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Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

nytimes.com

81–90 of 366 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I do get the feeling of an underlying crypto play marketed on the old brands AOL/Yahoo.

I didn’t even think about something as simple meme stonk. It may sound like sarcasm and a joke, but look at the meme stonks or Doge ($11B+ market cap)...sure the kids on tik tok might not know what yahoo or aol are/were but that actually makes them fresh to the new generation, mixed in with a little nostalgia from those slightly older that would love to jump on the next rocket going to the moon...it’s seriously just 1 Elon tweet from a doubling in value.

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who will be hosting verizon.net email accounts, held by Frontier customers?

AFAIK, those are still managed by Verizon

They are managed by AOL now. Access is thru mail.aol.com. Will they return to Verizon?

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

#83

I'm really surprised that Yahoo Finance has not been spun out as an independent company at this point. I think as a stand-alone company it could easily be worth in the billions of dollars. Reportedly Yahoo Finance has revenue between $100M and $250M annually. With the increase in retail interest in investing it seems like a property that could have some growth potential behind it if they did things right and separate…

That and their fanatsy sports platform as well. I don't know the numbers at all, but its the de-facto platform for a large portion of fantasy sports. If they made moves into the DFS space I think they would do even better.

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

#84

I'm really surprised that Yahoo Finance has not been spun out as an independent company at this point. I think as a stand-alone company it could easily be worth in the billions of dollars. Reportedly Yahoo Finance has revenue between $100M and $250M annually. With the increase in retail interest in investing it seems like a property that could have some growth potential behind it if they did things right and separate…

I'm surprised Twitter hasn't been interested in Yahoo Finance and Yahoo sports apps. The onboarding into Twitter, integration with tweets would be worth billions. A lot of "regular people" use those apps, and Twitter investors are looking for the user growth. Also, if Twitter is going to become a platform for interests/topics, it would be good to have a couple of standalone apps on some core topics.

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

#87

I worked at HuffPo right after AOL was acquired by Verizon and before AOL/Yahoo became Oath. During this time Arianna left; rumor was she was forced out or at the very least, her power was undermined/neutered by Verizon and she was unable to fulfill her vision. Shortly after was the 2016 election. It was very surreal to be working there, while everyone on the editorial staff was sure HRC was going to win and then Tru…

> everyone on the editorial staff was sure HRC was going to win

I will always remember the HuffPo homepage masthead, which showed HRC with a 98.5% chance of victory, right up until the end. Probably didn't help her situation.

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to HuffPo just now. It appears to be same sort of stuff from years ago. HuffPo never had the rep of a shining beacon of journalism or even integrity. Didn it ever make a profit?

No, it was bleeding money for a long time. They had to essentially pay Buzzfeed to take it off their hands.

Very similar to the Tumblr situation.

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

#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 technical and Economical perspective. It still baffles me.

Or are they only doing it for the marketing? ( Which is worst because Apple have to specifically make mmWave antenna for iPhone. Although I would not be surprised if they have something like 802.11ay planned using the same antenna R&D. )

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

#90
My first reaction is that this is really good for everyone.

For Verizon, as they aptly spun it, it allows them to focus on their core business. I'm not in Media or Telecom, but from the outside looking in, the synergies between those two segments aren't obvious.

For Yahoo / AOL / Verizon Advertising, these can be repackaged into sets of assets that "make sense" so that they may be sold to strategic buyers and ultimately have a better home than being the ugly duckling in Verizon's portfolio.

For Apollo, the benefits are obvious. There's probably lots of operational improvements to execute on, again due to the fact that Verizon was likely not really focused on these businesses. Presumably the fund will reap huge returns if they can deliver on these improvements and exit successfully and timely.

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EDIT: There is one more nuanced question I forgot to address: is this "really good" for the employees to? On an individual scale, probably not. I'm sure many people will be let go once Apollo is at the helm. But from a broader view, it is arguably "good" for everyone collective in the long run. Verizon really can't do much with the asset, so the alternative to selling is letting it wither away in the hopes of some miracle, with the more likely outcome being that Yahoo and AOL would become even worse shadows of their former selves with each passing day.

Eventually people would be let go anyway and those businesses could be shut down unless some miracle strategic buyer (i.e. not a private equity owner) came along and bought them. But most strategic buyers are not comfortable buying bad operations and turning them around. They find it too risky, so that's usually a job left to financial sponsors like Apollo who are built for that. In fact, these days most PEs are not even interested in turning operations around because they also find it too risky—and sponsors learned they can make more than enough money by just being great at finding sub-scale / non-core assets, putting them together in a "platform" and selling them to another sponsor or exiting through an IPO.

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