Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 367 posts

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#321

Post by mywittyname »

cdmckay wrote: post #300
Klinky wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much revenue/profit does Yahoo generate? How much does WhatsApp? Facebook paid handsomely for a lot of hype and to gamble at poaching users. The Yahoo deal seems way more down to Earth, compared to an astronomical offer by a company with cash to burn and a desperate desire to keep growth going up.

Facebook buying WhatsApp could also be seen as a defensive purchase (i.e. prevent Google or MS from buying up the users).

Facebook realizes that it's smarter to be a communication company rather than a communication platform. Brand management is a key to P&G's success, and Facebook is smart to emulate this in the tech. sector.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#322

Post by martinza »

Ping938 wrote: post #314

Here is math for people wondering about price of Yahoo: Y! market cap is $36.38b. Have in mind that Y! is selling only its core biz so we would have to subtract values of Y! shares in Alibaba and Y!Japan, which are worth $33.74b and $8.56b respectively. However thats pre-tax and Y! could not get that money for them. There for adjusted values (-38% tax)are $21b and $5.4b again respectively. There are also cash & marke…

Spot on. Only thing missed was potential price of the patents (which arguably that price will pay for core sale taxes). Only real bet on yahoo stock right now is whether the board can avoid some of those taxes on an alibaba or yahoo Japan sale.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#323

Post by phamilton »

rsyntax wrote: post #315
phamilton wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only remaining pieces are holdings in Yahoo Japan and AliBaba. There's no operating company left.

Yahoo Japan is a different company.

Yes. That's what "Holdings in Yahoo Japan" mean. It's a different company but Yahoo proper has a stake in it.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#324

Post by AjithAntony »

sangnoir wrote: post #78
sandstrom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to look it up, for curiosity: In April 1999, Yahoo! acquired the company for $5.7 billion (or over $10,000 per user) in stock. [...] The company had 570,000 users. -- Wikipedia These 570k users only listened to audio, seems like the biggest waste ever. Cuban got a bunch of (undeserved?) money and Yahoo lost the same amount. Feels like a pointless transaction.

> These 570k users only listened to audio, seems like the biggest waste ever. Cuban got a bunch of (undeserved?) money and Yahoo lost the same amount. Feels like a pointless transaction These were the heady days before the dot-com bubble burst. In April of '99, Pets.com had just IPO'd (February) and Webvan was a going concern. The 'information highway' replacing traditional radio was believable enough. I don't think…

> Only today did I put 2 and 2 together on the inspiration for Silicon Valley's Russ Hanneman "I put radio on the internet" joke...

http://shop.markcuban.com/three-commas-universal-symbol-for-...

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#325

Post by jlgaddis »

A fair amount of FreeBSD's infrastructure in hosted in Yahoo!'s datacenter in Santa Clara.

I'm curious how this will affect that relationship, if at all. It's not like Yahoo! is going to stop using FreeBSD overnight or anything but Verizon may decide they don't want third-party infrastructure in "their" datacenter.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#326

Post by AjithAntony »

seanhunter wrote: post #75
vram22 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the heck do people use 'bn' for billion and 'mm' for million? I've seen VC @fredwilson use 'mm' many times on his blog (avc.com), and IIRC I read some reasoning for it, either there or elsewhere, which made some kind of sense (they said Roman numeral for 1000 is M, so for million we use MM, though not sure if that is quite right logic), but why then the inconsistency between 'mm' and 'bn'?

I used to work in finance, and there is a bunch of obscure terminology and conventions, adopted from different cultures (eg you can trade a "Lakh" of silver). See how the currency sign for GBP looks like a capital L? and the currency sign for shillings and pence was "s" and "d"? (now the uk use "p" for pence since decimalisation). So "Lire", "Soldi" and "Denarii" were the denominations of Italian currency in the the…

For anyone who is about to google this, a lakh is 100,000

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#327

Post by mywittyname »

profeta wrote: post #318
Ping938 wrote: post #314

Here is math for people wondering about price of Yahoo: Y! market cap is $36.38b. Have in mind that Y! is selling only its core biz so we would have to subtract values of Y! shares in Alibaba and Y!Japan, which are worth $33.74b and $8.56b respectively. However thats pre-tax and Y! could not get that money for them. There for adjusted values (-38% tax)are $21b and $5.4b again respectively. There are also cash & marke…

why do people keep bringing up the alibaba and other assets when discussing the market cap? this is like buying someone body shop, looking at the body shop revenue, and then subtracting the price of the current owner paid-for porsche.

Because Yahoo owns $30B+ worth of Alibaba stock.

To use your analogy, it's like buying a body shop, but subtracting the $10,000,000 in real estate they own because it's not included in the sale.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#328

Post by speeder »

jjnoakes wrote: post #313
speeder wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you still get to eat right? I followed my interests, and now can't afford food, literally. I should have went for a job a hate but that paid well.

You literally can't afford food and you are on hacker news? You can afford a computer, your own web site, ... I mean I suppose if you value technology above eating then I suppose technically you can't afford food after you spend your money elsewhere, but the full picture doesn't seem quite as bad as you originally painted it.

I used to type that post a 2013 MacMini, sort of smuggled in the country, that belongs to my startup (not me personally).

The startup ran out of money, and I took the MacMini with me, so I could continue working.

The MacMini is also currently using a damaged HDD, that S.M.A.R.T. keeps telling me should be replaced and is already critical, because I can't afford actually replacing the HDD.

I was kicked out of the apartment I was living, and now I live with my parents, my parents own a store, and by law, all sales must have a tax form filled online, thus internet is a hard requeriment to have a store, I am using that internet connection.

The maintenance of my websites, cost for me in total, about half a month of food.

Currently my source of food is mostly debt (ie: me, my parents, and other extended family members are taking loans to pay basic stuff).

It is not like getting rid of my computer, would help me, my choosen profession, the unprofitable one, is to be a programmer, so I need it to work anyway.

So, it is not a question of valuing technology above eating, it is that I already have technology because of my work, and getting rid of it won't make food sprout on my plate.

Even if I managed to sell all my belongings, I would still be unable to buy food anyway (my net worth is negative, even if I sold every single object I own, somehow for their "new" non-depreciated value, even my glasses, I would still not pay all my debts).

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#329

Post by mywittyname »

spriggan3 wrote: post #77
harmegido wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's not about money at a certain point.

It is always about the money. The more money you have the more money you need to manage the money you already have. So it is always about the money. The Zuck was confident his website was worth way more than a billion. that's why he didn't sell.

If it was about money, he wouldn't be giving away most of his company while trying to retain a controlling stake. The fact that he is giving away his money suggests that he's more interested in being a successful business mogul than he is about being "FU rich."

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#330

Post by GFischer »

arebop wrote: post #299
GFischer wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My slightly different take on this: At the beginning of your career, I think the most important thing is to learn. Any company where you're learning a lot is a good place to be. But I think you need to be able to learn to like what you're doing, even if it doesn't sound like your cup of tea. Get out of your confort zone. Go into a company that does something that's not just IT (that is, not a company that sells stuff…

As somebody who started in software at a non-tech company, my first reaction to this was horror. On second thought, it seems like fine advice as long as your first job at the advertising firm is as a brand manager, or at a manufacturing firm you're in logistics, etc. I.e., if you are primarily an entrepreneur who might someday want to start a tech company, then by all means get some first-hand practical experience wi…

That's good advice :) .

Your point of working on what senior management cares most about is also good (but easier said than done !!!).

Workers in secondary/support activities (as IT is in most non-tech companies) don't get that many opportunities.

Post reply on HN