Microsoft bids $44.6B to buy Yahoo (2008) • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by jfim » Tue, May 04, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #173

darkwizard42 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome was an excellent browser when it launched... It might not be able to compete with such a wide gap against all the Chromium based clones out there now, but it was rightfully an amazing experience. Initially its only competition felt like Firefox

a list of shockers - streamed install process (download a shim of 300kB which will stream the rest) - obviously the chromeless ui - the dynamic status bar (ok that was the point above) - downloads shown below (as cute as the status bar, actually I miss that thing) - something about tab closing that was more regular (no need to move your mouse) - option / printing lean and fast

One of the big features was also the fact that it was running multiple processes. Back then, if the browser crashed it just took down the whole browser with all tabs, which was also a bit more common with the numerous plugins that were required to browse the web.

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

#192

Post by nl » Tue, May 04, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

cbsmith wrote: post #184

nl wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's misrepresenting the search market's reality though. For most people, they never clicked install. The author was talking about Chrome.

On the other hand, the author's statement flies in the face of the reality that Chrome's market share at the end of the year was ~1%. ;-)

Chrome was launched in Sep 2008.

It's really, really hard to move market share quickly.

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

#193

Post by ec109685 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

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.

Where does the doubt about its profitability come from?

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

#194

Post by ec109685 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

skinnymuch wrote: post #52

AdrianB1 wrote: post #25

Is this the best money Microsoft did NOT spend?

No. The Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes would have paid for the entire purchase while still having benefits and then some. Yahoo sold $8B of Alibaba in 2012 and $40B of the remaining in 2019. They sold Yahoo Japan shares for $4B. Microsoft would have had no need to sell the 2012 stake at the time. They could have possibly doubled their money.

Yahoo didn’t need to sell 8B of Alibaba. They renegotiated with Alibaba some to avoid them splintering off assets to avoid Yahoo owning 30% of them.

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

#195

Post by scarface74 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

ec109685 wrote: post #193

scarface74 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where does the doubt about its profitability come from?

From most analysts. Once they pay creators, bandwidth and storage.

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

#196

Post by cxr » Tue, May 04, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

tolbish wrote: post #167

cxr wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it would be nice if the tendency of people to jump into a conversation and start spewing absolute nonsense were subject to harsher social consequences. But it was not just niche browsers. By the time of Chrome's debut (2008), just about every browser had tabs—including Internet Explorer: "With the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, all major web browsers featured a tabbed interface." https://en.wikipedia…

What punishment would be harsh enough in your eyes for the grave mistake of correcting a wrong memory?

Public beheading.

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

#197

Post by perryizgr8 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

darkwizard42 wrote: post #69

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…

Chrome was an excellent browser when it launched... It might not be able to compete with such a wide gap against all the Chromium based clones out there now, but it was rightfully an amazing experience. Initially its only competition felt like Firefox

Remember this video?

https://youtu.be/nCgQDjiotG0

Chrome was seriously fast when it launched. It made everything else seem a decade old.

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

#198

Post by phire » Tue, May 04, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

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…

I actually have no idea how good the search results from other search engines were in 2004-2006. I was exclusively google by then and I'm willing to admit it's entirely plausible it's competitors had similar results.

But in 2001-2002, I remember Google having a significantly better search experience. And it was massively better than all it's competitors from the 90s.

A large factor were the snippets, which gave you a decent indication if the result was relevant before even clicking. Before the other search engines copied that feature, they would just show the contents of the meta description tag.

It also seemed to index a much wider range of sites and ranked them better.

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

#199

Post by skinnymuch » Tue, May 04, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

ec109685 wrote: post #194

skinnymuch wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes would have paid for the entire purchase while still having benefits and then some. Yahoo sold $8B of Alibaba in 2012 and $40B of the remaining in 2019. They sold Yahoo Japan shares for $4B. Microsoft would have had no need to sell the 2012 stake at the time. They could have possibly doubled their money.

Yahoo didn’t need to sell 8B of Alibaba. They renegotiated with Alibaba some to avoid them splintering off assets to avoid Yahoo owning 30% of them.

I’m aware. But not fully of all contexts.

Why did SoftBank sell far less? Why would a behemoth well run company like Microsoft fare the same as Yahoo vs Alibaba?

In parallel, why has Naspers never faced this issue?

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

#200

Post by skinnymuch » Tue, May 04, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

_ea1k wrote: post #71

skinnymuch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes Yahoo got were selling half of Alibaba stake for $8B in 2012 and $40B remaining in 2019. They sold Yahoo Japan shares for $4B in 2019. Microsoft would have had no need to sell the 2012 stake at the time. They could have possibly doubled their money.

Oh, certainly if YHOO or MSFT had retained the Alibaba stake it would have been worth it. It looks like YHOO shares never went back above $45B, though: https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-market-cap-over-time-2...

The market was not valuing Yahoo fairly for most of its life as Yahoo for the company name after this.

So when Yahoo’s remains changed to Altaba after selling that $4.5B Yahoo namesake and Yahoo Japan for $4B+ soon after, it was still a nearly $40B market cap company. Almost all of it being 16% of Alibaba.