Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#61

Post by douche » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:03 AM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #53

dexwiz wrote: post #31

Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and boosting one to popularity is somewhat…

> Imagine if Google's last product was Docs. No Android, no Doubleclick, no Street View, no autocomplete in search, no Chrome. Android, DoubleClick, Google Maps (Where 2, ZipDash), Google Earth (Keyhole), and Google Docs (Writely, 2Web, Tonic, DocVerse, Quickoffice) were built of acquisitions, not new Google products. Chrome, too, in a sense (WebKit). Thought experiment: what if Yahoo ! , not Google, had acquired all…

I wonder if I'd be using a Samsung WP10 model, instead of a Galaxy, still using Firefox, and using the Office365 suite. Maybe MapQuest, again.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#62

Post by carterehsmith » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:08 AM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #53

dexwiz wrote: post #31

Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and boosting one to popularity is somewhat…

> Imagine if Google's last product was Docs. No Android, no Doubleclick, no Street View, no autocomplete in search, no Chrome. Android, DoubleClick, Google Maps (Where 2, ZipDash), Google Earth (Keyhole), and Google Docs (Writely, 2Web, Tonic, DocVerse, Quickoffice) were built of acquisitions, not new Google products. Chrome, too, in a sense (WebKit). Thought experiment: what if Yahoo ! , not Google, had acquired all…

They _did_ buy Tumblr and all you ever read about that is Yahoo writing off more of the Tumblr value.

How are their other acquisitions doing?

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#63

Post by trimbo » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:11 AM UTC

elgabogringo wrote: post #57

trimbo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha! Terry Semel is where the "Yahoo is a media company" thing began. http://www.zdnet.com/article/can-terry-semel-yahoo/ http://www.wired.com/2007/02/yahoo-3/ I'm still puzzled by Yahoo's hiring Semel, more than any other executive mentioned in this thread. (e.g. hiring Fiorina for HP made sense at the time).

He was from hollywood, right? No "tech" experience? In some ways he was right. A lot of "tech companies" are media companies now. Was he ahead of his time? A poor exec?

Yes on the two questions, but for as to exactly why the idea failed, I don't know. I'm an outsider to Yahoo, maybe someone who was there at the time has more perspective. [1]

I just remember thinking at the time they hired him (and still think): "I use Yahoo for products like Groups, Mail, Messenger, and so on, why are they hiring the guy who greenlit Batman?"

[1] - Another article discussing the topic in the meantime: http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/6/was-yahoo-s-terry-seme...

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#64

Post by discardorama » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:15 AM UTC

elgabogringo wrote: post #9

Has the valley ever seen a more hyped, yet disappointing hire than Mayer?

I don't know about hyped, but Carol Bartz (also at Yahoo) was the most disappointing. She single-handedly killed Yahoo faster than anyone else. Compared to her, Mayer is a genius.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#65

Post by kalleboo » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:22 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #42

dexwiz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of which are software companies. That is to say they offer hardware and services.

There are very few pure-play software companies. Microsoft is simply alone in its class as a large, pure-play, shrinkwrap software company. Adobe might come close. IBM, Oracle, SAS, PWC, Deloitte, McKinsey, PeopleSoft, and many other firms bundled software with at the very least consulting services. IBM, along with Sun, HP, Digital, and other vendors sold (or leased) both hardware and software, along with consulting…

I would have used Microsoft as an example of a former software company that has started banking on hardware (Xbox, Surface, Nokia)

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#66

Post by throwaway76543 » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:23 AM UTC

theli0nheart wrote: post #22

throwaway76543 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally this occurs when you exercise an option to purchase stock, then hold the stock while it significantly depreciates in value. Fairly common scenario during the dot-com bubble. 1) Option at $1 2) Exercise at $100, spending $1 to buy. Tax on $99 short term capital gains owed, or ~$35. 3) Stock falls to $10 and sold for a $9 profit. You still owe $35 capital gains and spent $1. Net loss of $25 per share.

> 2) Exercise at $100 [1], spending $1 to buy. Tax on $99 short term capital gains owed, or ~$35. This makes no sense. Simply exercising an option is not a taxable event--you're just trading a contract for shares of a stock. There's no money going into your bank account. Furthermore, you aren't taxed short-term capital gains when you haven't realized a profit. You'd need to exercise AND sell at $100 / share for those…

It may not make sense but that's the tax law. You will owe tax on unrealized gain in this scenario -- as others have said it's due to AMT. Check with your accountant.

This is why 83(b) elections are so important. If your employer allows you to early exercise stock you can purchase your options immediately, prior to vesting, and pay tax at that time. Because your option purchase price will be equal to the market value (409A) the net tax will be $0. The 83(b) election is how you declare you've paid the tax at exercise.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#67

Post by tomc1985 » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:29 AM UTC

dexwiz wrote: post #31

Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and boosting one to popularity is somewhat…

That's harsh. There are a handful of top-notch products with great features that I would really like to see stay around in their current form. (Yahoo Finance and Flickr come to mind.)

Plus, while they are what they are now, you can't necessarily deny open-source contributions in the past. YUI is impressive in its scope, for one.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#68

Post by carterehsmith » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:29 AM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #25

cloudwalking wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have no idea what happened at Yahoo. They may have failed two years earlier without Mayer, for all we know.

I thought she was the most qualified CEO they had in a very long time. Yahoo Mail has been a huge driver of their user retention, webmail usage has almost fully shifted to mobile. Facebook has gobbled up a big chunk of display ad revenue along with Youtube and video ads in general. Pretty much everything they can't control sucks for Yahoo.

I don't see how she was qualified at all.

She had one job. And that was in the company she was with from the beginning.

So she had zero experience working anyplace that is not Google, and zero experience as a CEO.

So she is not qualified and it shows.

Example 2: Robert Nardelli. He was such a great leader at GE. Then went to Home Depot as a superstar and managed to fuck everything up. He also never had a job outside GE, the place where he became superstar.

Anyways why anyone thinks that hiring a CEO that had a total of one jobs, is a good idea, I just can't figure out.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#69

Post by jonknee » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:35 AM UTC

dexwiz wrote: post #31

Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and boosting one to popularity is somewhat…

> Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale?

Is Yahoo a software company? They don't claim to be (I think it's currently a media company).

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#70

Post by lsc » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 4:40 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #39

nostromo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple, of course. It's probably the biggest turn-around story of our time.

Apple turned around by moving much more heavily into consumer hardware, specifically the iPod and then the iPhone and iPad. It was not really a software turnaround, though that was a smaller part of it.

was it, though? I mean, none of the apple hardware is amazing, and today, it's not even really different, but... the software mostly works, and for computers? that's amazing.

I remember in the mid aughts, when I had been working exclusively with linux for some time, I started to see my peers, peers who wouldn't be caught dead with a windows laptop, carrying around os-x laptops.

Compared to the ThinkPad of the day, the macbooks were terrible pieces of hardware; they were obviously designed by people who believed in style over substance, and their keyboard was mush. But... OS-X? OS-X mostly worked, something that could not be said for windows or linux laptops, not without a whole lot of effort.