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Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#101

Post by subpixel »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #91
cbsmith wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked at Yahoo! when this was going on As did I > I'm amazed share holders didn't sure Jerry Yang and the board for avoiding the sale. There was a lawsuit: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/yahoo-settles-lawsuits... > Yahoo had very little of technological value and was actively trying to destroy its own search business amongst other properties at the time. I'm not sure what you are referring to there. There…

I’m a bit confused at what Bartz’ strategy was? If she deinvested in search, where did she expect Yahoo to succeed over Google?

I think it was in no small part about selling ads on Yahoo-owned media or through a Yahoo ad network.

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#102

Post by cbsmith »

hogFeast wrote: post #90
Bukhmanizer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Long before Google became such a dominant player, competing search engines had matched or exceeded its quality, compute cost, and ability to scale. Just curious, which ones? I remember Google felt so far above any other search engine for a very long time.

Essentially all of their tech was taken from Robin Li and AltaVista/DEC. Brin did a lot of the implementation work, Page did nothing (a lot of the work he did do, didn't scale, and was highly inferior to existing work as he wasn't a strong programmer...I think he provided a server room or something, he was the snake oil salesman). The actual technological innovation in the search product was minimal (the stuff they d…

The tech was "stolen" from HITS/IBM Research.

Because of their success with their initial data center approach AltaVista was arguably one of the last to shift to a model that more closely resembled the one Google employed, but they certainly did a very fine job of it (late mover advantage and all that). I still liked AllTheWeb's data centers somewhat better, but at that point the differences were pretty small.

I wouldn't agree with your characterization of Brin & Page's contributions, but their direct technical contributions to Google by that time were at best marginally greater than Yang's, so it's not really relevant anyway.

Google definitely had some great tech, but the extent to which that won them the game is more myth than reality. Their aggressive strategic moves are really what made them successful.

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#103

Post by [deleted] »

eloisant wrote: post #79
duxup wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there an understanding in 2008 that Yahoo... couldn't just "be Yahoo" going forward without falling behind / fading away and would have to really change dramaticly? I ask because it seemed like there were attempts but they were sort of fits and starts and meanwhile most of Yahoo still seemed like just old Yahoo... It does seem like a continuous failure in leadership at Yahoo to really change much at all. There we…

No, in 2008 Yahoo was already seen as a failed company. The biggest mistake they did in the late 90's is to stop being a tech company and be a "media company" instead. So in 2008 they were still big but mostly running on momentum they built during the 90's and a couple acquisitions. They had Yahoo!Mail that was popular, their homepage was still popular because some people forgot to try something different, Flickr tha…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#104

Post by trimbo »

andy_ppp wrote: post #15

I worked at Yahoo! when this was going on, I’m amazed the share holders didn’t sue Jerry Yang and the board for avoiding this sale. Yahoo had very little of technological value and was actively trying to destroy its own search business amongst other properties at the time. They really were in a prime position and bungled it extremely badly, I think they had maybe 20% of the search market at the time. Carol Bartz late…

IIRC, Yahoo didn't have search tech until they bought Inktomi. They outsourced their search to Inktomi in the 90s, then to Google in 2000. It was only after Yahoo bought Inktomi that they brought it in house (can't remember timeline of switching off Google).

https://www.cnet.com/news/yahoo-to-acquire-inktomi/

Yahoo was also a major shareholder in Google because of those agreements/investments and cross-licensing Overture patents.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/business/technology-googl...

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#105

Post by cbsmith »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #91
cbsmith wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked at Yahoo! when this was going on As did I > I'm amazed share holders didn't sure Jerry Yang and the board for avoiding the sale. There was a lawsuit: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/yahoo-settles-lawsuits... > Yahoo had very little of technological value and was actively trying to destroy its own search business amongst other properties at the time. I'm not sure what you are referring to there. There…

I’m a bit confused at what Bartz’ strategy was? If she deinvested in search, where did she expect Yahoo to succeed over Google?

It's almost like there are more ways to make money than search. ;-)

Bartz really wasn't there long enough to execute on a strategy, but her point was that the opportunity cost of continuing to try to win the search engine wars was far greater than the likely value of the investment.

At least from a historical perspective she was right. Alibaba, social media, mobile, games, content, etc. All of those spaces had lots of opportunity for the right moves.

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#106

Post by JohnBooty »

cbsmith wrote: post #100
Bukhmanizer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Long before Google became such a dominant player, competing search engines had matched or exceeded its quality, compute cost, and ability to scale. Just curious, which ones? I remember Google felt so far above any other search engine for a very long time.

Inktomi, Altavista, AllTheWeb, all later under Yahoo. No question about the "feel", but it's amazing how perception fuels reality. We did a lot of studies of this, and one of the more interesting ones was that if you told people they were seeing Google search results (regardless if they were), they'd be more inclined to rewrite their queries and look farther down in the search results, rather than try using another s…

    We did a lot of studies of this, and one of the more 
    interesting ones was that if you told people they were 
    seeing Google search results
This is super-interesting; where might one read more about these studies?

Also, when were the studies done?

I'm curious about the "when" because I think Google's reputation has slipped quite a bit.

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#107

Post by figassis »

robotresearcher wrote: post #97
meestaahjoshee wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

firefox definitely had tabbed browsing and private mode before chrome was released. pretty sure opera had tabbed browsing as well. i just recall chrome being very minimal, clean and fast when it was first released. plus as kreeben said, Google was pretty revered at the time.

Chrome made a big thing at launch about their process isolation of tabs. Was that their innovation?

What chrome sold was speed. Most of their ads were all about how fast websites would open. And tabs was cherry on top. I know that’s what made me jump from IE. I remember I have a Sony vaio desktop then and IE would weigh it down to a crawl, then I install chrome and that just made me swear to never use IE again.

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#108

Post by mrweasel »

0xy wrote: post #74
mrweasel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could Yahoo possibly be worth that much money? It certainly not worthless, Yahoo still have great brand, nostalgic even. $5 Billion is a bit of a strech though.

Anecdotally, I use Yahoo Finance daily and Yahoo News (they have decent business stuff sometimes) a couple of times a week. Yahoo Finance is a great product.

Yahoo Finance I could see be a successful stand-alone product/company. It's not a billion dollar company, but perhaps a $50+ million. Sadly I don't think many in Silicon Valley is interested in being an company of that size.

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#109

Post by kreeben »

cbsmith wrote: post #72
kreeben wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are flabbergasted by the fact Yahoo, and everyone else for that matter, thought it absolutely impossible to disrupt Google (except for perhaps a handful of hubris-riddled people at MS), please remember the general sentiment HN used to have towards Google who according to us, at that time, could do no wrong. They were infallible. They were the brightest people in the world. They were The Good Guy (TM). They wer…

> We just drank the cool aid and clicked "install". That's misrepresenting the search market's reality though. For most people, they never clicked install.

In 2008 there wasn't a need to click "install"? What OS were you on that provided Google Chrome seamlessly?

Re: Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

#110

Post by tapoxi »

robotresearcher wrote: post #97
meestaahjoshee wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

firefox definitely had tabbed browsing and private mode before chrome was released. pretty sure opera had tabbed browsing as well. i just recall chrome being very minimal, clean and fast when it was first released. plus as kreeben said, Google was pretty revered at the time.

Chrome made a big thing at launch about their process isolation of tabs. Was that their innovation?

Process isolation of tabs, speed (V8), incognito mode, silent updates. Most of this they covered in the announcement comic.
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