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Who is Going to Buy Yahoo?
| 9% | 2 votes |
| 9% | 2 votes |
| 4% | 1 votes |
| 9% | 2 votes |
| 18% | 4 votes |
| 13% | 3 votes |
| 0% | 0 votes |
| 36% | 8 votes |
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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sillema sillema nika su
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @08:35PM
Marissa Mayer, a Jew, was fucking one of Google's Jew founders before she was sent into Yahoo to destroy it. Google it yourself and see.
Though many could argue that Yahoo needed to die well before then.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 17 2016, @09:16PM
Adolph Hitler apparently thought that there was a Jew among his ancestors, which is part of the reason he hated Jews. Seems that you may have something in common with him.
Oh yeah - I'm sure you'll be celebrating his birthday on the 20th of this month.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @09:23PM
Different AC here. I'll be celebrating something else on 4-20 ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @09:25PM
MUH Holocaust
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @08:54PM
Why must yahoo be sold? Reorg and chop off the stuff hat can't make money sure but why is a takeover necessary?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday April 17 2016, @08:57PM
They've been trying that for a decade.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 17 2016, @09:03PM
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Sunday April 17 2016, @09:15PM
Perhaps it's the corporate culture that just doesn't cut it?
And all these diverse services, perhaps they can't coordinate between them?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday April 17 2016, @09:11PM
Essentially their creditors cut them off. Not necessarily in a dramatic sense. There's the concept of price vs value and neither have to have anything to do with each other. After you sell off small parts and use the proceeds for operating expenses, you eventually end up with a couple big assets that are too big to be ignored by the creditors if sold, and due to the paperwork issues the value of companies at that stage is usually higher than the price.
So Yahoo minus the successful japan site and alibaba is worth negative something dollars. They can't sell alibaba for $45B first because markets aren't as liquid as you'd think for assets of that size, and secondly if the company is only worth $40B as a combined entity that means insta-bankruptcy with a negative $5B net worth.
Sorta like the spooky old lady living in the haunted mansion, she can sell the family silverware or the jewels or furniture for decades and still be the spooky old lady in the haunted mansion, but the day she gives up the haunted mansion and sells it, she's just another cat lady living in an apartment off SS checks. Yahoo is that spooky old lady, and if she sells one more thing the banks will foreclose, and if she doesn't sell the bank will foreclose anyway.
They're done. They had an interesting run but its done.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by daver!west!fmc on Sunday April 17 2016, @09:37PM
I'm thinking Verizon will make a go at it. They bought AOL, and Yahoo's got that webby portal with e-mail sort of business too, with AT&T-formerly-SBC as a hosted e-mail/portal customer. There will be an opportunity there to make some managerial points, and reduce customer choice, by putting the organizations together and figuring out which services to shut down or merge.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Sunday April 17 2016, @10:10PM
Yahoo doesn't need creditors. Yahoo has billions of dollars in cash and investments that can be sold. So, it's like the spooky old lady who owns the house outright, has plenty of money in the bank and no pressing need to sell anything.
No, the issue here is that the markets are assigning a negative value the non-Alibaba part of Yahoo. Clearly, it has some value, so the only way to force a correction is to split the businesses. One way would be to split each share into two shares: one each of of two companies: one being a holding company for the Alibaba stake, the other being the rest of Yahoo.
The big concern is that some types of transactions might create a very large tax liability relating to the Alibaba shares. Back to the old lady: if she sells the house, there may be a huge capital gains liability.
I think that people who look at these types of transactions believe that a sale on the non-Alibaba part of the company won't create a tax liability, so that's what they are doing. Also, it may be that in a sale of the non-Alibaba part of he company, there may be more value than as an independent company.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 18 2016, @01:01PM
I don't think we're necessarily disagreeing on anything but presentation style.
I pulled their financials from the end of last year and they have $1B in cash equiv and eternally stable $1B in receivables (unpaid bills due to them for you non-investors) and about $5B of hand wavey accounting slush fund thats not cash or equiv and not any other resources. Meanwhile they owe banks and companies about $2B in payables and loans.
If you accept the handwavey stuff that SOX was supposed to eliminate from the marketplace (LOL) even so their total claimed assets are $45B of which $35B is long term investments aka Alibaba. So Yahoo minus Alibaba has assets of $10B. The problem is even their hand wavey total claimed liabilities are $14B.
I have not researched why they have over $10B in deferred income tax as a liability. The situation is pretty dire because they owe the IRS alone, more than (yahoo minus Alibaba) is worth.
A better old lady analogy is she's like the spooky old lady who hasn't paid her property tax for 20 years such that her total prop tax bill now exceeds the likely fair market sale value of her house. And she's sold everything else she can sell. So she's trying an estate sale where maybe her collection of kitty statues and needlepoint unicorns PLUS the house will pay off her bills. Or maybe the IRS is just gonna get stiffed. The IRS don't like that, not much, BTW.
Their income sheet is a disaster because they can't decide if they're a mutual fund / holding company or an active income generating company. Crossing off all the investment BS their "core business" whatever that is, generates about $4B/yr after spending about $6B/yr. For a active income generating company, having "Gain (Loss) on Sale of Assets" and "Unusual Expense (Income) " being the highest numbers on your income sheet mean you're doomed, at least as an active income generating company.
The tax and regulatory tend to get funky about companies that can't decide if they're hedge funds, mutual funds, or "real companies". Its not necessarily illegal or even wrong, but the system or the establishment or whatever doesn't know what to think of weird ducks like that. So Yahoo has gotta be chopped up, the massive debt pill they hold of $15B has gotta be distributed or forgiven somehow among the people who buy the parted out scraps, etc. A large part of the mindshare not liking them is things like an income statement tend to not make much business sense if you insist on being a combined lemonade stand / holding company, you can't really evaluate the performance of each half of the company because line items from division A are line noise in the analysis of division B and vice versa. They had kind of a "shit or get off the pot" moment a couple years ago when they could have gone either way, but paying yahoo to lose $2B/yr as an operating company is a non starter and paying yahoo anything to act as an intermediary to hold Alibaba stock for you is also a non starter (why not buy on the open market?). So squeeze some blood from the stone, collect as much salary and golden parachutes as you can, drive that sucker right into the ground at mach 25. Capitalism isn't so heroic and pretty on the inevitable downslope of companies, at least compared to the upslope.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday April 18 2016, @04:30PM
Yahoo doesn't bring anything new to the table. Amazon has AWS and Google acquires every next thing. They tried to compete with Facebook and now Facebook is bigger than Yahoo. Yahoo doesn't bring anything new to the table.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 18 2016, @05:58PM
In startup terms you are correct they're nothing. Haven't been cutting edge since like '98. Maybe a little more recent but not much.
Unfortunately they have parts that can be monetized. Like a cockroach, yahoo-groups just won't die so they have traffic for advertisers. Also they supposedly have six bazillion patents ready to be enforced by trolls, although I have no detail on that. Supposedly their front page is popular for home page viewers and that domain will be monetized. They hire a large number of people in SV-ish land someplace in CA.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday April 19 2016, @08:29AM
They have been hiring and firing people every next quarter in the hope of monetization, but to no avail. Old people who don't like change are the only ones visiting Yahoo's homepage. So it cannot be changed much. Same with yahoo groups - Facebook groups are taking over. If Facebook implementes a non-intrusive un-censored group feature - yahoo is a goner! Yahoo weather - that is a service everyone seems to use but then, who actually will miss it?
Patents are like you trying to burn a house down but your parents won't live it. So you wait it out...
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday April 17 2016, @11:35PM
Reorg and chop off the stuff hat can't make money
Which is all of it. Ergo, it's being sold whole to whichever sucker wants it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday April 17 2016, @08:58PM
Yahoo being a loosely combined cluster, like a poorly packed hamburger falling apart on the grill, one dude will likely organize the bankrolling of getting the whole thing and then parting it out. In the end, rather than one person owning an entire slaughtered turkey, it'll be more like a pig, OK one dude pays $15 for a giant boneless roast and other folks get hams and those mysterious parts get sold to 100 different people as hot dogs etc.
Its a boom bust cycle where large companies will gobble up until they get ingestion and then they blow chunks all over the place. So seriously you got an office building in bubble-land CA, and a share of the Chinese Amazon, and just the weirdest collection of riff raff you can see outside an Oceans Some-Number movie...
When the dust settles I bet over 100 companies will own a little piece of the Yahoo.
In the very short run I was the guy who voted for Comcast. They're in that financialization stage I mentioned of having capital they gotta spend regardless of good idea or not, because that's just what giant companies do until they reach the blow-chunks stage and get parted out like a steer in a slaughterhouse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @10:35PM
I'm a vegan, can you rewrite that analogy in vegetable terms? Thanks xO
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @10:43PM
Sure ...
... that mixed salad you're going to eat once it warms to room temperature and begins to wilt? You'll have to get each type of leafy whatever from a different source instead of buying a pre-made bag of Yahoo Mixed Salad.
Better?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 17 2016, @09:14PM
I wouldn't give you a roll of wooden nickles for it. Ever since I heard the name, "Yahoo", I've wondered WTF anyone even visits the site(s). Sounds like a bunch of back-woods hill-billies heard the word "high tech" and tried to make it work for them. I might wish them on Microsoft. Anything that might help to bring down the empire is a good thing.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday April 17 2016, @11:13PM
Look up the original use of "Yahoo" some time. Try goolging "Yahoo Gulliver".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by martyb on Monday April 18 2016, @02:38AM
According to Etymonline.com [etymonline.com] [*]:
I, too, fail to see how "Yahoo!" could have been considered as being anything other than a pejorative.
[*] WARNING! If you are a word nerd beware of going to this site; you can get lost there for hours!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2016, @05:38AM
Seeing as how the company name includes a !, I would expect they were going not for Yahoo the noun but Yahoo! the exclamation. According to the OED - Used to show that you are very happy.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday April 18 2016, @01:54PM
Yes, I would ordinarily agree with you except that in all of the commercials that I have seen, it has been pronounced like "ya HOO-oo" — sounding more like a yodel than an exclamation of happiness ("ya HOO").
Nit-picking to be sure; I appreciate your mentioning the distinction between noun and exclamation, but in this case at least, it seems like some Yahoo got it wrong! =)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 18 2016, @06:59PM
Indeed, their tag line was (or still is?): "Do you Yahoo!?" This clearly indicates the second meaning.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @11:28PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2016, @12:38AM
I use it all the time. Its RSS aggregator (myyahoo) is decent. Its financial section is also decent for a quick look at a company.
The rest of the services I no longer use.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday April 17 2016, @10:25PM
The answer to the question would be what value Yahoo would have to anyone. I am at a loss as to why Yahoo still exists as a thing. If anyone can figure out anything Yahoo does that adds value to the Internet, they would bid for it. I guess someone who wanted to buy an advertising channel so they could kiss Google and Doubleclick goodbye might want it.
Mayer has done really nothing at all of substance that I can remember, mainly overpaying for a lot of technology that Yahoo bought over the past few years (RSS apps and stuff) but has not really done anything with. I doubt any of this stuff has much value. Her move to hire fluff people like David Pogue added no value, because he's all fluff.
Beats me.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday April 18 2016, @08:19AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2016, @06:09PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2016, @10:30PM
I'll buy Yahoo if Yahoo pays me.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday April 18 2016, @12:41AM
I used to hit the financial page, the comics, and their news page. They got rid of the comics a few months ago. Then they turned the news page into a real PITA to read. But I have to admit, I still hit the financial pages 5 days a week. No login, and I get an instant update on how my stocks are doing.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Monday April 18 2016, @02:10AM
You want to answer any more of your own questions?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2016, @03:15AM
To buy the company and rename it
Yahoo!!!
which will be thrice as fun and innovative as the former company, and half again as innovative as a hypothetical proposal for Yahoo!!
How about four, five, even more exclamation points? Sorry, that just won't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2016, @02:06PM
More likely rename it to Yahoo???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 22 2016, @01:06AM
Only some yahoo would buy Yahoo!