
Verizon Reduces Yahoo Deal Price by $250 Million in Revised Deal - richardboegli
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-15/verizon-reduces-yahoo-deal-price-by-250-million-in-revised-deal
======
alrs
$1B would have been better, but this is a dream come true for the people who
take infrastructure and security seriously.

We've got Amy Pascal's head on a spike, now we have the same for the Yahoo
deal.

Please, may this be the year that Wall Street is finally bitten in a serious
way by a tech company flaming out due to the technical incompetence of its
leadership.

~~~
empath75
what the hell does amy pascal have to do with this? She was a movie producer?
Is it just because she's also a woman?

~~~
Phlarp
The Sony hack had a significant negative impact on her career. The parent post
asserts that this "is a dream come true for the people who take infrastructure
and security seriously." because people in powerful positions won't care /
listen to their security teams unless they fear the consequences of ignoring
them.

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sna1l
Yahoo most likely has contingencies in place that would make a pullout from
the deal very painful for VZ.

Otherwise VZ would have much more leverage, since they don't need Yahoo like
Yahoo needs them.

~~~
grigjd3
Laws are being relaxed on subsidizing data plans with ads so Verizon wants ad-
tech. Is it really that hard to understand?

~~~
jpadkins
yahoo has adtech?

~~~
notyourwork
I was as surprised as you are,
[https://advertising.yahoo.com/](https://advertising.yahoo.com/)

------
mtgx
Meanwhile:

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/yahoo-warning-users-that-
hacker...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/yahoo-warning-users-that-hackers-
forged-cookies-to-access-accounts/)

You've got to give it to Yahoo. It must be the only company that broke _its
own world record_ for a data breach. That's kind of impressive in its own way.

------
mtgx
That's it? Seems like Verizon's negotiation experts weren't very good. Yahoo
board is desperate to sell the company. I think they would've easily given up
on a billion dollars to do it.

Also, if this was some other company, it may have actually cared about Yahoo's
disastrous data breaches and its cooperation with the NSA. But because is
Verizon, the cooperation with the NSA and the spying infrastructure being
already in place is probably why Verizon didn't want to cut too much from the
price.

~~~
berberous
Yahoo's board may be desperate, but that doesn't mean they necessarily
believed they were contractually in the wrong here. Verizon only had an out if
it could show that this event was a "material adverse effect" on the business,
which is a very high standard to meet. Verizon likely also preferred to close
the deal, and neither company wanted to take the risk of litigating this and
losing.

------
chrisabrams
Not that I understand how the deal structure is priced, but that seems like a
win for Yahoo at this point?

~~~
adrenalinelol
I'd say so, I always assumed $~1 billion would get shaved off the asking price
after the PR nightmare caused by the hacking.

------
git-pull
If anyone from Yahoo is listening, I'm still trying to get into my Flickr
account after about a year and 10+ contact attempts now. You guys literally
have thousands of users in a holding pattern complaining and you're not doing
anything about it [1].

I'm not trying to cause trouble or shake anything up. I'm an honest person who
just wants in my account with all my photos. Meanwhile while all this happens
you're just leaking and leaking account info every year.

What am I to do? Yahoo Help is just a FAQ that has no route for me to submit
my identification information. Flickr's legacy login is gone. My original
gmail was deleted. I do not have a route for escalating my issue. I'll show
you my driver's license, birth certificate, maybe even the last 4 numbers of
the CC I used for flickr pro in 2008.

What do I do? Get a lawyer? This is my stuff! Get it together Yahoo!

[https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-
us/72157668446997150/](https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-
us/72157668446997150/)

~~~
snovv_crash
Me too. For me it is because I moved country, and now my 2FA SMS won't work
because my number changed. And there is no way around it, no 2FA no account.

I mean, yes, I understand security blah blah. But if I can send you a scan of
my passport, which shows the same me as in most of the photos, surely that is
an exception? And if I can reply to the same username@gmail.com too? But no,
there is no way I can get to a human.

~~~
homakov
Best practice is to _never_ use 2FA SMS

~~~
snovv_crash
Agreed, but it was the best option available at the time.

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newscracker
This is not even a mild slap on the wrist. It seems like Verizon has been very
desperate to get Yahoo and blinked during the negotiations (after the
revelations about the security violations/intrusions).

------
77pt77
Also have a look at the latest yahoo mail breach
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13654696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13654696)

------
ptrptr
Don't forget to reduce final price by 1 billion USD -
[http://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-
deal-m...](http://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-deal-mozilla-
yahoo-payment)

------
geodel
Huh, I think Yahoo negotiated well.

~~~
Bartweiss
Looks like the market agrees. Yahoo is up 2 points, Verizon is down 0.7.

------
sigjuice
_“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”_

------
xenihn
So I have 4 shares of Yahoo I bought a few years ago on a whim...what the heck
should I do with them? I paid something like $40 per share.

~~~
dforrestwilson1
If you like Alibaba then just keep holding. After the sale it is basically a
tracking stock for BABA.

If you don't like BABA then you should probably sell?

Frankly, if you are asking strangers what to do with some stocks you bought,
you might consider simply buying a broad market ETF like the SPY, VTI, or VT
with the proceeds.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Asking "strangers", i.e. experts in internet forums related to a stock, is a
key step in learning enough about a market to trade intelligently in it. Your
comment reads a little like "investors asking baby questions should trade baby
securities". But just asking people's opinions on a stock doesn't mean you are
a low skill investor. Quite the opposite really. People who si questions tend
to get smart.

~~~
oculusthrift
this is a tech forum. any response you get should not be assumed to be from an
expert.

~~~
awfgylbcxhrey
I've come across more doctors and bankers on HN than on any other social
bookmarking site I've ever read. It's not limited to a "tech forum".

------
nkkollaw
Yahoo! seems to keep screwing up. Even this last thing is a screwup, last
thing they did as Yahoo!, inc.

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sabelo
At least now we have a price point for what a breach costs. Very pricey it
seems.

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bigdataanswers
Yahoo has something you cant buy. Yahoo has what makes facebook unique and
google plus suk. A user base, an fing large one. This discussion is not really
for hacker news. We are techies, this is a talk for business men. If anyone
has ad sales experience please step up and speak to the value of yahoo. Aol
would love to have the inventory of yahoo in its graps and looks like they
will finally get it.

Security is for techies, I dont think yahoo's user base cares as much as lets
say githubs. So while bad, its context that will help here.

