For those who were confused (as I was), Prabhakar Raghavan wasn't the one who recently died, it was his co-author in Randomized Algorithms, Rajeev Motwani.

BTW, I highly recommend their book. In it is all the evidence of the genesis of Google.

hacking != science

Yahoo needs to compete on product, not algorithms.

Yahoo Mail did nothing while Gmail made continuous progress towards a great product and earned market share.

Yahoo did nothing while Twitter grew into a monster. Yahoo could have crushed Twitter if they had simply adapted or expanded YIM while Twitter's servers were flailing.

Advertising is the one area Yahoo has retained some leadership (rightmedia), but they aren't blinding the competition with that science.

Yahoo needs creativity. It needs product vision. It needs to stop resting on prior accomplishments and start building if it wants to recapture the attention of consumers.

Science should be a supporting character to creativity.

Whenever I hear "pure science" I think of this:

http://www.vonnegutweb.com/catscradle/cats_nytimes.html

That's some prompt paid advertisement to reply to PG.

I hope they take it seriously though.

I see no reason to believe it's paid - do you?