Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#31

Post by vonklaus » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:18 PM UTC

Paul Graham's What happened to Yahoo[0] is probably just as relevent now as when he wrote it in 2010.

> One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to work there was the way they insisted on calling themselves a "media company.

That was a bad decision then, but at the time content and media were newer on the internet and had value. They don't anymore. Yahoo finance and fantasy sports are nice things to provide, but they aren't a google killer for sure.

Yahoo's core business is media not technology. If the NYT and Wall Street Journal are any indication, media is a bad business to be in.

[0]http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#32

Post by morgante » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:18 PM UTC

yeukhon wrote: post #4

Can someone explain why do business like to create new company? What are the benefits for the financial return other than having a book reporting individual revenue? In the end, aren't they going to be under the same parent company, which, if one wishes, can actually challenge and even overrule the child company CEO's decision behind the scene? HP, Google, now Yahoo.

By themselves, "businesses" don't like to create new companies. But businesses aren't sentient, so it's actually two different groups we're talking about:

1. Executives generally don't want to have separate companies. Having it all under their purview gives them more power and control.

2. Shareholders often want separate companies, especially when they perceive one division as being much more valuable than the rest. With separate companies, they can own the profitable division but not the others.

The balance of power between these two groups is why ends up dictating what happens. This is why Google was able to turn into Alphabet (a single company) instead of spinning off their non-core assets (as some shareholders desired). Unfortunately, Yahoo executives just don't have the clout to hold together any longer. The market thinks Yahoo's assets have negative value: the only thing propping up their stock is their investments, and shareholders want to hold those investments by themselves.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#33

Post by netcan » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:19 PM UTC

I'm not sure I quite understand.

The article puts Yahoo's Alibaba stake at 31bn. Google finance is reporting Yahoo's market cap as 32.75bn. Does this mean that Yahoo's non-Alibaba value is a rounding error?

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#34

Post by grobbles » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #22

lmm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's search engine runs at a loss to support their advertising business, and haven't had any serious competition in that sector since they bought Doubleclick (which looks a bit antitrusty in my eyes but what do I know). Yahoo doesn't have much of an ad business so there's not a lot of value in running their own search. They're good at their core business of being a portal, with some parts implemented themselves a…

> Google's search engine runs at a loss to support their advertising business What? I have never heard that AdWords runs at a loss and find it incredibly dubious.

I believe their argument is "if you ignore the sources of revenue, it runs at a loss", for what that's worth (which is little).

The search engine runs ads, and is enormously profitable.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#35

Post by carrier_lost » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

wiremine wrote: post #12

Honest question: what has been Yahoo's core business for the last 15 years?

Their latest quarterly report summary offers plenty of details: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/151105/yhoo10-q.html

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#36

Post by morgante » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

mattlutze wrote: post #30

FussyZeus wrote: post #3

Oh just give this poor old dog the old Yeller treatment already. I don't know what's more sad, the fact that Yahoo has fallen from where it once was, or that it's falling so slowly and that it's new CEO, once thought to be it's saving grace, is letting the bleeding continue for seemingly as long as she possibly can. I can't imagine the morale issues in the trenches of Yahoo, it's gotta be just horrible in there.

As a sidebar, I've always kinda felt the name gets in the way. Yahoo! I feel silly saying it. I feel silly asking someone if they Yahoo!? It feels silly seeing it on stock tickers. Do I want to invest in a silly business? Work for a silly business? The answers are yes and yes in an objective world, if the company is producing interesting products that are selling. But when it comes to marketing to users, investors an…

As opposed to Google, which has a super staid and boring name.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#37

Post by vonklaus » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:21 PM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #24

Again I ask, where should I take ~30GB of photos that I have on Flickr? Yes, I have other backups but I need offsite storage. Guess I'll have to budget for it now. Backblaze B2 isn't quite ready yet.

you could put them on mega.co for free up to 50GB, or a 14.00 flash drive or instagram.

I don't think cloud storage or image hosting are unsolved problems.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#38

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:21 PM UTC

plinkplonk wrote: post #19

chollida1 wrote: post #17

Yahoo had to do this. They had been hanging onto the belief that the IRS wouldn't tax their Alibaba spin out, a belief that they and their tax accountants alone believed. Most telling is that Yahoo was up after the markets closed on this news. Heck Bloomberg just sent me a note saying the sentiment of the news on Yahoo was very positive, even the machines like this news:) Sadly this probably means 3 things are going…

"Sadly this probably means 3 things are going to happen in the next 6 months" (Genuine question, not snark). Why "sadly"? Companies, even technical companies, get obsolescent and die all the time. Maybe it is just Yahoo's time to go.

[deleted]

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#39

Post by morgante » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:22 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #28

lmm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's search engine runs at a loss to support their advertising business, and haven't had any serious competition in that sector since they bought Doubleclick (which looks a bit antitrusty in my eyes but what do I know). Yahoo doesn't have much of an ad business so there's not a lot of value in running their own search. They're good at their core business of being a portal, with some parts implemented themselves a…

That's perhaps the most twisted/obtuse definition of "running at a loss". Without their search engine, there is no advertising business.

> Without their search engine, there is no advertising business.

They do have significant advertising businesses beyond search (AdSense, gmail, etc.).

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#40

Post by strictnein » Wed, Dec 09, 2015, 2:23 PM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #31

Paul Graham's What happened to Yahoo [0] is probably just as relevent now as when he wrote it in 2010. > One of the weirdest things about Yahoo when I went to work there was the way they insisted on calling themselves a "media company. That was a bad decision then, but at the time content and media were newer on the internet and had value. They don't anymore. Yahoo finance and fantasy sports are nice things to provid…

Wish I could find the article I read this in (googling around has failed me), but I believe around 2010 they also started bringing in execs and business people from Hollywood/MSM and there was a big clash of cultures.