

Yahoo closes $7.6 billion deal with Alibaba Group - jwuggles
http://phys.org/news/2012-09-yahoo-billion-alibaba-group.html

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deveac
_> Back in May, Yahoo pledged to distribute most of the Alibaba windfall to
its shareholders. But after making that promise Yahoo hired longtime Google
Inc. executive Marissa Mayer to its CEO. Last month, Yahoo revealed Mayer is
considering holding on to the money._

If Yahoo! was in my portfolio, I would be furious if they distributed that
money to me in the form of a dividend.

Well maybe not furious. I'd take it, then immediately sell all my stock on the
signal that they are too inept to see that that money would be much better
spent on transformative changes and acquisitions in order to turn the company
around.

~~~
asdfprou
I definitely agree. Which aspects of Yahoo! would you like to see reinvestment
in as a shareholder?

~~~
deveac
Well, I don't hold it, so I have not done the research and am speaking from a
place of ignorance investment-wise.

But I am very interested in tech, and looking at Yahoo! in a broad sense I
think they need to shift their focus from short term profits to making their
core offerings a)more functional for their users, b)more beautiful for their
users, and c)integrated with the other services and platforms their users use.

I mean, look at their search page. It is literally _slathered_ in adds and
links to...god only knows what. Seemingly random news articles? Buttons that
say "OMG!" (where will that take me, I wonder?), auto-site links, and
hilariously, a 'Trending' section. I almost want to cry.

Now think about a search customer navigating to Yahoo! to perform a search,
-that's all they want to do. And they see this.

Same goes for their mail product. You have users that you are serving, but
what you are offering them is just as comically abysmal. It's offensive. It's
information overload. It looks like shit.

They are, as a company, in a position to better offer some core services like
search, mail, photo storage and sharing to an incredibly large audience in a
beautiful, user experience enhancing way. I'd love to see them seize that
opportunity instead of just slathering their products with garbage to chase
short term ad revenue (destroying the user experience in the process and
driving people away in the long term), or failing completely to nurture and
exploit their better properties like Flickr.

Yahoo! needs to get back to basics and fix those things before it starts
moving on to grander ambitions imho. They do that, and users will appreciate
it. They will stay with them. New users will come into the fold. Stem the flow
of users leaving their properties, bring new users in with core service
enhancements, then leverage that audience as they expand into areas of what
amounts to pure speculation.

~~~
asdfprou
Great points. I definitely agree that the visual styling of Yahoo! remains in
a web 1.5 era and I'm sure Marissa Meyer will have her fair share to say about
it in the coming months. After all, Google's famous white background is
largely considered one of Marissa's influences.

Other than the design aspect - Yahoo!'s web technology is largely, for the
lack of a better word, 'adequate'. Their search bar searches well (powered by
Bing), their mail client sends mail, and Flickr is still a great service for
image consumption and storage.

What of their 'lifestyle' or 'media' portals? For instance Yahoo! Answers,
Finance, Auto, Sports (Fantasy Sports as well as Sports news) etc? These are
all great Yahoo! product areas in their own right. What do you think users
would say to Yahoo! making a media play similar to what AOL has done?

One gripe of mine is Match.com, another Yahoo! property. It seems largely
untapped. It isn't widely branded as part of the Yahoo! portfolio (lacking the
trademark Yahoo! Purple design scheme, for one), and it seems it has largely
operated independent of its parent company in the past. I think Yahoo! should
either choose to do something with this website and have it mean something to
the rest of the Yahoo! family of products, or sell it off and use the money to
fund other ventures.

~~~
skinnymuch
I thought IAC owned Match.com.

~~~
18pfsmt
Indeed. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match.com>

~~~
asdfprou
No way, I stand corrected.

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shawndumas
I'm confused -- how do the following reconcile:

    
    
        -- Alibaba is paying [...] to buy back Yahoo's 20[%] stake
    
        -- Yahoo will retain a roughly 20[%] stake in Alibaba

~~~
RobAtticus
Yahoo previously owned 40%.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/us-alibaba-
buyback...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/us-alibaba-buyback-
yahoo-idUSBRE88H0Y520120918)

~~~
shawndumas
ah, thank you.

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randallu
Time to start more acquisitions?

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dpcx
Anyone remember how much Yahoo paid for it's initial stake in Alibaba?

~~~
shawndumas
"Yahoo originally acquired its stake in Alibaba Group in 2005 in exchange for
$1 billion and the sale of its Yahoo China business to Alibaba Group."

\--[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/us-alibaba-
buyback...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/us-alibaba-buyback-
yahoo-idUSBRE88H0Y520120918)

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lquist
Hmm...

As an investor, I'd rather capital was reinvested at Alibaba than at Yahoo,
though I'd prefer a dividend to that.

~~~
shawndumas
23% still is

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freehunter
This is kind of a conspiracy theory, but I have to wonder... Mayer came from
Google. As we know from recent news about Asus and Android, Google has a big
problem with Alibaba because of their Aliyun OS, which Google claims to be an
incompatible fork of Android with pirated apps in the app store. I have to
wonder if this sale isn't somehow related. Possible Yahoo wishing to distance
itself from Alibaba?

~~~
brd
This sale to Alibaba has been in the works for a long time, theres no chance
that the Aliyun OS incident has anything to do with it. The timelines just
don't match up.

