[danw]

"Why doesn't Yahoo take a few million dollars in seed money and start a bunch of companies under its own umbrella using some of its own people?"

They did, it was called Yahoo Brickhouse. Yahoo closed it in 2008[1]. I'd love to know more about what did and didn't work there

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2008/dec/11/yahoo-mobile...