Chan's Personal Blog

You may have heard in the media that Yahoo has laid off approximately 1,000 people last week. To answer everyone's question, yes I am still at Yahoo. I have survived. These are definitely strange and interesting times though. The day after the layoffs, the dust was still settling and we were still trying to get a grasp of who the survivors were. It was definitely very hard getting an e-mail from an international team member who was asking why Ms. X wasn't responding to her e-mail; I had to explain that she wasn't with the company any more.

With Microsoft at the gates of Yahoo, it's definitely hard not to wonder if those who were let go were the lucky ones. Microsoft is definitely doing what it's good at, and that's spreading FUD. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

At this point, the only certainty is uncertainty.

In either case, let me salute those who have fallen. There were some people who should have been let go, and others who definitely shouldn't have. We shall continue the fight, until we can't.

I just came across this really neat project where researchers have visualized Yahoo Search queries. It shows what people are searching for based on their geographical location. This project was created by the Yahoo! Design Innovation Team.


There's a video (requires Quicktime) here of this in action. The visual representation Hurricane Felix searches are quite remarkable and pretty. It'd actually be interesting if they showed the hurricane coming in on the globe, and see how that affected search queries. For example, as the hurricane hit, queries suddenly start lighting up around the world. Another interesting query would be to see what happened search wise after 9/11; however, I doubt they keep search logs from that long ago.