
Yahoo is officially for sale - azov
http://mashable.com/2016/02/19/yahoo-admits-what-everybody-already-know-it-s-looking-to-sell/#qhaMI5cibSqC
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brianbreslin
Here are my thoughts on this: \- Mayer's tenure at the helm of a big co like
this is over, she will take a multi year hit before she resurfaces somewhere
else (will take a while for her to get another CEO job)

\- Yahoo still has tons of traffic (default browser tabs?), though the quality
of it is questionable.

\- If someone can pull a 1980s style buy and chop up and resell deal, they
could extract positive value instantly. They are trading right now at a
negative value to their cash.

\- Can someone buy the company and then sell the email users to google? The
search traffic to Microsoft?

\- They are going to need to lay off thousands of people (many might be best
off quitting now and beating the crowds to the market)

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nerfhammer
Why would wall street value a company at less than its book value? Struggling
to understand how that could make sense.

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WhoBeI
I didn't realize Wall Street had to make sense. Is that a new rule?

~~~
ves
If you believe that they don't make sense, take the opposite position

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cm2012
Facebook should buy them, and let advertisers target using FB targeting (the
best in the world). It would be a huge new acquisition channel for a lot of
direct response orgs.

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soared
You can't just say something is the best in the world (its not) without
qualifying it at all. Yahoo advertising is some absurdly small amount compared
FB, Google, or even Bing.

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cm2012
As you say, the big platforms are FB, Google, and Bing. The only non intent
driven advertiser on the big list is Facebook for a reason. According to this
list, [https://www.quantcast.com/top-sites](https://www.quantcast.com/top-
sites), Yahoo traffic is not insignificant compared to FB at all. With FB's
targeting, Yahoo could be monetized soo much better.

Most direct acquisition marketers I know would say that Facebook is the main
scale player in non intent driven advertising, all because of its superior
targeting.

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bnchrch
While it sounds like the beginning of the end of the early internet era I for
one am excited at the thought of a company being able to do something a little
more remarkable with the infrastructure Yahoo has built.

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Jemaclus
So here's a potentially dumb question. A lot of commenters are expressing
optimism that a company could buy Yahoo and do something good with it.

If that's the case, why can't Yahoo do something good with itself? If all it
takes ("all") is dropping the parts that aren't profitable, why can't Mayer or
some other CEO do that?

What's the real benefit of another big player buying Yahoo, if Yahoo couldn't
save itself? What's the real hope there?

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norea-armozel
I don't think there's much saving Yahoo in its current form. It's just all
over the place as to what it's doing (media, search, email, odd sorts of
services like Flickr and Tumblr...). I just don't get how Yahoo even survived
this long. It seems to me it's just a fluke of the market I feel.

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Mahn
Yahoo is in such a strange position, in that they have a lot of great
products, users and revenue and at the same time I can't think of a single big
player that would want to own them, let alone for a fair price.

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differentView
> they have a lot of great products

They do?

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monknomo
I'd be interested in hearing what other people think of as Yahoo's great
products. I personally like Tumblr, but I'm having a hard time thinking of
another Yahoo thing I like/use

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thenomad
Flickr springs to mind. Still the default choice for a lot of serious
photographers.

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trymas
TL;DR: just a rant, about that flickr feels to be plateaued and better options
are rising, even though it's still rather good platform to keep and share your
photos.

Flickr is great (with its 1TB of storage), though I recently tried to join
'500px', since then flickr looks like desert with tumbleweed. It's a bit of
exaggeration, though 500px is way more exciting, your photos are more easily
shown to the public. People are encouraged to rate each other, etc. Also it
has a marketplace. All in all 500px let's to improve my photography, whereas
in flickr 90% people who've seen my photos are people, to who I've shown them.
Also flickr's home page have the same set of pictures on carousel for weeks,
where in 500px it's always fresh.

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thenomad
Interesting - I'd not heard of 500px. Will check it out: my primary concern
with Flickr has always been that it doesn't really enable discovery.

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jawns
Gannett Co., the media company, was in a similar predicament recently.

Its broadcasting and digital businesses were doing OK, but its print
publications were in horrible shape.

So it split into two companies: TEGNA (TV/digital properties) and Gannett
(newspapers).

In Yahoo's case, its stake in Alibaba was propping up the company. Now that
Alibaba is a separate entity, I imagine that we can learn a lot about what
Yahoo's fate will be by watching how Gannett has operated since its spin-off.

Interestingly, since the split in July, Tegna shares have plummeted after an
initial small rise, whereas Gannett shares have remained roughly even:

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=tgna%2C+gci&ei=DF3HVvjMA4Tk...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=tgna%2C+gci&ei=DF3HVvjMA4TkmAGZ3JXQBg)

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manigandham
Yahoo still has a lot of potential if someone knows what to do with it.

Yahoo is a portal with email. It's the browse/discover counterpart to Google's
search. With all the traffic and infrastructure it has, it can definitely turn
into a great ad network play and offer another option in the cloud
productivity business. Just need to shed all the deadweight and ridiculous
business ideas while improving quality of both content and ads back to where
they were before.

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orionblastar
Yahoo has a deal with AT&T to provide web email service for them. I have an
account that dates back to SBC and hope I don't lose access to it. I have my
bank and other stuff going to that email. If Yahoo sells their email service I
hope I can still access my email account. This will effect a lot of people if
they start shutting down old accounts.

Already Yahoo Mail requires a mobile number to sign up for a free account and
not everyone has a mobile number.

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nickfromseattle
I work at BitTitan.com an email migration company. If you'd like to get out in
front of this, shoot me an email and I'll help you get your email into another
mail service. NickJ@BitTitan.com

~~~
orionblastar
I registered my email with so many services, that if I changed my email to a
different one I can't change my email on each account because I got some I
can't remember.

Is your service free?

~~~
nickfromseattle
Me too, unfortunately can't help you there, but this will make your data
redundant if you're concerned about data loss.

It's not free, but yours is on me. I landed in my current role after meeting
the founders at an HN meetup and like to give back where I can.

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frik
So meta, watching their stock chart on their portal:
[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO+Interactive](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=YHOO+Interactive)

I hope Yahoo Finance and sites like Flickr stay around - they are quite good.

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Analemma_
Yahoo still serves ~12% of all search engine traffic in the US. I'll bet you
Google and Microsoft are going to be fighting bitterly to buy the right to
redirect that traffic to their engine.

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cosmie
Yahoo Search and (most of) it's ad network are already powered by Bing. You
can bet Microsoft will be scrambling to ensure at least those portions of
Yahoo's properties stay out of Google's hands. Not only would they see an
immediate drop in ad revenue from the loss of volume itself, but a large drop
in volume would also cause many PPC marketers to reevaluate if it's worth the
overhead to even manage campaigns on the Bing network in the first place.

Even if they don't buy it directly, they're likely to try to get it in the
hands of a company that will keep the current Yahoo-Bing agreement in place.

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bitmapbrother
No they're not. Yahoo's results are provided by both Google and Bing.

>In October, the Company reached an agreement with Google that provides Yahoo
with additional flexibility to choose among suppliers of search results and
ads. Google’s offerings complement the search services provided by Microsoft,
which remains a strong partner, as well as Yahoo’s own search technologies and
ad products.

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cosmie
Oh, that's nifty to know! I haven't managed campaigns in the last ~6 months so
hadn't kept up with the news changes. Makes a lot of sense now on why they
pulled part of their ad inventory out of Bing back to a Yahoo-specific
management platform.

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gtk40
I wonder how this will affect Mozilla, since the search engine deal.

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e15ctr0n
Mozilla earns about $300 million a year from their deal with Yahoo. The deal
runs for five years from Dec 2014 through Dec 2019.[1] When the money from
Yahoo runs dry Mozilla will have to go back to Google or Microsoft for a new
search deal which will bring in much less than before because Firefox browser
share has been falling about 3.7% a year since 2010.[2] Mozilla will be forced
to shutter projects and shed staff.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/11/yahoo-and-mozilla-
for...](https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/11/yahoo-and-mozilla-form-
strategic-partnership/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#StatCounter_.28July_2008_to_present.29)

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eachro
What are the key Yahoo assets? Finance, Sports, Mail for sure. Maybe Tumblr?

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mdorazio
Its biggest asset is $30B worth of Alibaba. However, Mayer stated that she
wants to separate that from the core of Yahoo operations, so it might not
factor into any sale deal.

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colmvp
People say that Mayer won't get another CEO job, but I wouldn't be so certain.
There's a lot of defenders for her in the tech industry who just attribute her
failed tenure as Yahoo being Yahoo. Plus, she has a lot of money and executive
connections.

And if Fiorina could be CEO for two companies over a longer time than Mayer's
tenure at Yahoo, well...

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vonklaus
I would say Yahoo is not yet a massive anti-capitalist prank of a company like
Radioshack, but I would say it is reminiscient of blockbuster. August 29th,
1997 Netflix was founded and on Aug 31 of 2011 Blockbuster announced no one
wanted to buy an asset that was pretty much a ton of rent obligations to strip
malls, and millions of DVDS & VHS tapes.

However, the Yahoo assets are actually reasonably valuable and if they backout
alibab it could be a good pickup for someone who was clever enough to use it.

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SCAQTony
I bet a network or a studio buys them as a content platform for their content.
Include some built in users too.

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tptacek
Something I feel like people miss in conversations about M&A is that companies
are valued in large part against their existing revenue. A studio looking to
buy Yahoo for their content platform is also buying a search provider. That
search provider accounts for a full third of Yahoo's revenue! You can't just
buy Yahoo and kill off search, unless you want to pay a gigantic tax for the
content platform.

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Animats
Yahoo hasn't been a search provider for six years. They resell Bing.

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tptacek
I chose the words "search provider" carefully.

In any case, the point stands: a studio buying Yahoo almost certainly doesn't
want to expend time and energy maintaining Yahoo's foothold in Internet
search. But that part of their business isn't for sale independent of the
search business unit.

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UrsuppDesquen
So, how will this affect Mozilla? Out of money soon? It really looks more and
more like 2 dying companies are going together to their doomsday party.

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stesch
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5HOt0ZOcYk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5HOt0ZOcYk)

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mpg33
Yahoo is one of those companies in which I don't really know what their core
product is anymore. Similar to Blackberry.

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ThatMightBePaul
Dear Writers,

Stop using the term "activist investor". It strongly connotes political and
social change.

That is not your intent. Find better words.

Sincerely,

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mmanfrin
It's a term that has been used for a few years. It does not connote political
and social change -- you are foisting your narrower understanding of the word
'activist' on to it.

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eva1984
It smells weird. Yahoo still has a lot of assets, and it is making money. Why
suddenly for sales? Only Wallstreet greediness can explain this for me.

