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Yahoo! has finally found a billions-slinging buyer for its "assets":
Verizon Communications Inc said Monday it would buy Yahoo Inc's core internet properties for $4.83 billion in cash to expand its digital advertising and media business, in a deal that ends a lengthy sale process for the fading Web pioneer. The purchase of Yahoo's operations will boost Verizon's AOL internet business, which it bought last year for $4.4 billion, and give it access to Yahoo's ad technology tools, BrightRoll and Flurry, and assets such as search, mail and messenger.
The deal, expected to close in early 2017, marks the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it with a 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and a 35.5 percent interest in Yahoo Japan Corp. "The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo," Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a statement on Monday.
Did you know that Verizon owns TechCrunch?
Microsoft executives recalled a previous buyout attempt and breathed a sigh of relief:
In February 2008 Microsoft Corporation made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo for US$44.6 billion. Yahoo formally rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" the company and was not in the interest of its shareholders. Three years later Yahoo had a market capitalization of US$22.24 billion.
martyb: Registered on 1995-01-18, yahoo.com has been around for a long time. Many services were made available on their site such as e-mail, groups, finance. What, if any, of their services have you used? Do you still use them? What are your plans in light of the buyout?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday July 25 2016, @02:15PM
Tony Robbins says that success leaves clues. Marissa Mayer is going to make more money in her time at Yahoo than I've made in my entire life (and I'm not young), so what did she do? Her plan never made any sense to me. She acquired many technology companies, but I can't remember seeing a single news article (besides the acquisitions themselves) about Yahoo coming out with any new technology of interest to anyone. During that time, the tech press, starved for anything, ran articles about Google, Apple, Facebook, and LinkedIn (!). Yahoo was only in the news for acquisitions and to use Mayer's picture for clickbait. Did any Yahoo acquisition make any difference either in buying an important technology (well, not Tumblr) or acquiring important talent that would change Yahoo's fortunes? Yahoo was kept afloat by Alibaba, an investment Mayer didn't make, and which peaked while she was CEO for reasons she had no control over. Mayer is not that attractive, but she's more attractive than, say, Ginni Rometty, so every single article I ever saw (except for one) about Yahoo since Mayer became CEO has had Mayer's picture. This is a double standard. Ugly CEOs like Rometty do not usually have their pictures on articles, and male CEOs almost never (outside of Wired puff pieces on startups). Usually, a news story has a picture of the corporate headquarters or the company logo. Other than looking attractive for cameras, Mayer seems to have failed completely in doing anything with Yahoo to turn it around.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25 2016, @03:02PM
> Mayer is not that attractive
She's more attractive than you are.
(Score: 4, Funny) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday July 25 2016, @03:49PM
There are extras on The Walking Dead who are more attractive than I am.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25 2016, @03:41PM
> Tony Robbins says that success leaves clues.
Robbins is a huckster who made millions selling pop-psych bullshit to fools looking for short-cuts in life.
Citing him is a sure-fire way to discredit whatever you might want to say.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday July 25 2016, @04:35PM
Marissa Mayer is going to make more money in her time at Yahoo than I've made in my entire life (and I'm not young), so what did she do?
She made more money in her time at Yahoo than you've made in your entire life, that's what she did.
Sounds like she was hugely successful to me.
And she's not unique that way; lots of high-profile CEOs do the same: they walk away with huge golden parachutes while doing either little positive, or a lot negative, for the company. But they're still successful: they made a ton of money for themselves, so you can criticize them all you want, and they'll just laugh all the way to the bank.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday July 25 2016, @07:34PM
My point is that people like Tony Robbins say success leaves clues, and you can look at those clues and imitate the successful people to have success. I'm trying to find out what this CEO did to be so successful. All I see is nothing.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday July 25 2016, @08:05PM
Maybe you should stop listening to hucksters like Tony Robbins.
As for Marissa, she was a successful upper manager of some kind at Google. Apparently that let her talk her way into the Yahoo job.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 25 2016, @08:07PM
So the key to success is to do nothing?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DECbot on Monday July 25 2016, @09:43PM
The key to success is the opportunity to run a major company into the ground, sell all the cash assets, layoff all the effective workers, and then sell the company before anyone catches on.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25 2016, @08:30PM
Go to a good university and study a hard science or engineering discipline. While you're there, meet as many people as you can and form friendships. After you graduate start working the network you created for an in with a big company. You'll need a good deal of luck, too. Most people who try this path in life fail, through absolutely no fault of their own. Not everyone can be a CEO of a $5B company.
People like to leave out the luck aspect because they'd rather believe in the Just World fallacy. If we accept that much of the universe is arbitrary and capricious then our accomplishments look a lot less impressive. People like to feel that they're entirely responsible for their successes (and failures). It makes justifying selfish and anti-human ideologies easier, too (see: libertarians).
Also, unless you started this whole plan in High School it's too late to start now.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 25 2016, @06:06PM
Mayer seems to have failed completely in doing anything with Yahoo to turn it around.
And that seems to be the gist of the news these days.
You could have lead with that, and not fallen into the morass of judging her looks. (Disclosure: I'm so clueless about Yahoo that I had to go google her to see what the hell you were getting on about.).
Signing on to help save a sinking ship is a thankless task, especially when you keep buying other sinking ships. But given that she extracted 4.8 billion from the smoking ruin of a walking-dead company would seem to suggest she was not a total failure. It was dead when she got there. And like Elvis, its still dead.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday July 25 2016, @07:36PM
Mayer's looks are important because every ... single ... article ... about ... Yahoo for years has had her picture. I think I've seen one that didn't. We are bombarded with her looks. I pointed out the double standard, because I don't know any other CEO, male or female, who is given this treatment. Ellen Pao or whatever her name was got the same treatment. Every single article about her had a picture of her. I think that it's worth pointing out and discussing because it's so in-your-face. How do you judge people on their merits (or demerits) when the media is judging them on their looks? If Mayer was as ugly as Ginni, would she have been given the same treatment? Not even close!
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 25 2016, @08:15PM
So what? Would you decide to buy stock of a company because the CEO is attractive? Or would you consider using a company's products because the CEO is attractive?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25 2016, @10:31PM
Theranos suddenly makes sense.