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Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

nytimes.com

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Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#111

Post by simula67 »

dmix wrote: post #98
dghughes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is why: List of Yahoo!-owned sites and services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yahoo!-owned_sites_and...

I forgot they bought Tumblr = 50 million visitors/month https://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com/ Yahoo Answers is still a big useless SEO machine = 50 million users/month https://siteanalytics.compete.com/answers.yahoo.com/ Yahoo Sports is very popular from what I understand = 12 million users https://siteanalytics.compete.com/sports.yahoo.com/ Yahoo Finance, ditto = 14 million visitors/month https://siteanalyti…

Except for Finance and maybe Tumblr, aren't all these services fading ?

* Yahoo Answers

Quora ( 100M users [1] ) and Stack Exchange is now the default question & answer sites.

* Yahoo News and Yahoo Sports

Google news and search ( 44% of Google searchers scan the news results [2] ) already provide these features. I used to use Yahoo Live Scores, but now I use Google.

* Yahoo mail

Gmail ( 1B users [3] and grew 100 Million users just last year )

* Flickr

Google Photos ( 100M users in 5 months [4] )

It seems like Google Finance is losing [5] as they see it as part of search but it appears there is a need for a good separate product here. Tumblr looks to be a runaway success ( 227 million registered accounts, more than double the number of accounts a year prior and more than 37 million unique visitors [6]), no match for Wordpress yet ( WordPress.com records 126M unique visitors per month [7] ), but the social aspects looks to work in Tumblr's favor.

[1] http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/21/quora-claims-10-of-u-s-pop...

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/19/outsell-google-news/

[3] http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/01/gmail-now-has-more-than-1b-...

[4] http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/20/9576713/google-photos-100...

[5] http://www.businessinsider.com/google-finance-yahoo-finance-...

[6] http://www.statista.com/topics/2463/tumblr/

[7] https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpres...

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#113

Post by gcb0 »

every time I missclick a New York Times link in my no-JavaScript mobile browser the site manages to redirect me back to the referrer url I was at. it's really uncanny. I click a link on HN, and after a page load, I'm back at hacker news.

except this one link. what should I think of that? why that single link is different than ever other nytime.com links?

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#114

Post by gcb0 »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #59
sb057 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you mention Alibaba. I did a little digging, and it turns out that Softbank (who owns ~35% of Alibaba to Yahoo's ~24%) has a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan. Very interesting stuff.

Yahoo! Japan is a separate company from Yahoo, Inc. It was formed as a joint venture between Yahoo, Inc. and SoftBank, thus both of them holding a stake.

and what reason it had to jump on alibaba?

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#116

Post by sytelus »

verganileonardo wrote: post #10
yalogin wrote: post #2

Doesn't Buffet famously stay away from Tech? What changed? He is buying Yahoo and has invested in Apple.

He is not buying equity in Yahoo, he is lending money to the actual buyer and will receive interest on that lending. (Which is much more secure)

So he is assuming Gilbert & company would be able to turn Yahoo around, churn out some cash and pay the interest? That would be very long shot given the history.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#117

Post by easytiger »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #107
tosseraccount wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/yahoo-qua... Yahoo announced falling revenues and a quarterly loss of $99.2m on Tuesday - from April 19, 2016

Just one quarter due to accounting. Annually quite profitable. Ugh, I wish the Guardian was more financially literate.

> Ugh, I wish the Guardian was more financially literate.

Then how could it bend the facts to meet their bias?

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#118

Post by lmm »

samstave wrote: post #36
howlingfantods wrote: post #31

Buffett is no fool. Berkshire is providing the financing to Dan Gilbert's group and will receive guaranteed interest as well as an option to convert to equity. I'm sure that financing is jammed packed with warrants and covenants. Buffett has basically parlayed the prestige of his name into sweetheart deals with provisions that no other company could get (eg. his investment in Goldman Sachs).

But who cares about yahoo? (Serious question) yahoo should just die. Please tell me why it shouldn't

They run a whole bunch of really useful services. Their personalized homepage is still great.

If they would just maintain what they've got and stop swinging for the fences - turn into something like the Apache Foundation was in their early years - they'd provide a lot of value for a lot of people.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#119

Post by lmm »

simula67 wrote: post #112
gtk40 wrote: post #52

Looking forward to a redesign of Yahoo! to match Berkshire Hathaway's website: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

I can't believe that is the website for the company which made Buffet the second richest man on the planet.

It works. It's not overdesigned. Compare http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ , or think back to how amazon or ebay's pages looked for the longest time. More pages should look like that.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#120

Post by taejo »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #30

I find these things amusing "according to people who aren't authorized to speak publicly" except that they are talking to a reporter so that's kinda public. But really what they want to do is let potential other players know that "oh yeah, its real, we're bringing it and we're gone sell this thing, if you want a piece of this you better wake up and call us or your going to lose out." kind of vibe which attempts to in…

> I find these things amusing "according to people who aren't authorized to speak publicly" except that they are talking to a reporter so that's kinda public.

But unauthorized. That's the point.

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