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Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#21

Post by harryh »

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.

It's important to realize that the 5B verizon is paying isn't for all of Yahoo. It doesn't include Yahoo's holdings in Alibaba or Yahoo Japan or Yahoo's patent portfolio. So while Yahoo might be worth a bit less now than the 44B MSFT offer the drop isn't all that big. The risk was probably worth it.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#22

Post by harryh »

josh-wrale wrote: post #17

What is likely to happen to shareholders of YHOO?

They will receive about $5.27[1] per share of YHOO stock they hold (or perhaps an equivalent amount of verizon stock if they do the deal that way) in exchange for the portion of the business being sold. Perhaps a bit less than this if there are transaction fees or taxes that must be paid.

They will then continue to hold their Yahoo shares which will represent their holdings in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan as well as Yahoo's patent portfolio.

1. $5B / 948.25M outstanding shares ~= $5.27 per share.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#23

Post by rahkiin »

hughw wrote: post #15
blahi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with yahoo was never quality of the traffic. They have the most coveted audiences cornered. Their problem is the lack of good ad units. They have banners... That's unacceptable in 2016.

Not familiar with ad tech... what is the standard for acceptable, in 2016?

I think it is square patches between textual content. They are everywhere on newssites. Also, 'sponsored content' as on twitter and facebook.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#24

Post by byuu »

dogma1138 wrote: post #18
cs702 wrote: post #4

Less than the $5.7 billion Yahoo! paid in 1999 for Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com: http://money.cnn.com/1999/04/01/deals/yahoo/ Times -- and fortunes -- change.

It's hardly a unique case, AMD is worth less now than what it paid for ATI back in the day.

That really had to be the dumbest moves in computing history.

"What does the #2 CPU maker need to become #1? The #2 GPU maker, obviously!"

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#25

Post by amiga-workbench »

hughw wrote: post #15
blahi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with yahoo was never quality of the traffic. They have the most coveted audiences cornered. Their problem is the lack of good ad units. They have banners... That's unacceptable in 2016.

Not familiar with ad tech... what is the standard for acceptable, in 2016?

Javascript laden, clickjacking full page overlays

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#26

Post by mdonahoe »

aceperry wrote: post #5

I hope yahoo mail sticks around. I've been using it since forever, and would hate to change to gmail. Yahoo mail is kind of slow, but gets the job done, gmail is too chaotic for me. Maybe I'm old school about that, but I'm all in on yahoo mail.

I didn't believe you that Gmail was more chaotic than Yahoo, so I signed into my never-used yahoo account.

The Yahoo Mail interface is much cleaner than I remember, though I don't enjoy the purple theme, the loading times, and the persistent "Try Firefox" banner in the top right.

Plus my mailbox is full of spam from Yahoo itself, like weekly emails from Yahoo Movies.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#27

Post by sandstrom »

cs702 wrote: post #4

Less than the $5.7 billion Yahoo! paid in 1999 for Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com: http://money.cnn.com/1999/04/01/deals/yahoo/ Times -- and fortunes -- change.

Had to look it up, for curiosity:

    In April 1999, Yahoo! acquired the company for $5.7 billion 
    (or over $10,000 per user) in stock. [...] The company had 570,000 users.
    -- Wikipedia
These 570k users only listened to audio, seems like the biggest waste ever. Cuban got a bunch of (undeserved?) money and Yahoo lost the same amount. Feels like a pointless transaction.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#29

Post by yulaow »

byuu wrote: post #24
dogma1138 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hardly a unique case, AMD is worth less now than what it paid for ATI back in the day.

That really had to be the dumbest moves in computing history. "What does the #2 CPU maker need to become #1? The #2 GPU maker, obviously!"

Well to defend them they needed a solution to fight the incoming intel cpu with integrated gpu. They needed ATI portfolio and knowledges.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#30

Post by x0x0 »

aceperry wrote: post #5

I hope yahoo mail sticks around. I've been using it since forever, and would hate to change to gmail. Yahoo mail is kind of slow, but gets the job done, gmail is too chaotic for me. Maybe I'm old school about that, but I'm all in on yahoo mail.

yahoo mail is incredibly valuable -- it's a feeder (clicks and identity) to all of their content sites. It's really one of yahoo's gems. The new owner will probably take better care of it than yahoo did.
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