Announcement from Flo-Flo:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/found...ber/036209.html

As usual, more questions than answers. Erik resigned, and is going where? No clue.

What's that phrase "killer-deal with Google"?

Is Flo basically saying "We're doomed."?

Probably. It's possible that Google was open to some sort of arrangement with Wikipedia, and the Board either screwed up, or pissed Google off, or was drunk or something. Then Google went to Plan B, which is Knol — screw Wikipedia, we'll do it ourselves. That's just wild speculation.

So now Flo-Flo is left with Plan C for Wikipedia, which is to never make $60 million a year from Google like Mozilla is doing. They might be able to afford San Francisco — just barely — but no mahogany furniture! Perhaps Google hired Erik and wants to raid more Wikipedians. Google hired a number of Firefox programmers.

All Mozilla's CEO Mitchell Baker can do these days is keep repeating, "We don't need Google, Google doesn't own us!" Then her co-workers pat her on the head, and say, "Now, now, Mitchell, it isn't all that bad. Look at all this nice furniture!"

It probably got too expensive for them to hire their own hit-men, so they must have considered signing up with Google Assassins™ at some point... I thought that was still in beta though, along with Google Blackmail™ and Google Surprise Sex™.

Man, I'm totally going to get us sued one of these days...

a while back there was a potential 1 million dollar donation from Google to the WMF... Jimbo posted asking for ideas on how to spend the money. The deal fell through due to someone missing a very important meeting in NYC.

Ouch! That had to hurt!

Still, the traffic in New York really is horrible, and the subways are absolutely filthy. So you can hardly blame the Google folks for not showing up! Besides, Jimbo was probably busy that week in South Africa, so maybe they sent Carolyn Doran to negotiate with them instead - and since the Google guys presumably use Google themselves...

Wait a minute, I'll bet that's not what actually happened, is it?

I hope not, or it's the worst example of incompetence probably ever.

No... it was someone else from WMF who failed to arrive. He was busy taking the scenic route from the airport rather than taking the train from JFK.

Lets just say that went over like an atom bomb with the board.

So who was this moron that cost Wikipedia $1,000,000? I'm sure this isn't private information.

When was this, by the way?

Someone who doesn't work for the board anymore... a real rad character he be.

Tim Shell? Michael Davis?

What does somebody have to do to get names named around here, Alkivar?

Man, I love a good riddle. Keep 'em coming.

It's got to be Tim Shell. I've never seen a more "rad" personal web page than his.

Greg

Judging from his blog, I'd surmise that he's a hedonist rather than a philosopher.

Real rad or real Brad?

Wow. He appears to have mastered <table></table> technology.

*cough* someone picked it up.