to blame the greedy telcos and cable companies (and they do deserve some of the blame), the lack of a federal imperative has been the most appalling explanation.

It is as if the federal government had decided dirt roads were preferable to the highway system or tin cans and string were better than universal telephone access.

Will making broadband access easy, fast and cheap for most people in the U.S. be the end result of the National Broadband Plan, to be officially unveiled by the FCC tomorrow?

As I wrote last week:

“The two key questions about the effort to get the United States up to speed, so to speak, with decent digital access: Will it be toothless or not and will there be any money to pay for it, given the cash-strapped federal government?”

A possible highlight of the plan concerns whether spectrum should be allocated for a free or inexpensive high-speed wireless service, as well as restoration of some regulations lifted in the previous Republican administration.

But the main focus will be that the U.S. needs high-speed access to improve dramatically across the nation, especially for poorer citizens and in rural areas.

After a quarter-century of .com, the growth of a trillion-dollar industry from one punctuation mark and three letters, and badillions of page views, you would think this would be glaringly obvious to our federal government.

You should think it would.

Earlier this week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was all over the place talking up the company on the occasion of its 15th birthday.

Here’s a video of a longish interview she did with CBNC, embedded below, where she cracks wise a lot, but says little.

My favorite part: When the interviewer oddly asks if Yahoo (YHOO) is a trinket and Bartz pipes up that it is a bracelet!

Thankfully, we have the critical jewelry issue around Yahoo settled.

Bartz also gets a good one off about Facebook’s lack of revenue compared with Yahoo, after being asked why Yahoo was not as hot as the social networking phenom.

“Remind me, what’s their revenue?” she asked.

Bartz’s week also included a lunch with a group of reporters at its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ–pretty much Lady BoomTown and a dozen dudes–Tuesday, at which she talked about a range of things, offered Sprinkles cupcakes and broke no substantive news.

She did give good quote though.

Bartz, for example, said she didn’t “wish antitrust on anybody,” when asked about Google (GOOG) and its issues with regulators in Europe.

She also noted, talking about the search giant’s recent conviction in Italy and its potential impact: “The [European Union] concerns me.”

But when talking about Google’s threat to leave China over censorship issues, Bartz was less kind. “It looked to me like it was more of a statement than an action,” she said. “If they wanted to pull out, they should have pulled out.”

Perhaps the most controversial remark was when she seemed to compare herself with Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, pointing out that his innovative turnaround of the iconic Silicon Valley computer company took a lot of time after he returned in 1996.

“He knew the DNA better than anyone and it took him four years,” she declared, noting her tenure was just over a year.

Perhaps her most important quote was related to losing search market share and seeing Facebook’s user growth close in on Yahoo.

Bartz said the real point at Yahoo was more “the fight to get ad dollars around relevant users.”

As in, from a jewelry point of view: Finding a diamond in the rough.

Here’s the video of the CNBC interview with Bartz:

Today, Yahoo is turning 15, which makes it approximately 105 in Internet years.

All joking aside–especially since that makes BoomTown 134 years old–reaching this mark is both an accomplishment and a burden, with Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz pushing forward a very deliberate transformation and employing a fix-it management style in her tenure at Yahoo of just over a year.

While the seasoned exec has most certainly gotten the trains running better, sliced off underperforming assets, mounted a new marketing and image campaign and struck several social networking deals–as well as putting an end to Yahoo’s painful turmoil with Microsoft (MSFT) by striking an online advertising and search partnership–some are now wondering if there needs to be a more dramatic facelift at Yahoo to hurl it forward at even greater speed.

It is a velocity that others have been reaching far more aggressively, from the spate of product releases and frenzy of acquisitions at Google (GOOG) to Facebook’s spectacular global growth to Microsoft’s efforts with its Bing search and mapping services.

That’s why, said several observers I spoke to this week, Yahoo’s stock has stayed squarely in a narrow range from $15 to a little over $17 in recent months–steady but without a lot of spark.

“Everyone understands the message of fixing the company and cleaning up the system,” said one person who does a lot of business with Yahoo. “What I think people want now is something more profound and clear in terms of exactly what the company is going to be in the next 15 years.”

Thus, while Bartz (pictured here) has consistently touted Yahoo as one of the most trafficked sites on the Web and as the “center of people’s online lives,” some, including major investors, think Yahoo needs an even clearer message.

One that most mention is to push its status as the premier premium content delivery site on the Web even further, differentiating it more starkly from Facebook, Google and others.

And one particular suggestion that has come up more and more frequently is for the Silicon Valley icon to dramatically demonstrate that by acquiring AOL (AOL), which is also trying to save itself by drilling down on content.

Under CEO Tim Armstrong, formerly a top ad exec at Google, AOL has been selling Wall Street on a vision of becoming a massive content machine to sell pricey ads against.

While the jury is still out on whether it will work or not, investors have been impressed with the effort.

Because of it, more of them think a melding of Yahoo and AOL is a better idea than it once was.

Yahoo made several failed attempts at merging the pair of Internet icons when AOL was owned by Time Warner (TWX). The company has also previously looked at buying Demand Media, another huge online content play.

Now, as a spinoff, AOL’s market valuation is about $2.7 billion, a little more than one-tenth of Yahoo’s.

One investor who has long been high on the idea said that Armstrong (pictured here) has the more pronounced Internet DNA needed to be CEO of the combined entity, as well as stronger talents in the online ad space, while Bartz has the critical executive discipline needed in what would be a very active chairman.

Interestingly, the combo of the two was a thought I heard yesterday from several people attending a marketing communications conference sponsored by the American Association of Advertising Agencies in San Francisco, where Bartz spoke in a session titled “Transforming Yahoo!”

While I did not attend the Bartz session, reviews were mixed, with attendees noting that they wanted a whole lot more inspiring and innovative vision from Bartz, who did mention Yahoo’s recent content deal with Hollywood player Ben Silverman.

“I kept thinking how Tim Armstrong would sell Yahoo,” said one longtime top ad exec. “I know Carol Bartz can fix Yahoo’s ills, but I want to know what she is going to do after that.”

It’ll be interesting to see if this birthday wish ever comes true or not.

In any case, I hope Yahoo enjoys its special day today–here’s a video of my fave version of “Happy Birthday,” by Stevie Wonder, which is in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.:

All Things Digital is not planning on publishing today, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthdate holiday.

Until we return tomorrow, please listen to the famous “I Have a Dream” speech that King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, which is in its entirety below.

As you will see, it is as resonant today as it was when spoken on Aug. 28, 1963, so thank goodness you can see it instantly on the Web.

While there are more famous lines, here’s BoomTown’s favorite:

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

I also included Stevie Wonder’s ebullient song in tribute to King’s birthday, which is simply wonderful.

Here are the videos:

For the last month or so, the Google homepage has played with the famous colored-letter logo by morphing it into a sci-fi in-joke and later adding another “l” to indicate the company’s 11th birthday.

The former–which included logos with alien spaceships and crop circles–was to honor writer H.G. Wells, author of “War of the Worlds” and other science fiction.

Now, a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi–the Indian leader whose 140th birthday anniversary is today–has become the “G” in the logo. (If you click on the image, it links to a search for his last name.)

While the impulse to do so seems hard to resist, I am not quite sure I much like Google (GOOG)–even with good intentions to educate and honor–using the image of one of the world’s great political leaders and peace advocates as a letter on a search service homepage, even if it will be seen worldwide.

(The poor Gosselin kids as a “G”? Oprah as an “O”? Liza Minelli as an “L”? I am totally down with that!)

Then again, I might be a tad grumpy on this issue since I also didn’t like Gandhi’s photo being used in that “Think Different” Apple (AAPL) marketing campaign more than a decade ago, which made him seem like some sort of advertising pitchman.

In any case, here’s the real thing to truly appreciate his impact on this world–Gandhi’s actual voice in his famous “One World” speech in 1931:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Starting today and through next week, BoomTown is headed south down California’s lovely Highway 1 for as much of a vacation as I can possibly take.

Which is to say, just a week off from posting (if one does pop up, forgive me, but it was probably already baked).

In other words: iLike twins, Wenda, Owen, play nice! Yahoos, please hold onto your internal memos. And I hope Apple’s iTablet is not delivered from on high this week while I relax beachside (it won’t be).

This summer has been unusually news-laden for the digital sector–the Yahoo (YHOO) deal with Microsoft (MSFT); all the machinations at News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace, Facebook and Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL; various and sundry Google (GOOG) battles; some tasty Amazon (AMZN) follies; Palm (PALM) Pre-ambulations; and, of course, more Apple (AAPL) hijinks than you can count.

Oh yeah, and whatever Twitter fill-in-the-blank-you-like.

But I digress, and will now return to my annual scheduled programming–a blog-free week with some really interactive time with the kids and family in Santa Monica.

This week is a particularly good time to take time–a big birthday celebration for my Twitter-bashing mother and also a 10th wedding anniversary (an inexplicable event, except to say–given it is me we’re talking about–that I obviously married a saint).

For all that and more, see you in September. (Actually, August 31, but who’s counting?)

And, until then, here is a cool video of someone playing a 45 of that great song by the Happenings on an old turntable:

Astonishing, really, when you think about it. In just 12 months, the App Store spawned a thriving developer ecosystem, a new gaming platform and a half-billion dollar software marketplace, an unprecedented achievement in the mobile world. Certainly, Apple’s rivals have all taken note of the company’s success and adopted similar approaches to distributing mobile applications, though–as Jobs notes–it’s going to be tough for them to ever match Apple (AAPL).

Oh, one last point worth making here. You know Steve Jobs is back, really back, when he’s talking smack about rivals in an Apple press release…

Below, a breakdown of apps by category and a graph of their growth over time, courtesy of 148Apps.biz. Click on the charts to enlarge.

Astonishing, really, when you think about it. In just 12 months, the App Store spawned a thriving developer ecosystem, a new gaming platform and a half-billion dollar software marketplace, an unprecedented achievement in the mobile world. Certainly, Apple’s rivals have all taken note of the company’s success and adopted similar approaches to distributing mobile applications, though–as Jobs notes–it’s going to be tough for them to ever match Apple (AAPL).

Oh, one last point worth making here. You know Steve Jobs is back, really back, when he’s talking smack about rivals in an Apple press release…

Below, a breakdown of apps by category and a graph of their growth over time, courtesy of 148Apps.biz. Click on the charts to enlarge.

Why so reserved? Maybe it’s because Sony (SNE) is struggling through yet  another restructuring, so a big party would seem inappropriate. Maybe because Sony views the Walkman’s birthday as a lot of middle-aged people view their birthdays: Markers of bygone eras and missed opportunities. Or else it’s just Apple’s (AAPL) fault. Associated Press:

The manufacturer, which also makes Vaio personal computers and Cyber-shot cameras, hasn’t had a decisive hit like the Walkman for years, and has taken a battering in the portable music player market to Apple Inc.’s iPod.

Sony has sold 385 million Walkman machines worldwide in 30 years as it evolved from playing cassettes to compact disks then minidisks — a smaller version of the CD — and finally digital files. Apple has sold more than 210 million iPod machines worldwide in eight years….

The archival exhibit shows other Sony products that have been discontinued or lost out to competition over the years — the Betamax video cassette recorder, the Trinitron TV, the Aibo dog-shaped robotic pet.

I do remember hearing some Sony folks mutter hopeful words about a new line of Walkmans that came preloaded with music from Sony artists like Beyoncé and were supposedly flying off the shelves at Wal-Mart (WMT). But that was a while ago, come to think of it, and I haven’t heard about it since.

In any case, just because Sony’s being bashful about the Walkman’s history doesn’t make it less interesting. You can learn more about it at Sony’s online archive, which is compelling despite the fact that it’s a stilted corporate hagiography. Start reading at Chapter 17, part 2: “Listening to Stereophonic Sound While Walking.”

If we were an actual baby, AllThingsD.com would be just about to walk by now.

Hopefully, we have done better than that over the past year and we hope to do even more in the year ahead, attempting to give readers the very best tech news and analysis married with the high standards The Wall Street Journal is known for.

At the same time, we have also tried to capture the excitement and energy of the blogosphere, in what has been an entrepreneurial effort within a major media company.

The site officially launched on April 26, 2007, one year and two days ago.

No presents, but your presence over the next year, as we make even more improvements to our work-in-progress site.

Thanks, of course, go first to my amazing partner, Walt Mossberg, as well as our crack staff (click here to see them in all their glory), partners, designers and all the many Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones folks involved.

To mark the past year, BoomTown could spend a lot of time deeply ruminating on how blogging is so very different than mainstream journalism (much more fun, much less sleep).

Or I could ponder the agonizing quest to improve standards and accuracy in the blogosphere (“I am I, Don Quixote, the lord of La Mancha/Destroyer of evil am I/I will march to the sound of the trumpets of glory/Forever to conquer or die.”)

Or I could discuss widgets and how they have changed my life (I don’t know what I would have done had Scramble not inspired my empty soul!).

But, no!

Instead, I will just re-post here one of the very first posts I had up on that first day, about…drum roll, please…my worries about the situation at Yahoo (YHOO).

I don’t want to say I am a psychic or anything, but in this piece, called “Terry in Turnaround,” I begin my obsessive coverage of the Internet portal, which I thought a year ago could be headed for trouble.

(Interestingly, my other post that day was about Facebook trying to become more mature.)

Here it is:

To: Terry Semel
From: Kara Swisher
Re: Some unsolicited advice on being under fire as the Chairman and CEO of Yahoo! Inc.

Terry baby,

Has it actually been six years since I last shot you a memo offering some thoughts on getting the top-dog spot at Yahoo? Back then, I wanted to be among the first to congratulate you, as I wrote:

…on getting the green light on one of Silicon Valley’s most boffo projects. Or as we say here, on deploying a major multi-platform operating system with a simplified user interface and innovative support services using a world-wide network that focuses on standards-based security, manageability and reliability.

I hope by now you know what all that means and, if not, that you sound like you do. It’s hard to live in one of those tiny cubicles at Yahoo all this time (memories of that swanky Warner Bros. office you once luxuriated in must seem like a dream) without absorbing some of the jargon that techies like to throw around to make you feel stupid. (I know you still don’t know what SOAP is, nor should you.)

But it’s not your geek learning curve I am concerned with right now. It’s these persistent rumors that you might soon be ankling your way out of Yahoo’s HQ in Sunnyvale or even get the big heave-ho from Chief Yahoo (I will bet that even on his craziest day Ted Turner never asked you to call him Chief Yahoo) Jerry Yang and the board or perhaps a passel of irritated investors.

Ingrates! When you arrived at the company, it was gasping for air after the Internet bubble it rode to the top had popped. You cleaned up that place like your good pal Clint Eastwood might take out all the baddies in a troubled Western town, except without a lot of shooting. Your Hollywood reputation as a world-class schmoozer and soother was true–all sweetness and light, but investors loved it.

It was a good plot, but, I think we can agree, not enough for today’s fickle audience. Now, you seem to be box-office poison with a lackluster stock, disgruntled employees and questions about your vision. In other words, you appear to be in “turnaround” in that bad Hollywood way (meaning a film project that has been in development for ages so that it is not likely to see the light of day, let alone a theater). But let’s change the story and make it the kind of turnaround the whole family will enjoy.

First, the big surprise: Rethink your whole approach to search. You have certainly put a lot of powder behind this new online advertising system called “Panama” and have promised big results in upcoming quarters. Maybe it will deliver, but the fact of the matter is that it is likely you will be running behind search leader Google for the foreseeable future. It’s not that they have such much-bigger brains over there (they don’t, except for that one guy they hide in the back) or that the food is better (well, it is), but that Google (GOOG) is and always will be a technology company that dabbles in media. Yahoo is almost the exact opposite, starting out as a directory and not as a technology superstar. All this wrangling with Google in a nerd version of “Highlander” is only going to get you to the reality: “There can be only one!”

While some have been suggesting you get out of search, selling off Overture and doing a big money deal with Microsoft (MSFT) or even, yes, Google, to handle the algorithmic heavy-lifting, I think a better approach might be to spin off the search part of the company, perhaps combining it with a spin-off of Microsoft’s search assets. Thus, you create a separate company that could focus only on making Larry Page and Sergey Brin sweat a little bit. Put it in the hands of a real techie star (think the Brad Pitt of servers), and I will bet top engineers will find a tech-focused outfit more attractive to work for.

Most important, it will free you up to focus Yahoo on what it does best: Media and consumer products. While Google gets all the hip glory, the fact of the matter is your email is much better, as are your mobile doodads, as are all your news and entertainment offerings (pitting scrawny Google Finance next to Yahoo’s mighty site is a fine illustration of what you do best). And when I say media, I don’t mean you have to spend all your time creating stuff–in fact, you might consider throwing in the towel on your Santa Monica satellite–but that you could be the best friend Hollywood ever had. The news business, book publishing industry and most of Hollywood (from television to movies to music) is justifiably scared out of their wits by Google and only more so after the YouTube and DoubleClick acquisitions. It is true that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which I think is a line in some Mel Gibson flick you helmed.

Speaking of acquisitions, go back and give that Mark Zuckerberg the love and $1 billion he wants. Facebook needs to hook up with a big player and fast, because despite its hypergrowth, its advertising ambitions are still hard to reach (even though a few ex-Yahoos are running the show in that department). They need help. Unlike the messy and looks-like-the-wheels-could-come-off-anytime MySpace, it is a really useful, well-made and sticky social network and seems to have a pretty defensible and young audience. As long as you keep things hopping, of course. Even us old folks are looking for a useful and relevant way to stay in touch, and Facebook can easily handle a lot of different communities, unlike many others where it’s hard to feel like you belong without a tattoo. I know it is a lot of money, but you know hiring a star is probably the best way to produce a hit, since a series of indie hits is not going to get you there.

Closely related is a more defined approach to marketing and rewarding customer loyalty. You can’t be a catchall anymore, as it is no longer a reach game. You must try to keep your best customers engaged. Let’s practice this one word: Relevance! What do I mean by that? I mean not turning into the soulless, ad-choked, spamfest that AOL became as it grew. Yahoo has to be relevant to each and every one of its users and that means letting them pick and choose any Yahoo product, even if it is not branded that way. Think Flickr (that was a terrific move) and you have the right idea.

Speaking of Flickr, I got this one off it. One personal aside: I love the loyalty, but can you possibly stop inviting Tom Cruise to Yahoo? It seems a bit goofy, and you’d be better off having some tech legend in from time to time.

There is a lot more to say, but let’s just end with the vision of your friend, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in the third “Terminator,” always kept to his task of protecting the leader of the resistance. Last time I wrote you, I advised you to use that old Hollywood technique of blaming the last studio boss if things went south after you arrived. Clearly, you can’t do that now, given your long tenure. So you have to stick to the course and say loudly you are doing that. After all, it’s not likely, even with the recent troubles, that the Yahoo board has the kind of guts it would take to oust you and there are no angry shareholders massing at the gates (and the last time I checked, even the obstreperous Carl Icahn couldn’t get rid of Dick Parsons at Time Warner).

And if you are going to go, then do it sooner rather than later. Unlike Burbank, Silicon Valley loves failure and even embraces it. In other words, even if you leave, you will eat lunch in this town again.

Tom Cruise/Terry Semel photo by Mitchell Aidelbaum.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.