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

Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 155 posts

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#81

Post by ghaff »

carterehsmith wrote: post #60
elgabogringo wrote: post #9

Has the valley ever seen a more hyped, yet disappointing hire than Mayer?

Carly Fiorina? As per Wikipedia: "several commentators ranked Fiorina as one of the worst American (or tech) CEOs of all time" Then as a punishment for being a shitty CEO: "In 2010, she won the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in California; " Overall she looks like at least a good challenger to Myers.

Fiorina certainly wins that matchup at least. Mayer arguably took over a no-win kobayashi maru situation and managed to at least not have it go up in a fireball. But, personally, I'd settle for a significantly smaller payday than Mayer simply to not make a further mess of a company going down the tubes.

Fiorina, on the other hand, caused active damage to HP and had at least some role in the evolution of what at least became probably the most dysfunctional board in a large tech company ever.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#82

Post by ProfChronos »

When reading the article I was remembering the words of Dominique Vidal, former Yahoo MD Europe, quoted by Criteo's cofounder Rudelle in his book: "Yahoo had everything to be Google. But when we reached a peak of users, we stopped investing in R&D to focus on other expenses. That is the most terrible mistake we did". When you look at Google or Facebook and their R&D investments in non core-business projects, I am definitely thinking that someone got Yahoo's lessons right

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#83

Post by demonshalo »

tuna-piano wrote: post #51
xxbondsxx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't the prudent thing to do be to sell at least enough stock to pay the tax? It's not liquid yet, that's the issue. That's what is nice about most RSU plans -- they immediately sell to cover, so you don't receive a ton of stock with an attached tax bill. But illiquid options are different; the capital gains tax is for the paper-wealth you just received. That same paper wealth can evaporate, but the tax bill re…

So you have an asset that is considered worth a price, but you cannot buy it or sell it at that price? Seems to me an unfortunate tax policy.

almost all tax policies are unfortunate.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#84

Post by neotek »

lsc wrote: post #70
ams6110 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple turned around by moving much more heavily into consumer hardware, specifically the iPod and then the iPhone and iPad. It was not really a software turnaround, though that was a smaller part of it.

was it, though? I mean, none of the apple hardware is amazing, and today, it's not even really different, but... the software mostly works, and for computers? that's amazing . I remember in the mid aughts, when I had been working exclusively with linux for some time, I started to see my peers, peers who wouldn't be caught dead with a windows laptop, carrying around os-x laptops. Compared to the ThinkPad of the day, t…

Pretty much all of Apple's hardware is amazing. If you try and evaluate them on specs alone then sure, they fall short - less RAM in their phones, slower clock speeds, whatever - but the vast majority of people don't buy hardware because of its technical specs, they buy hardware because it looks gorgeous, makes them feel special, and performs the tasks they need it to perform. Nobody ever lined up for a week to buy a ThinkPad.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#85

Post by _9vpl »

cloudjacker wrote: post #43
danso wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a consumer product. They performed thousands of blood tests, which were available in Palo Alto and Arizona. But it's false that companies that don't have a consumer product don't draw intense interest. Ask Enron. Or WorldCom. Or Blackwater. Or Lehman Brothers. Or the folks behind the AOL and Time Warner merger

You have a point, but it operates under the assumption that there is an interest in disproving a role her gender had in the attention. An assumption I can't empirically prove, nor one you can empirically prove. I would like to think the blood test product scandal was interesting on its own merits, amongst all of the other frauds going on in this country, but I don't think it really was elevated to the collective cons…

> but I don't think it really was elevated to the collective conscious because of that.

It was elevated because of the massive PR push by Theranos itself. I never even heard of Theranos until they did a massive PR push in 2013 or 2014. That, combined with the fact the company is valued at $9 billion, apparently has no actual working product and numerious other interesting facts about the company including it's well-connected-to-Gov (and large) [former?] Board of Directors, co-founder who committed suicide, at least two-large corporate partnerships that blew up (Safeway, Walgreens), etc., etc.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#86

Post by msh »

acchow wrote: post #47
jldugger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Intel and IBM come to mind.

I think Intel is mostly hardware and IBM is mostly consulting?

The IBM turn around was turning them into a consulting company.

Might not be the most glamorous turn around but compared to yahoo...

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#87

Post by AlisdairO »

acchow wrote: post #47
jldugger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Intel and IBM come to mind.

I think Intel is mostly hardware and IBM is mostly consulting?

IBM has a large consulting arm (although it is shrinking IIRC), but they also still have an enormous software business that brings in many billions in profit every year. Hardware is shrinking but still pretty damn big.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#88

Post by twblalock »

theli0nheart wrote: post #44
bhickey wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may make no sense, but the IRS disagrees with you. Exercising is a taxable event.

That's only for ISOs, which are essentially deferred compensation. Getting paid in ISOs is functionally equivalent to taking an 83(b) election in that you're trading a risk of potential loss for the upside of only needing to pay long term capital gains tax.

You are confused.

Exercise of incentive stock options (ISOs) is not a taxable event, although you may get hit with the AMT. Exercise of non-qualified options (NSOs) is a taxable event. For both types of options, the sale of the stocks at a later time is taxable.

Re: Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report

#89

Post by awad »

kalleboo wrote: post #65
dredmorbius wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very few pure-play software companies. Microsoft is simply alone in its class as a large, pure-play, shrinkwrap software company. Adobe might come close. IBM, Oracle, SAS, PWC, Deloitte, McKinsey, PeopleSoft, and many other firms bundled software with at the very least consulting services. IBM, along with Sun, HP, Digital, and other vendors sold (or leased) both hardware and software, along with consulting…

I would have used Microsoft as an example of a former software company that has started banking on hardware (Xbox, Surface, Nokia)

This list of billion dollar lines of business at Microsoft was generated in 2013 but let's go with the safe assumption that from 2013 they doubled down on the software components (which they did) and kind of lukewarm accepted the other parts of the business:

Windows (which also, up until now, included Surface, which contributed $853 million to the total in fiscal 2013)

Windows Server

Windows Azure

Office (client)

Xbox

SQL Server

System Center (client and server both, so includes Windows Intune)

SharePoint

Visual Studio

Dynamics (CRM and ERP)

Online Advertising (search and display both) Office 365

Client-access license (CAL) suites (formerly known as desktop access)

Enterprise Services (including consulting)

Enterprise communication business (Exchange plus Lync)

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-16-billion-dollar-bu...]

Not too bad, eh?

Post reply on HN