
Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report - bane
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/07/18/yahoo-misses-profit-expectations-in-what-could-be-its-last-ever-earnings-report/
======
shams93
Its taken them a while, all their peers except for Amazon have essential gone
to the dust. If Geocities had been bought by say Google instead of Yahoo I
could have easily flipped my options into my own startup. However dot bomb hit
so hard instead of wealth I was left holding a huge capital gains tax bill
that forced me into 10 solid years of hardcore poverty as most of my income
was confiscated to pay off the debt. Not a nice outcome for companies bought
by yahoo back in the 90s!

~~~
a_small_island
Have you written more about this? I would love to read more details.

~~~
hkmurakami
One person who avoided this was Mark Cuban, who bought a bunch of Yahoo! put
options when broadcast.com was acquired, hedging himself against the stock
crash.

~~~
option_greek
Nice strategy. I wonder why others didn't do it.

~~~
majani
If you read Mark's story, it's clear that he was aware of what was happening
at the time but didn't drink the kool-aid, while if you look at the other dot
bombs, they definitely thought the world was changing and the rules had
changed.

~~~
aerovistae
"Read his story" \--> Can you provide a link to this particular story? I would
be interested to read it.

~~~
chkuendig
[http://investmentxyz.blogspot.ch/2006/05/cubans-collar-
anato...](http://investmentxyz.blogspot.ch/2006/05/cubans-collar-anatomy-of-
famous-trade.html)

------
dexwiz
Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's
scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company
was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo
services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites
and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and
boosting one to popularity is somewhat of a dark art. Web services are a dime
a dozen, and Google or Facebook probably has a better one. Yahoo seemed like
it failed to break into any enterprise offerings either.

Poor leadership, and failure to attract talent. They didn't have the same
culture pull as Google/Facebook/Apple in the latest tech bubble. And why work
for Yahoo if you could do the same thing with VCs funneling you money? I think
one of the most telling things is the lack of OSS from Yahoo. Their top repo
on github has been effectively dead for around a year [2]. Yahoo hasn't been a
tech company is almost a decade, and it shows in their products. Not even
their numerous acquihires have netted them anything.

EDIT: Looking at a timeline of Yahoo, they haven't launched a major product
since 2006 (10 years). All new products have been bought [3]. Imagine if
Google's last product was Docs. No Android, no Doubleclick, no Street View, no
autocomplete in search, no Chrome.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yahoo!-owned_sites_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yahoo!-owned_sites_and_services#Closed.2Fdefunct_services)

[2]
[https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=user%3Ayahoo&ref=searchre...](https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=user%3Ayahoo&ref=searchresults&s=stars&type=Repositories&utf8=%E2%9C%93)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Yahoo!#2006](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Yahoo!#2006)

~~~
cpeterso
_> Imagine if Google's last product was Docs. No Android, no Doubleclick, no
Street View, no autocomplete in search, no Chrome._

Android, DoubleClick, Google Maps (Where 2, ZipDash), Google Earth (Keyhole),
and Google Docs (Writely, 2Web, Tonic, DocVerse, Quickoffice) were built of
acquisitions, not new Google products. Chrome, too, in a sense (WebKit).

Thought experiment: what if Yahoo _!_ , not Google, had acquired all those
companies instead?

~~~
carterehsmith
They _did_ buy Tumblr and all you ever read about that is Yahoo writing off
more of the Tumblr value.

How are their other acquisitions doing?

~~~
fheisler
[http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-
may...](http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-mayers-yahoo-
acqu-1781980352)

------
swalsh
Being first to market is rarely a long term advantage, it's more like a shot
of adrenaline. Over time you build up technical, and structural debt. As the
front runner you have to make all the mistakes, after you've made them a
competitor can swoop in, avoid your mistakes, and outperform. You may not
pivot because hey what you're doing seems to work, or you may avoid a pivot
because you have too much technical debt. But it seems to prove itself over
and over again to be a very weak advantage.

Yahoo finance sucks compared to google finance, yahoo search sucks to google
search, yahoo content sucks. Yahoo mail sucks, yahoo shopping sucks.
Everything they do is not as good, but they were one of the first to do it
all.

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

~~~
cloudjacker
Theranos.

The valley is very sensitive towards women running companies with large
valuations, that company's woes would otherwise have flown completely under
the radar. The next one on the "overhyped but disappointing and in the valley
list" would be Clinkle and its now 24 year old CEO. No women there but as you
will see the valuations drop off a cliff pretty quickly in this list.

~~~
danso
Why is the primary factor behind Theranos's bubble the fact that its founder
was a woman? That is a notable aspect but Elizabeth Holmes also leveraged
powerful connections and a TED-friendly dream to get that hype. There are
plenty of female-led startups that did not reach any notable status despite
having a woman at the helm.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'd like to see a woman hired as CEO for whom the principle talking point _isn
't_ that she's female.

I don't fucking care.

Be competent. Be a decent person.

Meg Whitman is a horrible person from everything I've seen. She's managed
_not_ to kill what's left with HP after Carly Fiorina drove it into the
ground.

I meant to search for "most notable (female|woman) tech ceo", but left out the
gender qualification.

A top 10 list fails to include any women:

[http://mashable.com/2014/03/21/top-tech-
ceos/#WNfESM0rbqqN](http://mashable.com/2014/03/21/top-tech-
ceos/#WNfESM0rbqqN)

A list of 13 likewise:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-
company-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-company-
ceos-2014-10?op=1)

A slideshow item I refuse to link on principle lists Alibaba, HP, Oracle (co-
CEO), IBM, Xerox, Yahoo, YouTube, and ... um, one other I've now forgotten,
fuck the slideshow very much. Oh, AMD. None of which are startups.

Women hold 23 CEO positions (4.3%) of the S&P 500, four of which I've already
mentioned:

[http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos-
sp-500](http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-ceos-sp-500)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-
company-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/13-most-popular-tech-company-
ceos-2014-10?op=1)

~~~
danso
I think we'd all love to see the day when a woman reaching the position of
Fortune 500 isn't news. As much as we might argue how much of Mayer's meteoric
rise was because of her being a woman, I think it's outweighed by the fact
that when she fucks up, she has to bear the burden of being the latest face of
female inferiority.

------
nashashmi
Yahoo's problem was that it was masquerading as a tech company when the only
valuable asset it had in its books was its media side of the business. Yahoo
had many media agreements, and it had developed much negotiating strength in
that business.

Unfortunately, Yahoo also had these random properties like mail and games that
made it difficult to forge one path.

Further, Mayer was someone who had reputation as a tech leader. She saw
everything from a tech angle which made it difficult for her to direct the
company in another direction apart from tech. This was the reason why Flickr
and Delicious were being shutdown.

------
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

------
guard0g
Poor execution, lack of innovation. At least Mayer can run for public office
now...

~~~
cloudwalking
We have no idea what happened at Yahoo. They may have failed two years earlier
without Mayer, for all we know.

~~~
AJ007
I thought she was the most qualified CEO they had in a very long time.

Yahoo Mail has been a huge driver of their user retention, webmail usage has
almost fully shifted to mobile. Facebook has gobbled up a big chunk of display
ad revenue along with Youtube and video ads in general. Pretty much everything
they can't control sucks for Yahoo.

~~~
carterehsmith
I don't see how she was qualified at all.

She had one job. And that was in the company she was with from the beginning.

So she had zero experience working anyplace that is not Google, and zero
experience as a CEO.

So she is not qualified and it shows.

Example 2: Robert Nardelli. He was such a great leader at GE. Then went to
Home Depot as a superstar and managed to fuck everything up. He also never had
a job outside GE, the place where he became superstar.

Anyways why anyone thinks that hiring a CEO that had a total of one jobs, is a
good idea, I just can't figure out.

------
sp527
I still remember when some were attempting to portray Mayers' demotion from
the exec ranks at Google as sexism. In reality, Google had probably already
recognized certain issues in her managerial style.

~~~
throwaway6497
Agreed. If Mayer was awesome, she would have been CEO of Google, infact she
was best positioned to be one at some point. All the people she hired were
getting promoted over her. She was pissed, obviously could never show it.
Bided time and took up the CEO position at Yahoo. Anyone with big ego would. I
wouldn't blame her. She did what is best for her. Just like any other economic
actor. What I really felt bad for - Yahoo's employees and customers. Only
qualified person who was willing to take up the job was Marissa. Rest were no-
name hacks who had no idea how to build products. Board had no choice but to
hire her. Hailing her as Obama with Obama change posters, I felt was a little
over the top. Yahoo's employees were desperate. She improved morale initially.
Had she shown results, she would have won huge loyalty from employees and
board. She tried. Made some bold moves and failed. Not bad in my opinion. I
wonder, if any other CEO would have made such bold product moves. Acquisitions
- lots of them, mail, home page improvements, new redesigned apps, attempting
to build an internal product for search. She at least tried. RIP yahoo.

------
ddebernardy
Whatever the price will be, it won't be the $44.6 billion MS offered back in
the days. Shareholders are probably furious at Yang for turning that offer
down.

~~~
nojvek
That would have been another shit move by Ballmer. He already destroyed Nokia
and cost MS a fortune.

Let's hope LinkedIn brings value with a deeper integration in office.

~~~
ddebernardy
From where I'm standing it looks more like a shit move by Ballmer for making
the offer _and_ a clusterfuck move by Yang for refusing it. ;-)

------
antoineMoPa
"Yahoo"... The brand is the problem. It sounds like a good name for a personal
website in 1998 (with 85 gifs and a turquoise background).

~~~
RankingMember
With the right products, I'm of the opinion that you can name your company
just about anything and be successful. I mean is Google's name any better if
you don't keep their products in mind?

Let's also not forget about GoDaddy, which for a time was successful with that
name and hobbles along (operating at a loss) even today.

~~~
antoineMoPa
I don't think there is a major problem with Yahoo products. I tried Yahoo mail
yesterday and the signup process was nice. It looks like a viable alternative
to gmail.

Google is a nicer name, it comes from googol which gives it some math meaning
beyond the sound. Yahoo is only an onomatopoeia that sounds dumb to me (I am
not a native English speaker though). Also, if you look in the dictionnary
([http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/yahoo](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/yahoo)):

    
    
        yahoo:
    
        a rude, loud, unpleasant person, especially one who has little education

------
codingmyway
I still don't see why Yahoo didn't stick to their original purpose of human
powered search instead of buying up random companies to try anything.

All they had to do was work out how to outsource the work to users. Why did
they not buy StumbleUpon or PearlTrees, which few have heard of?

That and email would have given them a lot of data on their user base.

------
l33tbro
This is probably a really dumb question - but I have 17 years worth of Yahoo
email. Most of it is for nostalgia, but how likely is it that this would be
wiped away if/when Yahoo goes under?

~~~
throwaway7767
If you care about it, keep your own backups. This applies to all cloud
services at all times.

The fact that you ask yourself this question now implies that you should
really start preparing.

~~~
l33tbro
You're right. I'm completely liable here if it does go.

------
joebergeron
Sigh... "To keep reading, please enter your email address".

Welp.

~~~
ars
You should be able to press and hold the back arrow, click on the story
directly and quickly press escape to stop the javascript that does that.

------
aioprisan
A bit dramatic of a title, no?

~~~
jonknee
How so? They put themselves up for sale and the deadline for final bids was
today. They also missed profit and revenue forecasts, it was another ugly
quarter for a quickly shrinking company.

