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

Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008)

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 228 posts

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

#121

Post by cbsmith »

kreeben wrote: post #109
cbsmith wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Chrome wasn't released until September of 2008. Initial adoption was around 1% in 2008.

I was referring to search engines, though the same was true for browsers. Deals were cut with distribution channels to have browsers pre-installed and to have certain browsers and search engines as the default. The overwhelming majority of people would use the default. In fact, a lot of the benefit of releasing Chrome was that it became another distribution channel that would default to Google as the search engine.

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

#122

Post by andy_ppp »

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…

I agree with this analysis, pretty spot on. Working there at the time there was still potential with the right leadership to turn it around. Unfortunately that never happened, instead we got Carol Bartz to destroy any remaining morale at the company.

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

#123

Post by scarface74 »

utopcell wrote: post #111
scarface74 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Revenue” is not the same as “profit” https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/google-still-isnt-telling-us...

The question stands: Where is the "net loss" statement coming from ?

Whether it’s a net loss or barely profitable, it still doesn’t move the needle as far as Google’s income.

Even if it did - it is still mostly search advertising. That’s not diversification.

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

#124

Post by sushid »

rapsey wrote: post #8

Honestly it is pretty crazy how old Yahoo is and they are still hanging on.

I would saying getting acquired by a PE firm is the opposite of "still hanging on." Verizon just let them flop around as their pond dried up. Now they're about to be eviscerated by professionals.

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

#125

Post by cbsmith »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #118
subpixel wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Isn’t that what Google was doing?

Google is doing that (particularly with YouTube), as is everyone else. I don't think they break down the search vs. other ad business any more, but at last check it was still the biggest single source of revenue for the company (admittedly, I believe YouTube and adsense collectively generate more revenue for them now, but both of these are primarily showing ads on other people's content).

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

#126

Post by wavefunction »

Huffers2 wrote: post #82
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.

You're right. Opera had tabbed browsing before Firefox existed, and Firefox had tabbed browsing before Chrome existed.

I could be wrong but it looks like Opera introduced tabs in 2009 with v10.5 while Firefox's first release was in 2002. Unless we're referring to different things.

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

#127

Post by JohnBooty »

cbsmith wrote: post #116
JohnBooty wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These were done around 2004-2006 IIRC, I don't know if the brand impact today is the same as it was back then. I'll see if I can find publications, but I think most, if not all of it, was not published. Even when you told people that we were substituting in different search engines and the presentation and layout was not indicative of where the results came from, putting a Google logo on the page produced a measurabl…

It makes 100% sense to me that perceived quality would be influenced by a person's feelings towards the brand. In fact I'd be shocked when that's not the case!

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

#128

Post by andy_ppp »

cbsmith wrote: post #105
Bukhmanizer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Is 21 months not enough time to execute on a strategy?

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

#129

Post by cbsmith »

andy_ppp wrote: post #128
cbsmith wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Is 21 months not enough time to execute on a strategy?

At such a large company? Not really. You can certainly start execution of a strategy, and she did, but it takes a long time to turn such a big boat and fully realize a strategic vision.

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

#130

Post by wombatpm »

acheron wrote: post #24
samgranieri wrote: post #12

That summer my girlfriend at the time and I were laughing at the different combinations of possible combined companies. Yahoogle was one. This one would have been Microhoo

Late 90's joke: Yahoo and Netscape are going to merge and move their headquarters to Israel: Net'n'Yahoo

Microsoft to combine its handheld (Compact Edition), desktop (Millennium Edition), and server software (Windows NT) into one release:

Microsoft CEMENT

Post reply on HN