Tangan-tangan Yahudi Dibalik Internet

The Jewish hand behind Internet

Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, MySpace, eBay...

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Wikipedia

What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is an Internet encyclopedia that anyone can edit and add information.

Wikipedia claims its articles are based on a "neutral point of view" but as it is human beings writing the articles, of course the contents quickly have been mixed up with politics. For instance organization like CIA have tried to affect the entries (see BBC:s "Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits' "), and big companies try to control the information on themselves. And Israel and its army of "cyber-soldier" Jews from all over the world are now doing the same...

The Wikipedia project has ended into control of student research on the Internet.

The situation is now that the majority of subjects Googled will show Wikipedia as the top - or one of the firts top results - and thus Wikipedia will get the majority of the hits.

And as shown in our section on Google this Internet search-engine is well in the hands of Zionist Jews and also cooperates openly with Zionist organizations such as ADL and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to control the searches and censoring information and certain sites.

This means that apart from Wikipedia other sites may be censored when Googling any given subject.

Wikipedia´s Jewish founders - Wales and Sanger

From all the available information it appears Wikipedia was started by two Jews, one a programmer, and the other an 'Adult Site' operator.

The origins are in a project called Nupedia launched in March 2000 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

The Jew Jimmy Wales (actually James Wales, or also known as "Jimbo"), with riches from his time as an options trader, became an Internet entrepreneur and decided to create a free, online encyclopedia. He recruited the Jew Larry Sanger, who was finishing a Ph.D. in philosophy at the Ohio State University - whom Wales knew from their joint participation in online mailing lists and Usenet discussion groups - to become the paid editor in chief. Wales's company Bomis, an Internet search portal and a vendor of online "erotic images" (featuring the Bomis Babe Report), picked up the tab initially.

The Jewish computer programmer Ben Kovitz is the one who suggested to Larry Sanger, Nupedia's editor-in-chief, to transfer the online encyclopedia to a wiki support. Larry and Jimmy Wales accepted and from that time, Wikipedia took over Nupedia and became a huge success.

Larry Sanger, one of the two recognized cofounders, is openly Jewish. In their rabblings of what different famous Jews are doing The Jewish Chronicle mentions Sanger in an article "Larry Sanger... creates a new Wikipedia", The Jewish Chronicle, 26 October 2006, p. 10.

Wales is presently in charge. Sanger left in 2002, and is a professor/lecturer at Ohio State.

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales History

Jimmy Wales is the de facto leader of Wikipedia and as thus wields a lot of influence. Time Magazine named him in its 2006 list of the world's most influential people.

Short history: Wales who was born in Huntsville, Alabama, went to the exclusive Randolph prep school, and onto the University of Alabama. Wales graduated and became a Futures Trader in Chicago. Next he opened Bomis, an 'Adult Content' website, which was followed by Nupedia, which morphed into Wikipedia.

Wales is the darling of the Jewish crowd at Harvard, being a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at the Harvard Law School.

What is Bomis.Com?

Basically 'Bomis' is an adult site, started by Wales.

The website featured user-generated webrings and that, according to The Atlantic Monthly (September 2006), "found itself positioned as the Playboy of the Internet". For a time the company sold erotic photographs, and Wales described the site as a "guy-oriented search engine".

Jewish employees

Names like Jeremy Rosenfeld (a Bomis employee), Benjamin Kovitz, Seth Cohen, dot the landscape of technical staff.

Wales´ editing interventions

It should here be noted that although Wikipedia states that it professes a "neutral point of view" the on-line dictionary has even seen direct interventions from its owner Jimmy Wales over its contents. The Herald Sun reports June 30, 2009, in the article "Wikipedia edits helped free David Rohde":

THE New York Times worked with Wikipedia to keep news of the kidnapping of one of its reporters in Afghanistan off the online user-edited encyclopedia.

New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was kidnapped by the Taliban in November, escaped from his captors along with his translator this month.

A number of news organisations, including Agence France-Presse, at the request of the New York Times, agreed not to report the kidnapping out of concerns for their safety.

Keeping the news off Wikipedia was another matter, the Times said.

It said that on at least a dozen occasions, user-editors posted news of the abduction on a Wikipedia page about Mr Rohde, only to have it erased.

Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing, it said.

"The sanitising was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at the Times,'' the newspaper said.

"We were really helped by the fact that it hadn't appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,'' Mr Wales told the Times.

"I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.''

The Times said that two days after the November 10 kidnapping, Michael Moss, an investigative reporter at the Times and friend of Mr Rohde, altered Mr Rohde's Wikipedia entry to emphasise that his work could be seen as sympathetic to Muslims, like his reporting on Guantanamo and his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims.

It said that the next day, an unidentified user, citing an Afghan news agency report, edited the entry on Mr Rohde and mentioned the kidnapping.

Mr Moss deleted the mention, and the user promptly restored it, adding a note protesting the removal, the Times said.

It said the Times eventually reached out to Wales and Wikipedia put an indefinite block and then a temporary freeze on changes to the page.

"We had no idea who it was,'' Mr Wales said of the unidentified user making the edits.

He said there was no indication the user had ill-intent.

The Times said Mr Wales himself unfroze the page after the June 19 escape by Mr Rohde and his interpreter, Tahir Ludin.

Interesting here is to see that people should be kept in the dark of the "security deterioration" and the realites of what is happening in occupied Afghanistan. Instead Wikipedia will help in sanitising the image.

Wikimedia Director Sue Gardner in Israel 2009

Wikipedia chief Gardner goes to Israel - gets advice

Israeli paper Ha´aretz reports 04/05/2009 on how Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia, has participated at a meeting in Israel - a Wikipedia Academy 2009 Conference - organized by Wikimedia´s Israeli supporters and Tel Aviv University's Netvision Institute for Internet Studies. Ha´aretz writes:

Wikipedia editors: Coverage of Israel 'problematic'

By Cnaan Liphshiz

Wikipedia's coverage of Israel-related issues is "problematic," leading Israeli internet researchers claimed Sunday at the Wikipedia Academy 2009 Conference dealing with the world's largest encyclopedia. The conference was organized by Wikimedia's volunteer-based Israel chapter and Tel Aviv University's Netvision Institute for Internet Studies. However, the Web site's leading manager said it merely reflected public discourse.

In demonstrating what he defined as problems, Eli Hacohen, the Institute's director, showed how Hamas is not defined as a terrorist organization in the first paragraph describing the organization on the English site of the reader-edited online encyclopedia, which is the world's fourth most popular Web site.

Hacohen also documented his attempts to define Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a Holocaust-denier. Each time he included his remarks on Wikipedia, users and editors removed the reference - despite Ahmadinejad's frequent and public Holocaust denials.

On a related entry, Hacohen also noted that Wikipedia defines David Irving - a known Holocaust denier - as a historian, although his credentials are recognized by no one but himself. Furthermore, the Wikipedia entry on January's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza describes it as an "intense bombardment" by Israel on a civilian population.

Dror Kamir, a leading Israeli Wikipedia promoter, showed how Lod is not listed as a city in Israel in Wikipedia's Arabic-language version.

Also attending the conference, which discussed Wikipedia's role in academia, was Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia. Gardner told Haaretz that she is "quite comfortable" with the mistakes on the Web site. "I know that more or less the same mistakes can be found in the New York Times," she explained.

On her first visit to Israel, Gardner explained that her attitude stemmed from her framework of reference as a journalist in her native Canada, including a stint as director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Web site.

The boss of Wikipedia thus travels down to the land of the chosen people to be lectured on how Wikipedia can be improved when it divulges information concerning Israel/Jews.

For a collection of images from this event beteween Wikipedia and Israel, see this link:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Academy_Israel_2009

Wikipedia leading editor also goes to Israel

David Shankbone, leading editor at Wikipedia, has been invited by the Israeli Government´s Foreign Ministry to help polish Israel´s image:

Photo Editing Israel's Online Image

By Sharon Udasin, Staff Writer
The Jewish Week, 03/04/2009

[...] But David Saranga, the media consul for the Consulate General of Israel in New York, plans to fight back. After launching a pro-Israel campaign through Twitter.com during the Gaza war and by bringing Maxim magazine into Israel last year, he says he is recruiting the best in the business to revamp Israel's online image.

In just a few weeks, he will bring six American new media experts to photograph Israel, with funds from the Consulate and Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

[...] However, Saranga says the initiative will, hopefully, knock the pictures of destruction much further down the lists, behind photos of ordinary Israeli daily life. And because he has enlisted Internet authorities like pen-named Wikipedia senior editor David Shankbone, Saranga thinks that there is a good chance they'll stay that way.

Shankbone - whose real name is David Miller - first visited Israel in December 2007, when Saranga led a group of journalists on a tour of the country's high-tech and environmental developments. All in all Shankbone estimates that he illustrates over 4,000 Wikipedia articles with his photography.

"The idea is to create a body of work that not only Wikipedia can use but that the general public can use," he said.

Shankbone is not Jewish, but he said he learned extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in school. While he considers himself a supporter of Israel, Shankbone doesn't intend to make Wikipedia a Zionist Web site, and he looks at the Gaza war as a black-and-white situation - Israel had a right to respond, but its mode of attack was not without fault.

Yet for Shankbone, the purpose of his photo expedition is not to document the aftermath of the war.

"People want to talk to you about other things than just missiles," he said.

Ideally, Shankbone said he'd like to end up at solar power plants in the Negev Desert or in a southern city like Eilat, because he spent most of his time up north during the previous trip.

"I particularly like small towns, because my feeling is that anyone can come to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem," Shankbone said.

While on open-source sites, users can add and remove other people's contributions as they see fit, only an administrator can permanently delete the posts from the storage database, Wikimedia Commons. In his three years working as a Wikipedia editor, however, Shankbone said that he has been careful to avoid inserting his own political positions, and readers have rarely altered his content. His collection remains the largest Creative Commons - a Web-based data-sharing platform - photograph community generated by one person, he said.

[...] Critic Oboler, however, questions whether "bringing out people like Shankbone will help directly with the grass-roots, anti-Israel and often anti-Semitic activity that occurs online."

"What it will do is help in the fight for hearts and minds online," he said. "This proactive engagement is also important."

"It certainly isn't going to be the silver bullet," Shankbone agreed. "It does give Wikipedia the opportunity or responsibility to present accuracy."

And while Saranga hopes to change the world's perception of Israel in the long term with the support of every American Israel consulate, he recognizes that, realistically, results will not be immediate.

"At the end of the day, a single activity won't change perceptions; a single activity won't change the criticism generated by the Gaza war," he said. "But what is important is to create a critical mass of positive activities that will improve Israel's image."

The Jerusalem Post writes on the same story:

Leading Wikipedia editor to visit Israel

By Herb Keinon

The Jerusalem Post, Dec 8, 2007

In an acknowledgement of the importance that the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has in shaping opinion, the Foreign Ministry is bringing one of its leading editors, David Shankbone, to Israel next week.

World According to a communiqué put out by the ministry, Shankbone has carried out dozens of interviews of US personalities for Wikipedia, including presidential candidates, religious leaders, rock stars and journalists. Shankbone will be visiting within the framework of a delegation of technology writers being brought to Israel by the Foreign Ministry and the America-Israel Friendship League.

Explaining the rationale for bringing Shankbone to Israel, David Saranga, the spokesman at the consulate in New York, said: "More than once we have faced editors connected to Israel that appear on Wikipedia in English that do not represent the reality in Israel. We decided to initiate a visit by Shankbone to describe Israeli reality as it is."

Wikipedia, according to the Foreign Ministry, is the eighth largest web site in the world, with some 60 million visitors a day, or some 14,000 hits a second.

David Shankbone - whose real name is David Miller - has himself written on his trip in his private user page in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Shankbone/Israel):

Israel

I went to Israel to expand Wikipedia's quality photographic representation and coverage of Israeli-related articles. My trip was reported on in their press:

* Jerusalem Post
* The official blog of Israel
* Haaretz

I also wrote a series of articles about the trip for Wikinews. I interviewed their President, Shimon Peres, had lunch with the President of the Technion and discussed the philosophy of Wikipedia over dinner with Yossi Vardi. Here is the first one.

And if you have a chance-check out Solar power in Israel, which I recently wrote.

Below is a gallery of images I took on the trip.

And here is a nice picture of Shankbone-Miller with Shimon Peres:

Wikipedia´s David Shankbone (Miller) with Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres - the man behind the
Qana massacre of over 100 Lebanese civilians in 1996

Shankbone´s interview with Peres appeared in the Israeli paper Yedioth Aharonoth (here part of the article, reproduced from the Israeli government site http://www.isrealli.org/ - isRealli - The New Blog of the State of Israel):

WikiPeres

By Itamar Eichner

Yedioth Aharonoth, 24 December 2007, p.12

A President with Value: Peres is the First Leader to Be Interviewed for Wikipedia's News Site

The nation's president proved again yesterday that despite his advanced age he has no need to be embarrassed facing politicians much younger than he. Shimon Peres is the first world leader to grant an interview to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

The interview with Peres will be published on the Wikipedia news site, Wikinews and his statements will be integrated into various articles throughout the encyclopedia.

For over an hour, Peres sat with one of the Wikipedia senior editors, David Shankbone. Shankbone, who came to Israel with a delegation of journalists, turned to the Israeli Consul for Media and Public Affairs in New York, David Saranga, and asked to schedule an interview with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Peres. To Shankbone's surprise, it was Peres who decided to take up the gauntlet and grant an interview to the popular encyclopedia. Wikipedia is the eighth most-popular website in the world in terms of daily traffic.

At the outset of the interview, Shankbone told Peres, "We checked among Internet surfers under age 30 and we found that you are the most popular and most recognizable leader in the world."

Peres used the interview for a bitter attack on Iran. "The Iranian economy cannot support the atomic program," he said, "and the world must decide if it is ready for nuclear weapons to fall into terrorists' hands."

Peres was asked his opinion of the younger generation of Israelis. "The 14- 15- and 16-year-olds need to participate in determining the world's future," the President explained. "If it were up to adults, they would want kids to keep dancing the hora or singing Slavic songs, but youngsters don't listen and should not have to. Young women today also wear more risqué clothing than they did in the past and there is no problem with that since they look nicer." Consul Saranga said last night "It was important for the Foreign Ministry that part of the interview was dedicated to subjects other than the conflict [with the Palestinians]."

Shankbone-Miller to return to Israel

In his own blog 2008/07/31 Shankbone-Miller writes that he will return to Israel (http://blog.shankbone.org/2008/07/31/david-shankbone-to-go-back-to-israel-for-wikimedia/):

David Shankbone to go back to Israel for Wikimedia

By David Shankbone

Last December I traveled to Israel where I had lunch with Yitzhak Apeloig, the president of their premiere university, the Technion, and interviewed their President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres (photo, right).

In the next few months I will be returning to the Holy Land for a week-long photography expedition. From the students of Haifa to the dolphins of Eilat; from the vineyards of the Galillee to the Bedouins of The Negev; I will engage in a photographic documentary of the people and landscape of Israel. The goal is to create a comprehensive body of images of the country that are licensed as free content, meaning my work will be available to everyone via Wikimedia for both commercial and non-commercial uses.

Watch this blog for updates.

In his own blog 2009/03/04 Shankbone writes more on his new Israel trip, where he will be joined by "baroness of social media, Tamar Weinberg, and her photographer husband". "Consul David Saranga in the Israeli Foreign Ministry [...] was instrumental in putting the trip together" (http://blog.shankbone.org/2009/03/04/my-israel-trip-covered-in-jewish-week/):

My Israel trip covered in Jewish Week

By David Shankbone

Sharon Udasin recently wrote in Jewish Week about my upcoming photography expedition of Israel for the creative commons. Also on the plane will be the baroness of social media, Tamar Weinberg, and her photographer husband. The itinerary is not set, but I have requested an interview for Wikinews. Because the focus is on photography, most of my writing will take place on this blog where I hope to document the experience. Consul David Saranga in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, who has spear-headed his country's foray into social media, was instrumental in putting the trip together.

My goal here will be to document not just the monuments and public structures that every tourist documents, but also common, every-day features of life and landscape. Cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are not crying out for free media (although they can always use more professional-quality shots). Instead, places like the Arava Valley, the kiryats and the kibbutzes need coverage.

I want to capture life outside the scope of a rifle. That not every Israeli is armed, living in rubble or dodging missiles is lost in a media narrative that filters everything through conflict. The hope is to obtain shots of the country not typically obtained by tourists and photojournalists. Small town and rural Israel holds all the appeal for me.

More tricks to control information in Wikipedia

But corrupting the very top names of Wikipedia for Israel´s cause is not enough. Jewish students, paid by Hasbara fellowships from the Israeli government, are mobilized to edit Wikipedia in a pro-Israel manner.

The images and text below are from a Hasbara newsletter dated May 2007.

Hasbara is an Israeli institution that gives fellowships to Jewish students around the world and also aids them in organizing "Israel Advocacy", i.e. Israel-propaganda.

We also recommend reading the following articles:

Jimmy Wales counting the bucks

* Foreign Ministry out to "conquer" internet
article from Israeli YNet site on a Israeli government photo offensive on Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr

* Photo Editing Israel's Online Image
Israel´s government invites Wikipedia editor Shankbone to help with pro-Israelization of Wikipedia

Yahoo!

Yahoo Jew Terry Semel

Yahoo! in Jewish hands

The Jew Terry Semel was CEO of the search engine company Yahoo! between 2001 and 2007.

During his time as Yahoo! CEO Semel used his position to impress on his fellow Jews. For instance Semel in the shape of Yahoo-boss appeared as one of the main speakers at the Jewish Community Federation in San Fransisco´s meeting, January 25, 2006, according to the organization´s homepage (http://www.sfjcf.org/aboutJCF/photos/album/default.asp?album=blcbreakfast-jan2006&page=1):

300 JCF donors gathered at the Julia Morgan Ballroom to kibbitz and build a Jewish network of business professionals. Featured speaker Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel gave an engaging, personal talk, sharing his views on philanthropy and leadership.

Terry Semel speaks at Jewish Community Federation in San Fransisco

The Jewish site Jweekly.com writes on the event:

Yahoo CEO talks of philanthropy, teamwork at JCF event

Friday, February 17, 2006

By Maureen Earl, correspondent

With more than 420 million users around the world, Yahoo can claim a high spot on the Internet echelon. But it wasn't always smooth sailing for the Sunnyvale-based company.

When Yahoo's chairman and CEO, Jewish Brooklyn native Terry Semel, first arrived at the company in 2001, it had just lost $98 million on revenue of $717 million. Semel was determined to put Yahoo back in the black.

His strategy worked. Last year Yahoo earned $1.2 billion on sales of $5.3 billion - and those 420 million users aren't bad, either.

On Jan. 25 Semel addressed 300 donors to the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation who gathered for the JCF's first Business Leadership Council breakfast.

Semel, once one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood and now one of the most commanding leaders in Internet technology, started the keynote address by announcing that he was not a morning person.

"I prefer to take an hour to reflect and catch up in the morning," he said.

Soft-spoken but authoritative, Semel discussed the importance of philanthropy in business. "Business and philanthropy go hand in hand," he said. "I came from a lower-income family in Brooklyn, yet by the age of 10 or 12 I'd already been taught the importance of giving.

"You need to start kids off that young so that it becomes a habit. To accomplish things you also have to give. At first maybe with time, then later with money, and eventually even both if you are able."At the age of 10 it was a dollar from his allowance; today, Semel no longer thinks on a small scale.

"I now think in terms of hundreds of millions," he said, "but the same principles apply whether it's a two-person philanthropy organization or a giant like Yahoo."

Tikkun olam, repairing the world, is how Semel operates both in philanthropy and business. He recalled how, as an ambitious young man working as a sales trainee at Warner Bros. in the mid-1960s, his boss would arrive shouting and yelling at all and sundry.

"There and then I decided I would not do that. How people are treated is vital."

Semel, who graduated in 1964 with an accounting degree from Long Island University, went on to become chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. During his 24-year career there, Semel and his business partner, Robert Daly, helped shape the company into one of the world's largest media outlets, generating nearly $11 billion in total revenue from businesses in 50 countries.

In 1999, Semel and Daly pressed their hands into wet concrete outside Hollywood's legendary Mann's Chinese Theater. With the executives thus immortalized in Hollywood lore, the ceremony marked the last day of work for the two at Warner Bros.

In May 2001, after an 18-month hiatus, Semel joined Yahoo as CEO and chairman immediately after the dot-com collapse in Silicon Valley.

"I was looking for a challenge. I didn't take the position for the money," he said.

Whether he was looking for it or not, Semel has netted $403 million by exercising Yahoo options and selling shares. He still owns shares and options worth more than $230 million.

The credit of Yahoo's success, Semel said, goes to his staff and their practiced team ability.

"It's always about team. No one wins if it rests on one star athlete. The superstar ideal will not get you to the Super Bowl, it's not sustainable. It has to be the team. And we [at Yahoo] actually like each other - we love the challenge."

Last year Yahoo added 220 people a month and now employs about 10,000. Daniel Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer, said, "Terry's a Brooklynite at heart. He expects a new fight every day."

One of the biggest challenges Semel faces is adapting the company to fit its users' ever-changing preferences.

"The big change in technology is that we used to have someone else program everything for us," he said. "Someone else programmed television, so you watched what was on when it was on. Internet has turned the user into programmers - we want what we want, when we want, and we get it."

On Friday evenings, Semel boards his private jet in Sunnyvale and returns to his family and home in Bel Air for the weekend. There he is able to relax for a couple of days knowing that he has helped grow Yahoo into a company that has the widest global reach of any Internet site.

Not shabby for a man who, prior to joining Yahoo, had rarely gone near a computer.

Semel may constantly redirect attention to his team, but he is very much an individual. "I would not have succeeded had I not been true to myself. I never wanted to be the guy who looks back and says 'I wish I'd done this, done that,'" he said.

Summing up Semel´s pre-Yahoo! career

Prior to Yahoo! - as stated in the article above - Semel worked in Hollywood where he spent 24 years at Warner Bros. As its chairman and co-chief executive officer, Semel and his partner built the company into one of the world's largest entertainment enterprises. Prior to Warner Bros., Semel was in charge of Walt Disney's Theatrical Distribution division and he has also been in charge of CBS' Theatrical Distribution division.

Terry Semel is a friend of Arnon Milchan, the Jewish Hollywood producer with Mossad connections, and was one of the invited att Milchan´s Israel party 2008, a party co-organized by the Israeli consulate (The Jewish Journal, September 25, 2008).

Other Yahoo! Jews

The Israeli Jew Andrei Broder, a graduate from Israel´s Technion Institute, is Vice President for Search & Computational Advertising at Yahoo! Research. Broder also serves as Chief Scientist of Yahoo's Advertising Technology Group. He has previously worked for AltaVista as the Vice President of research and for IBM Research as a Distinguished Engineer and CTO of IBM's Institute for Search and Text Analysis.

David Goldberg was Vice President and General Manager of Music at Yahoo! Inc., since the acquisition of LAUNCH Media, Inc. by Yahoo! in August 2001. David Goldberg is married to and has kids with Sheryl Sandberg, the Jewish Internet boss formerly with Google and presently "second-in-command" in Facebook (see our long entry on her in our Google section).

Goldberg left Yahoo! in 2007.

The Israeli engineer Udi Manber, also a graduate from the Israeli Technion Institute and who we portray in more depth in our section on Google, was chief scientist at Yahoo! from 1998 to 2002. Manber then joined Amazon.com where he became "chief algorithms officer" and a Vice President. He was later appointed CEO of the Amazon subsidiary company A9.com, where he led the company's A9 search engine work. In 2006, he was hired by Google as one of their Vice Presidents of engineering.

Yahoo! and Israel

Semel was in Israel during the festive events 2008, celebrating Israel´s 60th anniversary. Semel appeared as a speaker on Shimon Peres' "President's Conference" in Israel May 15, on the topic "The Revolution of the Internet and the new media", together with Google´s Jewish co-founder and President Sergey Brin. Semel was here to represent his post-Yahoo! company Windsor Media, where he is chairman and CEO.

Susan Decker, the present President of Yahoo! Inc., also attended and spoke at the 2008 Israel conference. Decker is the person that took over the Presidency over Yahoo! directly after Semel.

The Israeli paper Ha´aretz writes:

Facebook, Google founders to attend Jerusalem conference in May

By Guy Grimland, Ha´aretz Correspondent

Ha´aretz 01/04/2008

Co-founder of internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, will join Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Yahoo president Susan Decker at a presidential panel on technology to be held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center May 13-15.

The convention, which was formed at the initiative of President Shimon Peres, will also be attended by a number of Israeli political, religious and financial leaders, as well as academics and cultural figures.

The panel will discuss issues facing technology in today's age and the future, in particular in regard to how it will affect Israel and the Jewish world.

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair will also take part in the conference, as will French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former prime minister of the Czech Republic Vaclev Havel, Nobel Prize Laureate Eli Wiesel, and Georgia President Michael Saakashvili

Other Zionist participants at the meeting were Rupert Murdoch and Maurice Levy, the latter a powerful French Jew with enormous might in the advertisement/publicity business (Publicis, Saatchi & Saatchi), and a man very dedicated to promoting Israel´s image.

The meeting was moderated by Israel´s "technology guru" Yossi Vardi, whom Yahoo! already had business dealings with (see below).

The "President's Conference" figured other speeches by staunch Zionists such as Israel´s Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and "American" agents of Israel such as Dennis Ross and Henry Kissinger.

And the collaboration between Yahoo! and Israel deepens

Here follows three Ha´aretz articles on the subject.

Yahoo! President Susan Decker takes interest in Israel

By Haaretz Staff and Channel 10, May 18, 2008

Susan Decker, the president of Yahoo! Incorporated, visited Jerusalem last week to attend the 2008 Presidential Conference.

Decker oversees one of the most popular Web sites in the world, with more than 400 million page views daily. She is the second highest paid female executive in the United States, with 14,000 people working under her.

Decker suggests that Yahoo! exemplifies the fact that the glass ceiling she was spared is a thing of the past.

Internet giant Yahoo! to follow rivals Google, Microsoft to Israel

By Raz Smolsky and Maayan Cohen

Ha´aretz 14/01/2008

Internet giant Yahoo! is coming to Israel, and not only over the Net. The company is taking its battle for survival against Google and Microsoft to Israel on two levels. It will open a research and development center in Haifa, and will also enter the content side of the business here for the first time through a cooperation agreement with Walla!, which is partly owned by Haaretz.

Yahoo! is following Google, which set up R&D centers in Tel Aviv and Haifa, as well as establishing a marketing center that also deals in joint content arrangements with Israeli portals. Microsoft, meanwhile, has set up a sales and marketing branch in Ra'anana, as well as R&D centers in Tel Aviv and Herzliya.

Yahoo! is now negotiating office space in the Matam high-tech park in Haifa; and is expected to open its research center within a few months.

Google kicked off in the Middle East with its Haifa R&D center in July 2006, despite the Second Lebanon War at the time; the center was its first in the region and only its fourth outside of the U.S. Other well-known companies in the Matam industrial park include Intel, Microsoft, Elbit and Zim.

Yahoo!'s first foray into the Israeli content market is based on a strategic deal signed with portal Walla!. The goal is to threaten Google's hegemony in the Israeli search market for the first time and the real challenge is to compete in search-based advertising.

Under the long-term deal signed between Yahoo! and Walla!, the technology and databases will come from Yahoo!, but the search engine will be branded as Walla! Search, the name of Walla!'s present engine.

Only six months ago there were reports that Walla! was negotiating with Google in the search market, but no agreement was ever reached. Google usually partners with a local search engine by providing the technology and the advertisements, while the revenues are split.

The joint Walla!-Yahoo! venture will continue using Walla!'s AdVantage platform. This will allow Walla! to continue to manage the advertising itself, and it will receive a higher percentage of the revenues than in a deal that also included advertising, such as Google proposed.

According to Walla! CEO Ilan Yeshua: "The search and advertising in search results sector is one of the fastest growing in the world, and also in Israel. The agreement with Yahoo! allows us to offer Walla!'s surfers an excellent search product ... for the Israeli user. The agreement will help Walla! increase its market share in the search-based advertising market. The existence of another strong player in the search and textual advertising sector will contribute to competitiveness , both in the search experience and in the range of possibilities available to advertisers."

Yahoo! and Walla! had previously discussed technological cooperation in the past, but nothing serious came of it. Walla!'s previous management, replaced in 2006, was never willing to allow outsiders to share its advertising revenues.

Israeli Internet advertising was estimated at $90 million in 2007, 10% of the total advertising pie. Of this figure, search engine advertising took about half, $40-50 million, the large majority of which went to Google.

Yahoo buys no-sales FoxyTunes for $40m

By Guy Griml

Ha´aretz, February 05, 2008

Yahoo, the Internet giant that Microsoft wants to take over, is gearing up for its second Israeli investment: FoxyTunes, owned by entrepreneurs Vitaly and Alex Sirota. The exact amount has not been announced, but sources close to the situation say the company will go for between $30 million and $40 million.

The Sirota brothers, new immigrants from Russia, are the big winners in the deal, along with Yossi Vardi and a group of private investors from the United States. Initial investment in the company is estimated at just a few million, and the brothers will be raking in a total of $15 million.

[...]  "We will become part of Yahoo Entertainment, and they will distribute the FoxyTunes toolbar to as many people as possible."

More on Jewish Internet actor Semel...

Semel is currently on the Board of Directors of Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, Emerson College, and the Guggenheim Museum. But he still continues his favourite pastime, which he describes in a Hebrew-language interview in the Israeli The Globe, as:

I'm busy mostly with in searching for interesting companies in order to purchase and invest in, and I'm certain that they'll be heard of in the coming years.

Terry´s daughter Courtenay Semel is also in the spotlight. The Jewish site Jewtastic writes:

Semel Reveals She Was Lohan's First Jewish Gay Lover

By Jewtastic Staff

August 18th, 2008

Lindsay Lohan embarked on a secret lesbian affair with aspiring actress Courtenay Semel before meeting [Jewish] Samantha Ronson, it has been claimed.

Semel - the daughter of former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel - insists she was the Mean Girls star's first gay love.

But she claims they kept their affair secret because of the actress' fear of coming out to the world.

She said: "Everyone thinks Samantha is Lindsay's first lesbian love, but we were very passionate until her fear of being found out drove us apart. At the time she was terrified her career would be over if she revealed her sexual tendencies. But then Samantha came on to the scene and I was dropped."

Terry Semel doing the classic "palms-out" pose

Bagian Kempat: Myspace

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