Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#151

Post by neilk » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:01 AM UTC

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!

That was for all of Yahoo. This is for the search & advertising part. These are measurably inferior than their competitors (although, by less than you might think) but more importantly, have failed to win at the network-effects game.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#152

Post by jegoodwin3 » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:02 AM UTC

dgacmu wrote: post #74

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'?

The way to consistently use 'm' as thousand and 'mm' as million is if you assume a Latin derivation, with 'm' short for mille. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mille#Latin ('mm' thus being 'thousand thousand', since roman numerals don't compose that way -- MM would be two thousand). That doesn't mean that that's the way it evolved, but it's a way to categorize it mentally so it makes sense. While there's no logic for i…

That's true now but not in all historical periods. In the original system, m. was an abbreviation for mille, and not a composable component of the numeral at all. In effect, it served as a comma does in English text today, to separate the thousands from the units -- both of which were encoded using the composable letter system we are now familiar with.

Later, of course, people assimilated the operation of the M to the other letters, esp. on the dates of printed books. However, if we are discussing manuscript practice in the 15th century, the medieval approach and not the modern approach to Roman numerals would likely be in play...

In any event, using mm. to represent mille mille (a thousand thousand, a million in modern parlance) would create no cognitive dissonance as it does today.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#153

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:04 AM UTC

asdfologist wrote: post #31

unchocked wrote: post #12

I remember being shocked when Yahoo spurned MSFT's $44+ billion offer in 2008. Goes to show, when someone offers you 11 figures for a failing company, sell because the offers aren't going to get better.

People were also shocked when Zuckerberg turned down $1+ billion offers. Hindsight is 20/20.

Facebook wasn't a failing company at the time.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#154

Post by droopybuns » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:08 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #149

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…

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.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#155

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:09 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #148

rayiner wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Verizon replaces copper with fiber, the investment gets booked as a capital asset, which doesn't count against profits. But any operational savings achieved by that will goose short term profits. So if Verizon is focused only on goosing short term profits, as you claim, they'd replace all the copper with fiber! More generally, Verizon is legally required to keep serving the places it already served with copper.…

They would. Except they can get even more profit by investing in wireless. So again, typical conflict of interests. Removing it could help. Their execs indeed have no clue how to mange landline business or they simply don't care about it. Their whole background is wireless and they are trying to get rid of landline (selling it off). Seidenberg was landline man through and through. He cared about improving it and movi…

So Verizon is too incompetent to make money on wireline so it's looking to sell it. And Google isn't chomping at the bit to buy it because?

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#156

Post by cstejerean » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

nikdaheratik wrote: post #85

andy_ppp wrote: post #47

What the hell has Marissa Mayer been paid for? Everything about this smells like Yahoo! is being run by idiot MBAs with some spreadsheets somewhere totally misunderstanding that technology can empower people to do fantastic things including those working within Yahoo! - instead it's been hamstrung by each property not being held accountable to it's competitors effectively. I would have started competitors (startups)…

I don't think you can put this all on Mayer. It's basically a tug of war between two different groups of key investors, with the concerns about the IRS also playing a role. One group thought that Y! had a shot at a viable business. The other group wanted out, but didn't want to sell until they got their cut from the Alibaba/Y!JP investments (which also propped up the stock price for the whole thing). Mayer was hired…

She lost support of the investors when it became clear that the turnaround plan was a complete failure. Initially she was given a lot of latitude to make whatever moves she deemed necessary including blowing a lot of money on failed acquisitions and key hires that didn't work out. Now maybe Yahoo was beyond saving, and it was going to fail anyway, but Mayer's execution didn't seem to help it at all.

This reminds me of JC Penney, where investors also brought in an exec from abother successful company in the hope that they could replicate that success. In that case it was Ron Johnson from Apple, who tried to replicate Apple's retail strategy at JC Penney with devastating results, and certainly not for lack of being given the latitude to implement whatever changes he asked for.

The situation at Yahoo is pretty similar. I wouldn't blame the board and investors for finally trying to cut their losses.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#157

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

rblatz wrote: post #105

rch wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet that Mozilla continues to work with Yahoo/Verizon.

Or they could switch back to google or bing and grab nearly an extra billion dollars between now and 2019. Seems like a no brainier to Mozilla.

Would be funny if they switched to Bing since that is what Yahoo search is now any way.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#158

Post by manigandham » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

droopybuns wrote: post #102

ajmurmann wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company that sells Internet access should be allowed to also be in the content business.

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.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#159

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

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).

Imagine if Google becomes irrelevant in 10 years, and end up selling itself to whichever hottest tech company that will be around then. Will you say "Told ya! Google should have sold to Yahoo when Yahoo was going to acquire them for $3 billion!"

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#160

Post by shmerl » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #155

shmerl wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would. Except they can get even more profit by investing in wireless. So again, typical conflict of interests. Removing it could help. Their execs indeed have no clue how to mange landline business or they simply don't care about it. Their whole background is wireless and they are trying to get rid of landline (selling it off). Seidenberg was landline man through and through. He cared about improving it and movi…

So Verizon is too incompetent to make money on wireline so it's looking to sell it. And Google isn't chomping at the bit to buy it because?

> So Verizon is too incompetent to make money on wireline so it's looking to sell it.

Yes, or rather they aren't interested in getting that competence, because they are too focused on wireless.

> And Google isn't chomping at the bit to buy it because?

Google might at some point. They can have different reasons to wait. For instance Verizon are still obligated to build out in some areas. Or Google want to avoid dealing with unions and such.