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Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

nytimes.com

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

#51

Post by yalogin »

throwaway823882 wrote: post #33
yalogin wrote: post #13

This was never in doubt. Everyone knew this was going to happen. Are non tech companies really that foolish to think they can salvage a brand that was relevant 10 years ago and revive it? I have a feeling this is some kind of tax avoidance scheme. Knowing nothing about taxes and accounting I will let knowledgeable people correct me.

> Are non tech companies really that foolish to think they can salvage a brand that was relevant 10 years ago and revive it? Sure you can, though branding isn't the only way to make a successful business. Kleenex knock-offs thrive even though nobody ever says "please hand me the Generic Tissue Paper". Assuming there are professionals involved (not just rich techbros that have held on since founding) tech companies sh…

Give me an instance this kind of salvaging happened in tech. Tech and non tech differ a lot in this case, one cannot use the generic business pattern there. People run of tissues and every time they run out, they seize being a customer and are new customers in the market looking for a brand. That is when discounts, shiny packaging etc help. Tech is not that way. There is an enormous entrenchment with things like email and even news readers. Particularly in online services, People don’t switch, that is the reason why the biggest sites are so loathe to changing the smallest things on their pages. In the same vein, companies that go out of favor don’t ever come back. I am trying to think of examples of any that might have but am unable to. There are tons of brands that are either sold off as acquihires or just left for dead and ignored though.

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

#53

Post by runako »

perardi wrote: post #43
throwaway088 wrote: post #35

Before people go all ballistic, please remember that yahoo and AOL make $700 million from Mail and a billion dollars from search. AOL sells huge number of paid dialup based email accounts(for older people though). So the sale price is approximately two years of revenue. Apollo is getting it cheap!

“AOL sells huge number of paid dialup based email accounts” Do they really? I am not being sarcastic. I cannot find a recent reference to this (everything seems to be from 2015), but given my experience getting my aunt away from AOL email: it seems horribly plausible.

> https://plans.aol.com/join?regtype=new

"If you're interested in purchasing a plan that includes dialup service, please call 1-800-827-6364 (Mon-Fri: 8am-12am ET; Sat: 8am-10pm ET)"

I would not be surprised to learn that they still have millions of dial-up customers & millions on the new non-dialup plans.

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

#57

Post by oaththrowaway »

syntheticnature wrote: post #45
oaththrowaway wrote: post #23

Yahoo employee here... AMA

I've definitely noticed Verizon being more willing to deprecate old services in Yahoo/AOL/Oath over the last few years. Do you expect this to speed up (i.e. leadership was being conservative) or slow down (they were chopping too much/all the chopping should, in theory, be done)?

If it's not related to 5G, I would expect it to be.. less of a focus

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

#58

Post by oaththrowaway »

ForHackernews wrote: post #41
oaththrowaway wrote: post #23

Yahoo employee here... AMA

Is Yahoo hiring? How's the pay? I think it'd be kind of fun to work for a zombie Web 1.0 giant in a weird sociological way. My first email address was @yahoo.com -- thank you for losing/forcibly deleting all my embarrassing teenage missives.

They are hiring (though I suspect this will make recruiting harder), pay is good. Not FAANG good, but Bay area good.

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

#59

Post by infinityplus1 »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #37
Tenoke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard of anyone using yahoo for anything except to check ticker prices in years.

A lot of people use it for fantasy sports because... I'm not sure why but they do. Also its impossible to set up email forwarding with them so I have a very old email address I keep active.

They have disabled email forwarding in free accounts. https://www.zdnet.com/article/yahoo-mail-discontinues-automa...

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

#60

Post by daveevad »

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #50
soco wrote: post #30

They definitely squeezed a better deal than with the sale of Tumblr last year (which went for 3 mere millions)

At that price I’m surprised some crypto millionaire/billionaire or hell at this point an NFT artist didn’t just buy it as a joke, tokenize it and flip it for profit. It may sound like a joke or sarcasm but it’s not, and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if we see this AOL/Yahoo turn into some type of crypto play that can be marketed on the back of the old brands.

Maybe Apollo plans on meme-stonking YHOO?
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