Nice guy, but kind of an empty suit. One thing people outside the industry don't realize is how hard it is to come to the Valley as an outsider and make a go of anything. The guys in Hollywood think they can cut it because they're in such a nasty business. But they have no idea how evil people are here (cough Tom Perkins) and they have no idea of the scale. Apple alone is twice the size of the entire U.S. box office. And we're just a slice of the tech industry. In aggregate, the tech industry dwarfs Hollywood. There's way more money involved. Guys like Semel come up here and they're just overwhelmed. Another issue is that it's tough to run a tech shop when you're not a techie yourself, or at least, as in my case, you've been around techies long enough to know when they're bullshitting you. From what I'm told the engineers at Yahoo had a running contest to see who could tell Semel the most outrageous lie and get away with it. Best one was a thing they called the Associative Speculative Search algorithm. They had 12 guys from IIT Bombay who were supposedly working on it; in fact they were down in some lab playing World of Warcraft.
As for Jerry Yang, don't get me started. First time I met him I mentioned Frank Gehry and he said, "Is that the new guy they just hired at Google?" Terry Semel at least can go back to Hollywood. I loved him in all those Christopher Guest movies.
Monday, June 18, 2007
I was never very impressed by Terry Semel, to be honest
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
and as Jim's dad in the American Pie movies
Associative Speculative Search algorithm
ASS algorithm!
Nice!!
This is good shit, especially the "outrageous lie" contest.
Eugene Levy/Christopher Guest movies. ROTFL. The resemblence in uncanny. Separated at birth?
I'll bet he really liked his role in New York Minute with the Olsen Twins.
"Bad Squirrel, Bad Squirrel (Boy)
Whatcha gonna do when I come for you?"
Ooops, he got canned. No perp walk for Squirrel Boy. You've been Googled.
But cheer up Terry, I hear Uwe Boll has been pitchin' a sequel. You'll be cast with the Rock in competition for one of the usuals as a love interest/triangle. Think Doom meets American Pie in Pan's Labyrinth with a Strictly Ballroom twist with a topping of Best in Show and a little Starship Troopers to add counterweight.
Remember, Uwe 'the B' Boll put the 'B' back in B-movies. His people are going to call your people to do lunch sometime soon. Lovve teh mousse on those 'brows you mench! Ciao!
wasn't he at the office in santa monica?
steve, you're horrible with geography
he looks like someone just stuck a 'kick me!' sign on his back.
so many in the valley come and go. you remain the same, our fearless sensei. history is often not just written by the winners, but simply by the survivors. in your case, it is both.
namasté, fsj.
Terry yahoo Semel couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag --
unless he googled it ...
Hey all the UDP ports are blocked in IIT Bombay. No WoW for us :(
The Yahoo guys were prolly watching Jenna Jameson or some hentai.
Wasn't he in SCTV with John Candy?
Nice picture of Eugene Levy, that does sound like something he would say. Now on to the point of Terry Semel, he worked in Hollywood and they brought him to Yahoo to help raise profit. All he did was hard ball himself into a corner, he could have owned a giant chunk of the internet if he would have bought Google but he thought it was too much for what it was. He got a deal and declined it because of his ignorance. All I have to say is goodluck and it was not nice seeing you.
Post a Comment