Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

reuters.com

61–70 of 315 posts

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#61
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone wanted a real answer, it's just advertising, as it has always been: http://static.tumblr.com/7drgjla/386nnw4n9/yahoo_inc._2014_a... "We generate revenue principally from search and display advertising on Yahoo Properties and Affiliate sites, with the majority of our revenue coming from advertising on Yahoo Properties. Our margins on revenue from advertising on Yahoo Properties are higher than our margi…

The REAL answer is "a tax efficient proxy for holding Alibaba shares".

This is the correct answer.

Matt Levine did quite a long writeup about this a while back: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-17/how-can-yah...

Taking an uncharitable view, Yahoo!'s core business actually has negative value -- and the current round of layoffs is a direct result of Wall Street pressure to stop subsidizing said core business and preserve the value of the Ali Baba stock.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#62

Yahoo is #5 web site: http://www.alexa.com/topsites Yahoo netted $7B : http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO+Income+Statement&annual Big, mature companies have to go through layoffs now and then; get rid of the dead wood. What's the problem?

They recorded $10B from alibaba shares, They broke even on actual operations.

http://i.imgur.com/f23T3Xc.png "Gain on sale of Alibaba Group ADSs"

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#63
post #51

Yahoo is #5 web site: http://www.alexa.com/topsites Yahoo netted $7B : http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=YHOO+Income+Statement&annual Big, mature companies have to go through layoffs now and then; get rid of the dead wood. What's the problem?

My thoughts are similar - they dont have one united vision about who they are, but they do have several successful internet properties - finance, sport, tumblr, flickr and more. It seems clear now that marissa is not capable to completely transform the company, but by doing incremental optimalization they can do just fine over time.

Flickr was incredibly successful at one point, but it has been slowly dying for years. I used to pay for Pro features there but one day they emailed saying that free accounts were now good enough. So revenue must be reduced since then. And what replaced it is a bunch of porn collectors. Ten years ago there was a community of photographers there. Now the only "likes" I get are on a couple pictures that happen to have nudity or a girl in handcuffs (actual police handcuffs, now reimagined as kink). Most of the people who try to follow me there don't even share a single photo themselves...they use Flickr to catalogue their fetishes.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#64
post #36
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, IMHO, is the crucial point: what exactly is Yahoo's business? As an outside watcher I have no clue (I am also stupid). Hopefully people working there have better insight than myself.

I've never paid much attention to Yahoo!. It might be that cheesy logo just made me discount their seriousness when they started. Like when the print Wired was first out, they had different text colors and fonts, sometimes in the same paragraph. I think Yahoo's business has been to be the internet, but they never noticed that other companies and services took that all away from them piece by piece. Now they're just a…

The most valuable part of yahoo to me is groups.yahoo.com. It's works somewhat like USENET, but includes a group-specific files section. There are some groups with information which exists nowhere else.

It sucks that this is locked into yahoo, but I'm sure it was the most convenient option at the time.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#65

I guess this proves that banning work-from-home didn't solve their problems. Yahoo was the internet destination back in the 90s and into the 2000s until Google started to eat their lunch in search and email. In my opinion, Yahoo's strength was its diversity; it was a one-stop shop for everything internet. You could register domain names, set up web pages, sell items, conduct email, instant messaging, etc. all within…

> I guess this proves that banning work-from-home didn't solve their problems.

I always considered that move to be simply Mayer forcing some attrition without having it declared a layoff.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the severence package. 6 months of salary when it doesn't take 6 months to find a new job isn't a bad deal.

Depends on what you do...it could take more than 6 months, and try being income-less in SV for a few months

In addition: Now the marketplace will be flooded with former Yahoo employees. Up until now I would claim < 6 months on average to find a job (Even in SV). Now... Not so sure.

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#68
post #6

So I guess she did mean something when she said, "No layoffs...this week" [1] Brutal. [1] http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/marissa-mayers-job-safety-joke-...

It gets worse.

Marissa Mayer accidentally fires dozens of employees: http://nypost.com/2016/01/30/yahoos-marissa-mayer-accidental...

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#69
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone wanted a real answer, it's just advertising, as it has always been: http://static.tumblr.com/7drgjla/386nnw4n9/yahoo_inc._2014_a... "We generate revenue principally from search and display advertising on Yahoo Properties and Affiliate sites, with the majority of our revenue coming from advertising on Yahoo Properties. Our margins on revenue from advertising on Yahoo Properties are higher than our margi…

The REAL answer is "a tax efficient proxy for holding Alibaba shares".

In terms of actual money, that's not wrong. The core operations are at about break-even per the 2014 report:

http://i.imgur.com/f23T3Xc.png

Re: Yahoo to cut 15 percent jobs, close several units

#70

I guess this proves that banning work-from-home didn't solve their problems. Yahoo was the internet destination back in the 90s and into the 2000s until Google started to eat their lunch in search and email. In my opinion, Yahoo's strength was its diversity; it was a one-stop shop for everything internet. You could register domain names, set up web pages, sell items, conduct email, instant messaging, etc. all within…

>Yahoo's strength was its diversity; it was a one-stop shop for everything internet.

I consider that its greatest weakness.

It didn't do any of these things particularly well. So focused competitors (Google, GoDaddy, eBay/Amazon, Skype/AIM, etc.) eventually took over and dominated. Yahoo never really retaliated by making their services any better. In fact, I can't even think about any major overhauls to any of Yahoo's various products. They've come out with a few nifty things (none of which I can even remember by name) and that's all I can remember about them since 2003-2004. In 2012 I was surprised to hear they were still in business, to be quite honest.

Post reply on HN