Brickhouse/Pipes

Verrrrrrrrry interesting. Yahoo has started its own incubator in San Francisco, called Brickhouse, to be headed up by Caterina Fake, co-founder of Yahoo-acquisition Flickr. Yahoo’s new Pipes tool, released this week, is the first product to emerge from the Brickhouse crew. Pipes (named after the unix pipe) allows users to plug and play with data input and output, using Yahoo’s web platform and pipe modules. Pipes lets anyone make mashups of data feeds to make applications, such as an Ebay price watch, or an ‘apartment near something’ finder that’s based on user-defined criteria. The more complex pipes (that aggregate a lot of inputs) run a little slow but they deliver impressive results. Another thing that’s cool is that the public library of ‘pipes’ are transparent to everyone – so when you say ‘how’d they do that?’ your answer is right there. If you want to get your heart thumping read what Tim O’Reilly writes about Pipes, Yahoo couldn’t ask for a more enthusiastic welcome.
So, will Brickhouse take Yahoo to the cutting edge? Apparently it will operate as its own brand, so the Yahoo family-search-boring stigma won’t hang over their heads. Maybe the environment at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale campus was getting too stuffy for the innovators on staff to develop anything hype-worthy. And surely Yahoo is feeling the heat as Google Labs makes news with their almost monthly feature launches. Cynics have suggested that Yahoo’s bid to open it’s own startup shop is just an attempt to fight the brain drain that’s luring their talented engineers back into the young and exciting Web 2.0 job market. But what would be wrong with that? The people who brought Pipes to life should benefit from whatever incentive plan Brickhouse has for breakthrough developers, it better be good.