As Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo puts it, “if you ever wonder whether you company is getting a reputation, just wait for the blogosphere to make fun of you.” And so it has — Greg Yardley has a great faux news release about Yahoo acquiring an unnamed Web 2.0 company “three days before it was to be founded.”
He quotes Chris P. Bacon, Director of Hype Production, as saying: “Yahoo! is committed to generating mass quantities of free public relations by acquiring more pre-revenue, pre-business plan companies than any other global Internet company.” And Hugh Jorgan, newly-appointed Vice President of Pre-Business Development, says: “We’ve been acquiring companies earlier and earlier – before VC funding, before revenue, and in some cases before the completion of their products.”
It wouldn’t be as funny it if didn’t have a grain of truth to it.