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

131–140 of 228 posts

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

#131

Post by Bukhmanizer »

cbsmith wrote: post #125
Bukhmanizer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Ah ok, so her strategy was to pull out on search, but focus on higher quality/yield ads?

It still seems like a bit of a losing strategy as I don’t see any reason for people to stay with Yahoo.

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

#133

Post by Bukhmanizer »

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…

> 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.

True, but don’t you kind of have to win at something to retain users?

It’s just unclear to me where they wanted to invest the freed money.

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

#134

Post by xorcist »

wavefunction wrote: post #126
Huffers2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not right. Opera had tabs in version 4, released in early 2000.

Some people apparently think tabs has to be drag-and-droppable, which Opera had in 2003, in order to be called tabs: https://allthatiswrong.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/opera-did-no...

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

#136

Post by rishav_sharan »

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?

I remember switching to Chrome just because of the minimalist UI. I don't know if Chrome was faster at that time, but it felt faster and leaner than anything else. I switched back to Firefox when I realized that there were everal extensions I didn't want to part with. And then back to Chrome again after a few years when Firefox upgraded their UI to make everything bigger and bulbous.

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

#137

Post by ginko »

tolbish wrote: post #73
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…

Tabbed browsing and incognito mode were incredibly innovative. edit - Looks like Firefox introduced both. But Chrome was incredible in comparison at the time. I recall thinking Firefox was no longer worth it. I made the move back to Firefox a few years ago.

There were tabbed browsers before that but the first mainstream browser to introduce tabbed browsing was Opera in 2000.

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

#138

Post by r00fus »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #113
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…

I never understood why Yahoo got so wrapped around the axle with the search engine business. I used to use Yahoo a lot to start my web browsing and I liked the fact that it wasn't a search engine. They provided broad categories that you could click on and you could keep drilling down to more specific categories until you found relevant websites. Not always the best way to search the web but it was great when you didn…

It's even in their original acronym "Yahoo = yet another hierarchical officious oracle".

Hierarchical is exactly what you're describing and I remember using that a lot in the early days.

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

#139

Post by Rapzid »

kreeben wrote: post #64
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…

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…

Well I'm not going to apologize for installing Chrome then or now lol. It was a fantastic piece of tech with the tab process isolation and V8 helped to revolutionize what "webapps" were capable of.

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

#140

Post by utopcell »

scarface74 wrote: post #123
utopcell wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Search revenue was $31,879 billion in Q1 and YT revenue was $6,005 billion. It doesn't seem like you're paying attention.
Post reply on HN