Today is Jerry Yang’s first anniversary as CEO of the company he founded. There will be lots of bad news coming out about the company in the coming weeks as more executives depart, Yahoo releases quarterly earnings and Google and Microsoft continue to play tug-of-war with the company’s remaining assets.
So as a brief interlude, we bring you this short film, produced back in 2000 for internal Yahoo use only. It’s an 11 minute spoof on the late Steve Irwin’s show The Crocodile Hunter. Holt Lyda plays the lead role - he was at Yahoo until 2003. The script was written by Cynthia Maller, who left the company in 2006.
The movie is funny and shows an innocence that’s long gone at Yahoo. They even get fairly aggressive at the end with a suggestion that the AOL creature is going extinct.
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Surprisingly entertaining
But darn reminded me of Steve-O.
dumbass
I’ll say it again. You’re a broken record.
Check out this blast from the past. Former Yahoo! CEO Jeff Mallett from 2000 or 2001. Seems like a lifetime ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30rSvydLjLo
I’d love to see what one of those videos looks like in today’s atmosphere.
Eh… Sucks when your business fails.
A big one but a Nice video.
Cheers, Nag
These were very ambitious days at Yahoo. The video was originally produced in two days for the Yahoo! Sales Conference.
NOTE: The real kicker is near the end (08:48)… the unedited Crocodile Blunders, which were not shown during the video’s .
- Written, Directed & Starring Cynthia Maller, as Terri Irwin
- Shot & Edited by: Geoff Nelson
- Also starring the legendary Dave Shen & Tim Sanders
Three cheers for Yahoo!, Class of 2000! And here’s to our fine little company’s future success!
HL
This video makes me really happy. I especially enjoy the tagging scene.
I remember watching that on my first day at Yahoo in 2001. Funny now that the behemoths-to-beat was AOL.
Lauren - yeah, the tagging scene was my favorite too.
As a former Yahoo, this gives me goosebumps. It was that fun to work for this company.
Wow, that brings back memories. Thanks for posting it.
OMG! FOURTH QUARTER REVENUES!
LOL
Holt is right that we did this in 2 days (that included the writing of the script), but it was produced for our Yosemite Manager’s offsite in October 2000. Huge props go to my boss at the time, Dave Shen, who gently encouraged me that yes, it WAS possible to write, shoot, and edit this thing in a week. These were wonderful days indeed. Days when innovation, courage, and decisiveness ruled the roost.
-SEMPER PURPLE
Cynthia Maller
Cynthia rocks!
those were great days indeed!
I worked at Yahoo! from 2000-2006 and can definitely say I worked with some of the most talented, creative, innovative team players in the industry, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to see Yahoo! survive this drought to keep developing some of the best internet consumer products out there…
*Siempre Purple*
Man - I sure hope that guy can still contort his body like he did in that video. This is pretty darn funny.
I almost forgot that they used to call groups of properties “pods”. Total 3420-ism.
Funny!
Hilarious. Too bad they are in a bad shape. Call me stupid if you want, but I still believe in the company. It just needs leadership. Jerry, no offense because I only dream of achieving what you have, but please find a real CEO. There is still time to turn the company around and build value.
The early days at Yahoo! were indeed exciting. We were inventing the automobile as we drove down the highway at top speed. Every time we tried something new, people would predict our doom…. only to realize later that we were right. It was crazy, it was intense, it was challenging. I miss it.
AH CAMELOT!
How I miss it!
My favorites:
1. Watching CNBC
2. The summer parking lot parties, the holiday parties, the wanton drunkenness of Europe.
3. Having your stock options go up $60 while you were away at lunch.
Where can I download this video?!
Download? Bill lets just copy it…
Interesting Dan, the way I remember it, we would just launch everything we could possibly think of, everyone would think it was solid gold and our stock would shoot up, regardless of the business model, until we were stretched so thin in production and engineering we hadnt noticed that Google had stolen our cash register.