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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

#171

Post by vidoc »

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…

> 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.

Sounds like the perfect fit for yahoo :)

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#172

Post by gaur »

doppp wrote: post #168

Can someone change the title to include the fact that this purchase is for the search and advertising operations part of Yahoo? Everyone here thinks it's for the entirety of Yahoo. It's like they didn't bother to read the article.

Maybe someone could remove those 'distracting, unnecessary quotation marks' as well.

I think the BBC somehow thinks they're being ultraprecise by putting quotation marks around certain words, but it's just obnoxious.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#173

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

subsection1h wrote: post #167
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #159

To the guys on this thread who talk like they're some mini-pundits who know it all saying this is what Yahoo gets for walking away from larger valuation offers from a decade ago: No one thinks you're intelligent for pointing out something years after the fact. Tech companies come and go, and I would bet that a lot of the hottest tech companies right now will meet the end just like Yahoo did in a decade (or less). Ima…

Are you seriously suggesting that when Microsoft made its final offer in 2008, Yahoo was one of "the hottest tech companies"?

no

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#174

Post by droopybuns »

manigandham wrote: post #158
droopybuns wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should Google be allowed to sell fiber? I think the suggestion that carriers shouldn't do this is wrong and naive and here is why: User count should not ever be exponential of customer counts. It inescapably results in fundamentally unethical business practices where users are exploited. That is google's business model and they stand uncontested today. Carriers that end up doing any amount of content monetization wil…

> User count should not ever be exponential of customer counts. This makes no sense. This is the backbone of the entire internet. Ethics and the value that users get from a company/service are all subjective, there's no hard rule that you can lay down like this.

It makes plenty of sense. I am annoyed that you cast me as illogical simply because you disagree. Something has changed in modern discourse and your reaction has become distressingly common.

Here is an article from 2012, enumerating the same point: http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/03/05/if-youre-...

Here is another from 2010: http://lifehacker.com/5697167/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-you...

If this is a new idea to you, you might want to consider broadening your debate network.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#175

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

manigandham wrote: post #166
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #159

To the guys on this thread who talk like they're some mini-pundits who know it all saying this is what Yahoo gets for walking away from larger valuation offers from a decade ago: No one thinks you're intelligent for pointing out something years after the fact. Tech companies come and go, and I would bet that a lot of the hottest tech companies right now will meet the end just like Yahoo did in a decade (or less). Ima…

I think most of the comments were just pointing out how much and how fast fortunes can change, but yes, the only right way to judge a decision is within the context in which it was made. Were they the right choices given all the information those people had back then? It seems that they were.

It's arrogant to think one can predict any single thing in the world, no matter how successful you are.

You could say the same thing ("Given all the information those people have back then, the best decision would have been to sell") about Apple right before Steve Jobs came back and turned it around. In fact here's what Michael Dell famously said: ("What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders")

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#176

Post by dpark »

vijayp wrote: post #141
ubersync wrote: post #137

Why isn't this mentioned/discussed anywhere. In 2008 Microsoft offered $45 Billion to acquire Yahoo. Then Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang rejected the offer, saying that the bid "substantially undervalues Yahoo." Microsoft raised the bid to 50 Billion, and it was yet again rejected. After that MS withdrew its bid. 8 years later, at 10% the original offer!

Well, YHOO's total market cap is now about $37.36B, so it's not a complete travesty. (MSFT would have gotten the Alibaba investment with the $45B offer)

Eh, it's a pretty complete travesty. 8 years later the stock is still almost 20% below the $45B offer price, which was by the way a 60% premium over the market cap at the time.

I still have trouble wrapping my head around why Microsoft even made the offer, but I have even more trouble understanding why Yahoo rejected it.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#177

Post by ericd »

droopybuns wrote: post #154
dredmorbius wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't parse this. Especially "User count should not ever be exponential of customer counts". Wat. I'm not seeing the connection between content monetisation and Google's ads business either.

Google users number in the billions. Paying Google customers number in the millions. For example Google drive: http://fortune.com/2015/09/21/google-drive-1m-paid-users/ W/r/t ads: the carriers who are aggregating anonymous useage data and reselling it are not revolutionizing their revenue. They are deflating the value of ads. This cuts into Google profit margins.

The problem is that exponential implies a difference in growth rate. Clearer would be to say that user counts should never many orders of magnitude greater than paying customer counts. I don't agree with this, but it's clearer.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#178

Post by ethbro »

tootie wrote: post #136
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...

They own AOL and now Yahoo, so no place any users actually visit.

Underestimate the number of elderly, you do.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#179

Post by unexistance »

allendoerfer wrote: post #97
unexistance wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what's Mozilla's reaction to this, if they haven't done so before

Let's Encrypt is Mozilla's reaction.

I'm not the most versed in encryption & stuff,

so does Let's Encrypt prevents / subvert Verizon's HTTP modification?

EDIT: ah it's supercookie[1] and apparently a full protection is "Only a VPN or Tor"

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh

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