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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

#121

Post by bakgwailo »

dogma1138 wrote: post #110
byuu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really had to be the dumbest moves in computing history. "What does the #2 CPU maker need to become #1? The #2 GPU maker, obviously!"

Well NVIDIA wanted to spin off into the CPU market also, they sorta did with them building ARM based SOC's with NVIDIA GPU's. There were also rumors of them licensing x86 from Intel. Oddly enough NVIDIA back in the day made what arguable was the best chipset for AMD CPU's - NVIDIA nForce.

NVIDIA could never have gotten an x86 license, as they would have required a ton of licensing from AMD, too. Plus it would violate the cross licensing agreement between Intel, AMD, and VIA.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#122

Post by themartorana »

otoburb wrote: post #71
tehwebguy wrote: post #49

Verizon shouldn't be allowed to own any web properties. They inject a unique subscriber identifier into your HTTP requests unless you turn it off. http://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-hea...

Adoption of HTTPS helps somewhat to counter this, but note that advertisers and content sites are also complicit. Carriers wouldn't have injected such headers without demand from content partners and other run-of-the-mill sites. Vilifying carriers only attacks half the problem.

"...run-of-the-mill sites."

Highly doubtful. Someone running ads on their site doesn't make them suddenly complicit and knowledgeable about the creepiest corners of ad-tech. This is _exactly_ why knowledgeable regulators should make this illegal - this is a situation where the people on both ends are unaware of an explicit MITM attack happening between them.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#123

Post by theandrewbailey »

zzleeper wrote: post #62
dogma1138 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hardly a unique case, AMD is worth less now than what it paid for ATI back in the day.

Dude ATI was in 2006, but in 2009 they divested Global Foundry in 2009 (which were a HUGE chunk of ATI's assets)

Global Foundries was AMD's chip fabrication business. ATI never had any, and mostly (always?) had their chips made by TSMC. So what were ATI's "huge chunk" of assets that Global Foundries took with them?

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#124

Post by macspoofing »

byuu wrote: post #24
dogma1138 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hardly a unique case, AMD is worth less now than what it paid for ATI back in the day.

That really had to be the dumbest moves in computing history. "What does the #2 CPU maker need to become #1? The #2 GPU maker, obviously!"

Why not? I still don't see why it was an inherently bad idea. There's a lot of overlap in the CPU and GPU business.

What happened was that Intel got its game back and then both, Intel and AMD, missed the mobile train. On the ATI side, they were outcompeted by Nvidia. Bad luck, and bad strategy.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#125

Post by rayiner »

shmerl wrote: post #119
rayiner wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any place that doesn't already have fiber within Verizon's footprint probably can't accommodate it profitably. The margins on the places that do already have fiber are already thin. No business wants to invest in new infrastructure that isn't going to make it any money. It's not like anybody else is chomping at the bit to build fiber in those places.

It can accommodate it profitably. But any such undertaking is a long term investment, and Verizon doesn't operate in such categories. They want to rip profits faster. Also, they have internal conflict of interests. I.e. their execs are all about wireless, and simply don't care about landline business. Splitting it in two could actually help, since then they'll care about improving. > It's not like anybody else is cho…

Verizon's wireline unit is making low single digit operating profit margins with its existing footprint. I'm pretty sure expansion into less favorable markets would push that into the red. There is a reason Google only enters carefully-vetted markets that waive the usual roadblocks to fiber buildout--it's the only way to make money in the industry.

And Verizon is a public company. Investors are pushing it to ditch wireline entirely. If the wireline unit was spun off, would those same investors suddenly be eager to give the divested company billions to build a bunch of marginally profitable infrastructure?

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#126

Post by themartorana »

tokensimian wrote: post #37
blahi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with yahoo was never quality of the traffic. They have the most coveted audiences cornered. Their problem is the lack of good ad units. They have banners... That's unacceptable in 2016.

They have banners, search ads, content ads, and native advertising. Some of their inventory is served by bing, so if you use both bing adcenter and yahoo/gemini, you may be competing against yourself. But I just launched a yahoo/gemini campaign 2 weeks ago, for leadgen on web. They definitely have more than banners. (Also, I've found banner ads can refer to either the format [728x90 graphic] or the model [pay per vie…

Plus Yahoo! bought Flurry recently, which gave them additional mobile ad units.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#127

Post by macspoofing »

Macha wrote: post #98
devonkim wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea was that a CPU + GPU company would be a lot stronger than themselves trying to defend against their respective #1 competitors. Instead, both the CPU and GPU market leaders got stronger and leveraged their massive capital to turn the #2 into a very, very distant #2.

It also changed the decision process from "Pick 1 of Intel and AMD, plus pick 1 of nVidia and ATI" to "Pick Intel/nVidia or AMD/AMD" for companies like Dell/HP etc. so AMD and ATI's weaknesses compounded each other from then on.

You think Dell or HP would ever have sidelined Intel? AMD was going to get shafted, no matter what.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#128

Post by saryant »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #64

I did a little work as a developer for Verizon's ecosystem back in 2007. Let me just say, from what I could see, they were a huge, bureaucratic company without a single redeeming cultural trait. The managers seemed like a bunch of frat boys who had been raised up into positions of authority through some inscrutable lottery, and none of them seemed to possess an iota of analytical capability or human management talent…

FWIW, I have a number of friends at Verizon Labs doing some pretty cool work with Scala and Haskell.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#129

Post by themartorana »

rahkiin wrote: post #23
hughw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not familiar with ad tech... what is the standard for acceptable, in 2016?

I think it is square patches between textual content. They are everywhere on newssites. Also, 'sponsored content' as on twitter and facebook.

Called "native ads" in the mobile space, which are all over Yahoo!'s mobile apps (see Yahoo! Weather for a simple, relevant example), and offered to other publishers through their Yahoo! Gemini platform.

So not only does Yahoo! run the currently "hot" ad unit (they also do rewarded video), they own it.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#130

Post by phamilton »

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…

Mail is and has certainly been a priority at Yahoo. All employees have to dogfood it. Ads are included in corp mail and POP3/IMAP access is disabled. You have to use the web and mobile clients.

When layoffs were announced Mail was spared and actually grew.

I don't know why it hasn't improved. It's not for lack of trying.

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