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Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#51

Post by x0x0 »

dmfdmf wrote: post #50
x0x0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yahoo mail is incredibly valuable -- it's a feeder (clicks and identity) to all of their content sites. It's really one of yahoo's gems. The new owner will probably take better care of it than yahoo did.

That was my take and when Mayer took over I was hopeful she'd sink some resources into the servers and fix the performance issue. Nope. Its as bad and slow as ever, all my clients that use it complain but there is nothing I could do save moving them to gmail. This was a major misstep in my opinion as Yahoo mail is the company "face" to many users. The Yahoo home page was horrible when she took over but at least she h…

The other alternative (and it scares me too!) is that Kardashians gossip was carefully measured to actually be what the most people respond to...

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#52

Post by MichaelGG »

asdfologist wrote: post #31
unchocked wrote: post #12

I remember being shocked when Yahoo spurned MSFT's $44+ billion offer in 2008. Goes to show, when someone offers you 11 figures for a failing company, sell because the offers aren't going to get better.

People were also shocked when Zuckerberg turned down $1+ billion offers. Hindsight is 20/20.

To accurately judge though, we need to know how many people/companies are offered large sums and decline, and how that works out. It might still have been a bad decision that just happened to work out.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#55

Post by harmegido »

kennywinker wrote: post #33
randomname2 wrote: post #16

YHOO used to be valued at $112B at its peak.

It's turns out valuations are imaginary numbers that mean nothing? I once sold a $1 beer to a friend for $2. Let's back-of-the envelope that: 100% markup, $1 profit. If I buy and sell 1 billion beers per year, that's a profit of $1B/year. Ok, so given a 5 year return on investment, that means my beer business is valued at $5 billion. Nice! Anybody interested in investing please get in touch I'm raising a series A.

They are definitely not imaginary, they just have probabilities baked into them. Many people traded around that valuation which is much different than your example.

Valuations of public companies aren't always rational in my opinion, however they are (again in my opinion) better assessments of value than any one person's estimate. If you disagree and think you are able to make a better prediction, then by all means don't leave a reply here, just short the stock (and with leverage - use options, etc).

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#56

Post by fullshark »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #46
tomp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo! didn't lose anything, only its investors did (as it paid with stock, not cash)... But then, they would have lost a lot anyways, because the whole market was overvalued.

I certainly see it differently. Investors have bought and sold Yahoo! stock all along. Had they bought it when the deal to buy Broadcast was announced and sold it 5 years later, they would have tripled their money. Are there Yahoo! investors who have lost money? Sure. That is true for every stock that is traded. Are their investors that made money? Sure, same deal. If one wanted to evaluate the performance of Yahoo!…

Use it for employee compensation.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#57

Post by orthoganol »

jaggederest wrote: post #39
asdfologist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were also shocked when Zuckerberg turned down $1+ billion offers. Hindsight is 20/20.

I don't know about other people, but there's a number past which I do not care . N > 10^7 in my pocket after tax, I'm out, regardless of circumstances, regardless of ability to earn more. No ragrets.

With the caveat that maybe you derive deep satisfaction from growing your business and by it impacting the world. I always think, if I had "FU money" and didn't have to work, what would I do? I would probably start working on the greatest possible venture I could image myself doing. If that venture (maybe akin to a Tesla or a SpaceX) becomes a billion+ dollar company, still doesn't matter to me as a founder, there's no point for me to sell it.

That said, a social network centered on photo sharing and a slightly more handy version of email or event sharing is definitely not one of these high impact ventures in my opinion, so yes, I would have sold that long ago and went to work on something more meaningful.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#59

Post by justin_vanw »

kennywinker wrote: post #33
randomname2 wrote: post #16

YHOO used to be valued at $112B at its peak.

It's turns out valuations are imaginary numbers that mean nothing? I once sold a $1 beer to a friend for $2. Let's back-of-the envelope that: 100% markup, $1 profit. If I buy and sell 1 billion beers per year, that's a profit of $1B/year. Ok, so given a 5 year return on investment, that means my beer business is valued at $5 billion. Nice! Anybody interested in investing please get in touch I'm raising a series A.

This reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkUiRGQHjdc

So probably 'there is more to it' than you are giving credit for.

Kenny: Don't tell me my whistlin' is good, whistlin's dead, and we both know that.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#60

Post by fullshark »

kennywinker wrote: post #33
randomname2 wrote: post #16

YHOO used to be valued at $112B at its peak.

It's turns out valuations are imaginary numbers that mean nothing? I once sold a $1 beer to a friend for $2. Let's back-of-the envelope that: 100% markup, $1 profit. If I buy and sell 1 billion beers per year, that's a profit of $1B/year. Ok, so given a 5 year return on investment, that means my beer business is valued at $5 billion. Nice! Anybody interested in investing please get in touch I'm raising a series A.

Just because you can make terrible valuations doesn't mean all valuations are terrible/useless.
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