Verizon this week is laying off another 150 staffers from the Verizon Media division that includes the Yahoo and AOL subsidiaries, according to a CNN report.
[...]The latest layoffs are less extensive than a major round of job cuts in January 2019.
[...]Verizon purchased Yahoo for $4.48 billion in June 2017 and AOL for $4.4 billion in June 2015.
[...]In December 2018, Verizon said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it had "experienced increased competitive and market pressures throughout 2018 that have resulted in lower-than-expected revenues and earnings," and that "[t]hese pressures are expected to continue." Verizon at the time recorded a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of about $4.6 billion, wiping out nearly all of the Yahoo/AOL division's goodwill value.
In Q3 2019, the most recent quarter, Verizon reported media-division revenue of $1.8 billion, down two percent year over year.
[...]
Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan said last month that the company is focused on growing the division's advertising, subscriptions, and e-commerce businesses, according to the CNN report.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Thursday December 12 2019, @09:47PM (1 child)
...and they just destroyed the utility of Yahoo Groups, dumoing all the group content, whereupon pretty much everyone migrated over to another service, taking their money — and their eyes — with them.
I'm sure that'll help a lot with their value. </rolleyes>
You'd think they'd have looked for a way to monetize them instead of dumping them, but hey, obviously they know what they're doing, hence the huge profits. Hello? Profits?
Oh.
Never mind.
--
Things that tell the truth: [small children,drunk people,yoga pants]
Things that tell lies: [politicians,breast implants,selfies]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday December 12 2019, @10:00PM
They know what they are doing. Their CEO is a Guru.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 12 2019, @10:58PM (1 child)
Verizon clearly bought these services as a big writeoff. Back in the day, verizon had it's own ISP email service and the verizonmail.com webmail services. They shitcanned both and shuttered them. Then they purchase 2 more services that are basically webmail.. eg who uses yahoo news or search and what does AOL even have besides email? AT&T got the time warner part....
So they datamine these services where people remain due to inertia while they run into the ground. When they finish they have a huge tax disount and a metric ton of personal information to sell.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday December 13 2019, @06:28PM
They didn't buy it for any of the end-user services.
Yahoo does still have one of the largest advertising networks on the net, though. They probably bought it for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 12 2019, @11:34PM (3 children)
The only things more useless than AOL employees are Yahoo employees. They can all rot in hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @12:07AM (2 children)
Yahoo! provided some competition for Google when others didn't. They had email, Groups, Answers, Flickr, Tumblr, etc.
Sure, it all went to shit, but AOL was already long gone.
(Score: 3, Informative) by anubi on Friday December 13 2019, @12:40AM (1 child)
Every time AOL is brought up, the first thing that comes to mind is a Chinese finger-trap.
Except I did not know how to get out of the damned thing.
To this day, I am extremely leery of signing up for anything on the net that requires a credit card.
As far as I am concerned, AOL did wonders for conditioning the public to use prepaid debit cards.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by zion-fueled on Friday December 13 2019, @02:01PM
Could one not call the bank and block AOL?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @03:42AM (3 children)
Who will miss those AOL discs in your mailbox? Haven't seen one in a while. They must have fired that team.
To activate the software on this disc enter: PANTS DRUNK
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @04:03AM (2 children)
At one point they were giving out AOL disks at the McDonald's drive through window.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @05:56AM (1 child)
I got free internet from them when I was 15. Got a job doing computers when I was 18, and got an engineering degree when I was 35. I loved those disks. Without them I might not even be alive. But yeah, by 2000 they were what FB is today - walking dead.
(Score: 1) by zion-fueled on Friday December 13 2019, @01:58PM
How did the disks even help? They made you sign up with a credit card and after you used it once you couldn't get another free trial. They were just coasters. Free trial was never free.
If you used someone elses CC you didn't need a free trial either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @05:49AM
For Yahoo / aol ... It's yahaol pronounced like yah hole / yahol. Kinda good right? Like you can stick it up yet yahole?