Yahoo! hires the Engineers that Motorola laid off in Champaign

How is this for synergy? Yahoo! has decided to open a 100 person engineering center in Champaign. Long know for its ability to produce top-flight engineers, and Silicon Valley heroes like Andreesen, Levchin, Hurley, and Chen, Yahoo! has decided to put down stakes in the area.

As a Yahoo! shareholder, I'm delighted. I hope this is a sign that David Filo (and perhaps Jerry Yang too) is putting his mark on the company in a very positive way.

As a Motorola shareholder, I'm disappointed. As the story notes below, Yahoo! is basically hiring the staff that Motorola recently laid off. From what I was told, many in Champaign were working on the long-promised Linux/Java (or "LJ" as MOT insiders refer to it) platform (translation: richer, faster, better) for the phones. I understand this work for Motorola is now being done in Beijing. We'll have to watch and see how that goes.

Motorola's loss is Yahoo!'s gain. They obviously thought these folks were talented. Good luck to them and Yahoo!

Here's the story.

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