PDPC Yahoo acquisition

It is with great fanfare that we announce the Yahoo acquisition of the PDPC, and by extension, freenode. After much deliberation, we have decided to accept Yahoo's offer to purchase the freenode irc network and associated resources for the amount of  approximately £2,700,000.00 in yahoo shares.  At present it is expected that all current network staff will remain in place while certain yahoo employees will be added to the mix.

Yahoo intends to leverage our large user base and experience with operating large networks to supplement their existing yahoo chat functionality, and eventually replace it with a hybrid ircd designed for the large numbers of users they have in mind.  We are very excited at what this future may hold!

What this means for you, the users of freenode, is that you'll have access to great new search technology right from irc! With the introduction of yahoo search into our ircd, you'll be able to easily search the web from any channel on the network and display results right there, saving you and everyone else in the channel the time and trouble of browsing to yahoo, the worlds premier search engine, first.

Additionally, we'll soon be implementing live phone support with the help of Yahoo call center employees based out of India.  We are very excited about this prospect and about improving response to our users through it!  Once the call center technology is fully in place, the #freenode channel will be shut down and all support requests will be handled via email and phone support.

Stay tuned for more updates, and as always, thank you for using freenode!