Yahoo considers sale of Internet business, but it isn’t worth much

Stake in Alibaba is worth more than Yahoo's core business.

Read the whole story

 

[theoilman]

WhyNotZoidberg[/url]":488npvsd]

theoilman[/url]":488npvsd]

Big Wang[/url]":488npvsd]

bongbong[/url]":488npvsd]Refusing the 44 Billion dollar offer will be Yahoo's legacy to the business world, "Don't make the same mistake we did"

I'm curious why you think this is so. Alibaba stake along is worth 30 some billion, so Yahoo really only rejected an offer for 10+ billion. that's not all that ridiculous. In fact I think that's under valuing them.

Back in 2008 it was probably an undervaluation. Alibaba wasn't worth $30billion back then but they could make an educated guess.

The 44B that MS offered was a 62% premium on the share price at the time. They were dumb not to take it. You can't factor Alibaba into it since Yahoo didn't own any part of it at the time.

They probably wanted their search business since Bing appeared in 2009.

In that case, yes, dumb not to take it. Ironically now yahoo pays Microsoft to use bing's backend for their search.

 

[East Wind Rain]

Marissa is doing to Yahoo, what Fiorina did to HP. Run it into the ground, destroy/slash/burn, many layoffs to come.

 

[adamsc]

JasePow[/url]":2fib2h67]

I agree about Marissa Mayer being a Trojan horse is stupid. She's not that smart. She is devoid of any meaningful talent (other that what she may or may not have shown Larry Page in the bedroom). Her only claim to fame was being an early exec. at Google. Why they would make her a CEO of a company that was quickly headed for life support is beyond me. Well,... I guess it makes sense if you consider that Dilbert cartoons pretty much accurately describe business, nowadays.

It's hard not to think that your unhappiness with Mayer have more to do with her gender than actual job performance. Given how badly run Yahoo has been since the mid-to-late 90s, the worst you can say about her is that she wasn't the turnaround miracle worker they needed to make up for close to two decades of mismanagement and deeply-entrenched dysfunctional culture.

 

[jjit]

theoilman[/url]":3oldmnek]

Sephiroth[/url]":3oldmnek]

Ostracus[/url]":3oldmnek]

BajaPaul[/url]":3oldmnek]Seems to me that Yahoo should be cloning everything that Alibaba does. If it is working for Alibaba than it should work for Yahoo!

Does the world need another ebay/craigslist clone?

Alibaba is soooo much more. For example I was looking for a very hard to find pine nut that grows in south asia. While searching for it I found that I could have 1 ton shipped to a commercial address. Not a bad price too if I had a business selling these things.
Then there is Alipay which is basically the easiest way to send money to people.

Yahoo should have sold itself to Alibaba and let Alibaba start these new things on Yahoo.com.

Good luck convincing alibaba to buy them

at 54:55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH9-_GLqGC4
jack ma wants it, but it was 2011 though

 

[David H.]

JasePow[/url]":19zya1n8]
I agree about Marissa Mayer being a Trojan horse is stupid. She's not that smart. She is devoid of any meaningful talent (other that what she may or may not have shown Larry Page in the bedroom). Her only claim to fame was being an early exec. at Google. Why they would make her a CEO of a company that was quickly headed for life support is beyond me. Well,... I guess it makes sense if you consider that Dilbert cartoons pretty much accurately describe business, nowadays.

Not being able to bring Yahoo! back from its tailspin isn’t a sign of someone being stupid. Additionally, the bolded part?—very distasteful and classless.

 

[OnThePlusSide]

bb-15[/url]":r3ry0awf]I'm a real outlier here.
I sometimes use Yahoo services as one of the alternatives to what Google provides.
It would be sad imo if Yahoo's offerings disappeared.

It would be sad to me too, not because I currently use it but because I remember what Yahoo! used to be and back then it was a site I enjoyed. As it is now it feels like just another wannabe with nothing unique to offer. I used to use their search engine via GoodSearch but when Mozilla and MS said they were switching to no tracking being turned on by default and Yahoo! decided they'd just ignore user's tracker requests I stopped that and started using mainly DuckDuckGo. I used to use their e-mail service but I get so much spam and phishing stuff through it from websites I have never even been to, much less used, it's ridicuous. My ISP partnered with Yahoo! for providing their customers' e-mail and I still don't use it and won't unless things there change.

 

[andrewsc0]

To those who said they picked Google over yahoo. There was a three year or so gap where there was no Google, and yahoo's directories were one of the better ways to find new content in a young internet, for that I thank and remember yahoo.

As for today, I use them for fantasy sports and Flickr. Every once in awhile I check my yahoo email and it seems serviceable, but gmail has been my primary email since I got my invite many years ago, and as such the yahoo account is nothing but spam now. Flickr I'm new to, but I like it as a good way to share large amounts of photos easily. The interface can be a little difficult at times, but over all it is easier than Google photos which seems to change everything every two weeks or so. It's not Instagram, which to me is a different service. So yes, I'd be a little sad to see those two services and the history that is yahoo disappear.

 

[theSeb]

I actually never really used Yahoo. I preferred altavista before Google came along. I just read that altavista was bought by Yahoo in 2003. I didn't even realise. Of course I wasn't using it by that time.

 

[JPan]

Buying tumbler was a sure sign this was all for Shit. Tumbler is the MySpace of the new Millennium.

 

[SPCagigas]

PhilGil[/url]":13bjfev4]My Yahoo email is still my primary email account (I've had it for almost 15 years). Of course, everything gets auto forwarded to Gmail now, so I only have to see the interface every couple of months.

I still hold a grudge against Yahoo for buying and killing Astrid. I still haven't found an Android+Web to-do application that works as well for me.

Not to utterly derail the discussion, but I moved to Wunderlist when Astrid was eaten by Yahoo, and have been pretty happy with it. There's also an app by Alex Baker called "Tasks" that's literally an open-sourced Astrid Clone that might be worth taking a look at.

 

[SPCagigas]

BatCrapCrazy[/url]":16j5s35w]I wonder, is it just me or what, but every time i see an article about Yahoo, that annoying,ear drilling,nauseating YAHOO-WOOHOO sound plays through my head, i can`t be the only one.

THavoc, you have any of those "special cookies" left that you offer new posters?

Could use a couple bout now, and some Kool-Aid to wash em down with.

Same here, but at least it isn't that damn CROISSANNWWWWIIIIIICCCHHH! Commercial. I can't decide whether to change the radio station or smack a hipster when I hear it . . .

 

[SPCagigas]

l27[/url]":1uqn78as]My first email address was @yahoo.com. Then when I got Time Warner cable internet it was @roadrunner.com. Then Comcast purchased Time Warner in my area and I went to @gmail.com because I thought I never want to change email addresses again, it's a PITA. I briefly thought about going to @outlook.com but thought it would be easier to say with @gmail.com.

Yahoo was many firsts for me on the internet, so from that perspective it's sad to see. Now they are so terrible at everything I haven't visited yahoo.com in many years.

The only way to make sure you never have to change your email address is to buy your own domain. Then you can use whatever backend service you want, without having to worry about updating everyone you know when you change from Google Apps to Exchange.

 

[Marlor_AU]

Yahoo's 15 percent stake in Alibaba is worth about $32 billion, the Journal report said. Since Yahoo's total market capitalization is $31 billion, stock market investors "are valuing Yahoo’s core business at less than zero if the Asian assets were spun out tax-free."

Yahoo actually owns more than that. They own a $32 billion stake in Alibaba, as well as $8.7 billion worth of Yahoo Japan stock.

They have $5.9 billion worth of cash and marketable securities, and only $1.4 billion of debt.

If you add up these stakes in other entities, and cash on hand, they are alone worth $45 billion.

Yet, as of last week, Yahoo was only valued at $31 billion.

So, Yahoo's core business is actually valued at somewhere around negative $14 billion.

If they could even give away their core business, their share price can only go up. If they could sell it off in one lot, or even piecemeal, then they would be even better off.

Yahoo is actually in a very good position due to their investments. Their share price is ridiculously undervalued. By spinning off their web properties, or selling them to someone who sees value in them, they could very well see their valuation skyrocket to well above Microsoft's famous offer.

However, without their portal, without search, without email, without any in-house internet properties, would they really be Yahoo anymore?

 

[Marlor_AU]

bongbong[/url]":3629mvnx]Refusing the 44 Billion dollar offer will be Yahoo's legacy to the business world, "Don't make the same mistake we did"

Jerry Yang has repeatedly said that he refused to sell because he figured their investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan were worth more than that.

Together, those investments are worth $45 billion as of today, and that is after Yahoo screwed up in 2012, by selling back half their stake in Alibaba for a rock-bottom price. Had they not done that, their investment in Alibaba would be worth something like $75 billion alone.

Yahoo's core business is a massive drag on the company, but their investments at the time were worth more (in terms of long-term potential) than Microsoft was offering.

I think history has proven he was correct. Microsoft's $44 billion offer was a massive undervaluation of investments that would be worth more than $80 billion today if Yahoo hadn't mismanaged them.

 

[arobert3434]

I feel compelled to offset some of the negativity here. Yahoo remains my go-to site for movies, weather, sports, and especially finance. I've occasionally looked for alternatives but Yahoo's approach from their earliest roots is to use clear, simple logical organization which remains very appealing when trying to navigate the huge melange of information and advertising the web is. It really is "the web for engineers". Moreover, to this day their pages don't involve massive numbers of overlays and downloaded bells and whistles from 9 zillion external sites. They load cleanly and quickly.

Finally, the breadth of what they have means you can browse multiple content areas of interest with easy top-level navigation between them and with single sign-on and consistent interface style throughout. So much more pleasant than going to a different site for everything, particularly if your "net time" is limited. In 20 years no one else has come close to putting together the vision, the reach, and the execution of Yahoo, and they continue to get the traffic they do for a reason. Their problem has always been monetization, but that shouldn't be taken as an indictment on the value of their services any more than for Twitter or other prominent companies past and present with the same problem.

 

[JasePow]

David H.[/url]":1115uzu6]

JasePow[/url]":1115uzu6]
I agree about Marissa Mayer being a Trojan horse is stupid. She's not that smart. She is devoid of any meaningful talent (other that what she may or may not have shown Larry Page in the bedroom). Her only claim to fame was being an early exec. at Google. Why they would make her a CEO of a company that was quickly headed for life support is beyond me. Well,... I guess it makes sense if you consider that Dilbert cartoons pretty much accurately describe business, nowadays.

Not being able to bring Yahoo! back from its tailspin isn’t a sign of someone being stupid. Additionally, the bolded part?—very distasteful and classless.

So, a female tech exec. has a relationship with her boss and gets supported for it (and anyone who notes the impropriety gets down-voted),... But, when a male tech exec. mixes his personal life in with his business life, he gets crucified for it?!?! Double standard much?!?!

There are plenty of woman CEOs that have excellent business acumen. She's not one of 'em. She can't even hold herself to her own standard of not working from home ("phoning it in"), when she was leading up to and on maternity leave (twice). She didn't give her employees that luxury. She's a hypocrite.

My own significant other is a brilliant woman (much more so than Mayer), as are many other women in my life. Don't chalk up to sexism what is answerable to a judgment of her abilities and integrity. That's the sign of a liberal-indoctrinated millennial.

As for being not that smart,... Mayer dropped out of a neuroscience program at Stanford to major in "Symbolic Systems," a watered-down Comp. Sci. program that emphasizes artificial intelligence (I looked at the curriculum, it is watered down from a full Comp. Sci. degree).

 

[Marlor_AU]

JasePow[/url]":36ks889z]As for being not that smart,... Mayer dropped out of a neuroscience program at Stanford to major in "Symbolic Systems," a watered-down Comp. Sci. program that emphasizes artificial intelligence (I looked at the curriculum, it is watered down from a full Comp. Sci. degree).

It's broader than CompSci - it is a cross-displinary program.

Does that mean it's "watered down"? Maybe, but only if you consider any discipline other than CompSci to be "water".

 

[JasePow]

Marlor[/url]":eeljasp8]

JasePow[/url]":eeljasp8]As for being not that smart,... Mayer dropped out of a neuroscience program at Stanford to major in "Symbolic Systems," a watered-down Comp. Sci. program that emphasizes artificial intelligence (I looked at the curriculum, it is watered down from a full Comp. Sci. degree).

It's broader than CompSci - it is a cross-displinary program.

Does that mean it's "watered down"? Maybe, but only if you consider any discipline other than CompSci to be "water".

It's the closest thing Stanford has to a "basket weaving" degree as far as tech is concerned... It's Comp. Sci. with all the heavy lifting courses taken out and replaced with humanities courses...

 

[Romberry]

Props to Robert X. Cringley for basically getting the worth of Yahoo's web portal...er....internet business right: http://www.cringely.com/2015/10/21/why- ... n-nothing/

 

[Romberry]

THavoc[/url]":wwa3g2xh]Kinda sad to see a founding Internet business fall off into oblivion.

The Yahoo of the 90s will be missed.

Isn't that kind of the problem, that the Yahoo of today is basically a gussied up Web 2.0 version of the Yahoo of the late 90's? The heyday of the web portal (remember those? Lycos, Yahoo and the rest.) is over and has been for quite some time.

 

[arobert3434]

Romberry[/url]":3fotsfdo]Props to Robert X. Cringley for basically getting the worth of Yahoo's web portal...er....internet business right: http://www.cringely.com/2015/10/21/why- ... n-nothing/

I don't find a lot of content there. Just, "They are dumb, dead, and they should just sell everything." Wow, really exciting.

Actually, what happened was Yahoo had an early lead in nearly every area: portal, search, email, maps, even social media (forums, message boards, movie reviews, etc.). But Google's search dominance which they parlayed into advertising dominance sucked so much of the profit oxygen out of the air that internet companies everywhere shriveled and/or died. Then Yahoo missed the boat in social media. They didn't get in on blogs, and they didn't get in on other types of social networking, and they got beaten by specialist sites from Facebook to LinkedIn to Instagram. They've had some limited success with Flickr and fantasy sports, but not enough to move the needle. Meanwhile Google maintains its iron grip on search advertising revenues, and they've even managed some modest success in social media via YouTube. And they continue to try to build an empire outwards from this bastion of financial strength. They are truly the successor to Microsoft.

The question for Yahoo isn't how much money it could get for selling this or that piece, but whether it can parlay its remaining strength -- as a portal -- into footholds into more lucrative internet trends. Unfortunately the prognosis for such "once dominant" companies trying to renew their relevance is not good. Sun, Lucent, Nokia, Blackberrry, AOL, Gateway, even, now, IBM all went / are going through periods of thrashing around spending their coffers trying to cheat the clutches of death. But the answer is not, "sell everything for cash," or at least not the interesting answer.

Experience does show that trying to turn or right a huge, listing ship is far harder than catching fire as a small startup with the next new idea. But still it's interesting to see if they can do it. Some companies, HP, AT&T, Corning, Apple, and even Microsoft among them, HAVE all managed it in their own distinct ways. And those ARE interesting stories.

 

[brutaltruth]

Yahoo blew it, especially with Flickr which is worse than it ever was.

What does Yahoo having going for them nowadays? Yahoo Answers..? LOL! Their website design sucks, their search sucks, their webmail is atrocious, Flickr is a disaster, Tumblr functionality is poor, etc.

 

[THavoc]

BatCrapCrazy[/url]":3nf6v0cz]I wonder, is it just me or what, but every time i see an article about Yahoo, that annoying,ear drilling,nauseating YAHOO-WOOHOO sound plays through my head, i can`t be the only one.

THavoc, you have any of those "special cookies" left that you offer new posters?

Could use a couple bout now, and some Kool-Aid to wash em down with.

Yes, I do. However, I'm not giving you any. You are already too weird.

 

[KGFish]

JasePow[/url]":1n6zxra7]

David H.[/url]":1n6zxra7]

JasePow[/url]":1n6zxra7]
I agree about Marissa Mayer being a Trojan horse is stupid. She's not that smart. She is devoid of any meaningful talent (other that what she may or may not have shown Larry Page in the bedroom). Her only claim to fame was being an early exec. at Google. Why they would make her a CEO of a company that was quickly headed for life support is beyond me. Well,... I guess it makes sense if you consider that Dilbert cartoons pretty much accurately describe business, nowadays.

Not being able to bring Yahoo! back from its tailspin isn’t a sign of someone being stupid. Additionally, the bolded part?—very distasteful and classless.

So, a female tech exec. has a relationship with her boss and gets supported for it (and anyone who notes the impropriety gets down-voted),... But, when a male tech exec. mixes his personal life in with his business life, he gets crucified for it?!?! Double standard much?!?!

There are plenty of woman CEOs that have excellent business acumen. She's not one of 'em. She can't even hold herself to her own standard of not working from home ("phoning it in"), when she was leading up to and on maternity leave (twice). She didn't give her employees that luxury. She's a hypocrite.

My own significant other is a brilliant woman (much more so than Mayer), as are many other women in my life. Don't chalk up to sexism what is answerable to a judgment of her abilities and integrity. That's the sign of a liberal-indoctrinated millennial.

As for being not that smart,... Mayer dropped out of a neuroscience program at Stanford to major in "Symbolic Systems," a watered-down Comp. Sci. program that emphasizes artificial intelligence (I looked at the curriculum, it is watered down from a full Comp. Sci. degree).

And yet, all you do is talk about how she's a lousy, weak woman, with the only supporting evidence that what - she doesn't have a degree you approve of, she gave birth, and your implication she got this far by fucking Google's founders?

You're not wriggling out of that morass.

 

[giantbee]

andrewsc0[/url]":1tny5a1q]To those who said they picked Google over yahoo. There was a three year or so gap where there was no Google, and yahoo's directories were one of the better ways to find new content in a young internet, for that I thank and remember yahoo.

Even then, a lot of people didn't bother with Yahoo, but preferred Dogpile and Altavista. Yahoo's browsable directory setup didn't scale well, and their searching was mediocre.

Also, I think you have your history wonky.. For about four years of the web, there was no Yahoo in any conventional sense. It wasn't until 1991 that the web appeared outside CERN. The yahoo.com domain itself dates from Jan 1995, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia. I'm going to express scepticism that you used it before then, when it was "Jerry and David's guide" (it was even more ugly and clunky then- yes it is possible).

Google.com as a domain is from September 1997.. so there's a two-and-a-bit year "gap" between Yahoo.com and Google.com domains, which is the closest that I can manage to your assertion. However, by the time that Google was born, some of us had been using the web (and grumbling that it'd never catch on, and what was wrong with gopher/wais/irc/ftp and so forth, blasted kids etc.) since 1991/92. So.. that's a six or so year "gap".

So yeah, having a hard time working out what you mean there. Sorry.

 

[simonov]

JPan[/url]":1vbrjlod]Buying tumbler was a sure sign this was all for Shit. Tumbler is the MySpace of the new Millennium.

Since MySpace was founded in 2002, I'd say MySpace was the MySpace of the new Millennium.

 

[t_newt]

THavoc[/url]":1abdw3qm]

dfavro[/url]":1abdw3qm]

THavoc[/url]":1abdw3qm]Kinda sad to see a founding Internet business fall off into oblivion.

The Yahoo of the 90s will be missed.

The web outgrew them. A directory worked when there wasn't much out there, but the web is too big now.

What will be sad to see is properties like Flickr, del.icio.us, Tumblr or Zimbra* that have withered under Yahoo's weak stewardship. There were a lot of good products out there that are dead, dying or in a precarious spot because of Yahoo. I don't weep for the founder who took the money and ran, but as a user it will sting.

* yeah, I know they sold Zimbra to VMware, who spun it off later.

Agreed. However, it's not just Yahoo that has purchased a good property and then let it wither and die.

Google has done quite a bit of that as well. SageTV comes to mind (since I have it).

Google Fiber uses Sage TV for its television service (though they don't call it that anymore), so it hasn't withered and died--it has just taken on a new form, and is growing as Google Fiber expands.

(I guess your point is that the remaining consumer side of Sage is no longer being supported).

 

[THavoc]

t_newt[/url]":2gn0xupn]

THavoc[/url]":2gn0xupn]

dfavro[/url]":2gn0xupn]

THavoc[/url]":2gn0xupn]Kinda sad to see a founding Internet business fall off into oblivion.

The Yahoo of the 90s will be missed.

The web outgrew them. A directory worked when there wasn't much out there, but the web is too big now.

What will be sad to see is properties like Flickr, del.icio.us, Tumblr or Zimbra* that have withered under Yahoo's weak stewardship. There were a lot of good products out there that are dead, dying or in a precarious spot because of Yahoo. I don't weep for the founder who took the money and ran, but as a user it will sting.

* yeah, I know they sold Zimbra to VMware, who spun it off later.

Agreed. However, it's not just Yahoo that has purchased a good property and then let it wither and die.

Google has done quite a bit of that as well. SageTV comes to mind (since I have it).

Google Fiber uses Sage TV for its television service (though they don't call it that anymore), so it hasn't withered and died--it has just taken on a new form, and is growing as Google Fiber expands.

(I guess your point is that the remaining consumer side of Sage is no longer being supported).

Yep.

 

[DKlimax]

Romberry[/url]":18u6dv4m]

THavoc[/url]":18u6dv4m]Kinda sad to see a founding Internet business fall off into oblivion.

The Yahoo of the 90s will be missed.

Isn't that kind of the problem, that the Yahoo of today is basically a gussied up Web 2.0 version of the Yahoo of the late 90's? The heyday of the web portal (remember those? Lycos, Yahoo and the rest.) is over and has been for quite some time.

Not exactly. Depends on how portals are managed. Czech Seznam.cz is doing quite well... (Google had very hard time breaking here and still many googlers are still visiting it for various things)