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

Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 366 posts

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#211

Post by avianlyric »

ksec wrote: post #89

A headline with 5G but not a single mention of it in the article. If any insider from Verizon may be could help explain why their insistence on mmWave 5G for Phones. ( And Phone only, not fixed Wireless internet access ) It doesn't make sense to me when the spec (3GPP) were announced, doesn't make sense when Verizon actually announced it, and still doesn't make any sense when they are now up and running. Both from a…

mmWave doesn’t penetrate glass or brick making it pretty useless as a wireline replacement. Unless you want to go through the trouble of mounting an antenna outside, assuming of course that you access to wall with direct line of sight to a 5G tower.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#212

Post by oblio »

ethbr0 wrote: post #114
acheron wrote: post #8

"My name is AOL Time Warner, king of kings. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair." Nothing beside remains.

There's two dead companies in that title, and the only live one owns content. Fair point: in a rapidly shifting marketplace, owning the well / mine is the best bet.

Didn't you, historically, want to be the person selling shovels?

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#213

Post by nappy-doo »

mssundaram wrote: post #205
throwaway3699 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just FYI, 'conservative investors' do understand crypto, they just think it's a bad investment.

Certainly not all of them. Edit - do you not consider Warren Buffet a conservative investor?

Or your definition of conservative is different from OP's.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#214

Post by mrweasel »

utopcell wrote: post #201
mohanmcgeek wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still how does that make DDG a Yahoo customer?

DDG was a collection of perl scripts around Yahoo BOSS (Build You Own Search Service), which is now backed by Bing. Nowadays, DDG has vastly outgrown its original serving by adding their most crucial ingredient: Privacy FUD.

That still doesn't really answer the question of how DDG is a Yahoo customer. BOSS is dead, and replaced by an ad program, which DDG doesn't use.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#215

Post by UnpossibleJim »

coderintherye wrote: post #169
amoorthy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. Remember when Google Finance was great with easily the best charting software and easy lookup of key stats for a company? Then they decided a couple years ago to destroy it for no reason. I wish I knew why they made this horrible decision.

Yes, it really was quite perplexing. I imagine the "reason" was to make it more mobile-friendly or mobile-first or perhaps just to standardize their properties more. However, as you noted, it really degraded the product. I went from a daily user to an almost never user.

"mobile-friendly or mobile-first" seems to be a trend in quite a few companies, in the last few years. The main problem is, the completely ignore the desktop design, viewing it as an either-or proposition, for some, unknowable reason. While it's understandable that much traffic is mobile, during office hours, especially during work from home (which will probably - at least partially - be a continued trend moving forward), quite a bit of traffic will be from a desktop/laptop. Simply ignoring this market share seems to be a fools errand.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#217

Post by bitwize »

codezero wrote: post #170
bitwize wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason Sprint went all in on WiMAX "4G" about ten years back: they think it gives them a value-add.

FWIW I'm bummed it didn't work out. I had a WiMax phone and even with the spotty coverage, back then (~2012?) my speeds were as good as my current broadband speeds (>200 Mbps) which was phenomenal for sprint. I even considered getting a dedicated WiMax internet provider at the time. Amazing how fast that came and went!

I had one too and the enormous drawbacks of WiMAX became apparent: go deep enough into a building and the signal gets spotty fast. WiMAX may work well for fast wireless internet to thin-walled homes, but it just doesn't work as well as a mobile technology.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#218

Post by reaperducer »

codezero wrote: post #170
bitwize wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason Sprint went all in on WiMAX "4G" about ten years back: they think it gives them a value-add.

FWIW I'm bummed it didn't work out. I had a WiMax phone and even with the spotty coverage, back then (~2012?) my speeds were as good as my current broadband speeds (>200 Mbps) which was phenomenal for sprint. I even considered getting a dedicated WiMax internet provider at the time. Amazing how fast that came and went!

I had WiMax from Clearwire. It was really epic. The dongle on my laptop delivered speeds that weren't even available wired at the time. I used it in Seattle, Phoenix, Chicago, Newark, and a few other cities, and coverage wasn't bad at all.

The only difficulty was that it had a hard time penetrating buildings. In my apartments, I could get 1-2 Mbps anywhere. But if I moved the modem into a window it was more like 25-75 Mbps.

I hope that some day 5G will be as good as WiMax was.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#220

Post by bredren »

kumarvvr wrote: post #168
lbsnake7 wrote: post #116

Can someone help me understand this from an investment perspective? AOL and Yahoo were worth a combined $400 billion in the 90s. Was investing in either of those companies essentially a fail? Were all those investors wrong or did they somehow recoup their investment through dividends and such over the last 25 years to justify that market cap? Currently the market is telling me that Facebook is a $900+ billion company…

The stockmarket is like a round robin thingy, putting it lightly. All those who hold shares in FB, combined, are holding paper that is worth 900B. However, if even 10% of those wanted to sell their holdings at a time, the price would fall and the total holdings would be worth less for all. Now, why are they holding the shares then? Two things come into play. Firstly, say 5 years down the line, the holders have confid…

For highly valued tech stocks I’d add that there is some presumption that these companies will acquire or build their way into major new sources of revenue that throw off vast profits.

With tech this might be implicit if they are “profitable and still in the market.” But it is different than say John Deer or Miller Paint in that regard.

Post reply on HN