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Verizon ‘might look at’ buying Yahoo
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- TheSockStealer 11y agoHere is my prediction if Verizon does buy Yahoo... all mobile traffic to Yahoo and Yahoo owned properties will not count against your monthly data cap. This sets up yet another streaming service(s) that Verizon can make money with ads and/or subscriptions with. Since Verizon also provides DSL and Fios, this also might incentivise Verizon to implement data-caps for those services as well; with the exception of course for Yahoo content. T-Moble started the trend for free traffic for certain services, but Verizon will copy the idea and bend it for their benefit.
- chipgap98 11y agoIsn't that against the basic idea of Net Neutrality? Is that even legal?
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoYes. No. Does our (U.S.) government actually give two cares? No.
- moonchrome 11y agoNo - they aren't gimping specific competitors or doing anything to filter data over public internet - they are offering a new tier of service - just like you have IPTV as a separate service from public internet. And why should the government care ? Who is getting hurt here ? Not to mention there are multiple competing entities in mobile space. We have something similar arround here with 0.facebook.com where you get free access to mobile FB version over 3G even on prepaid cards - it's popular with younger people - why should this be illegal ?
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago> Who is getting hurt here ? Businesses that wish to enter this market.
- moonchrome 11y agoSo what ? New businesses are always getting hurt by successful vertical integration because it increases efficiency through methods they can't match - as long as there is no monopoly the government should not care - it's role is to protect consumers from monopoly behaviour - not help sprout new business by preventing optimization.
- empath75 11y agoThere are many, many many content providers and only a relative few ISPs. It would be pretty easy for ISP's to coordinate or even just act independently and abuse their oligopoly status and extort money from content providers who don't have the same leverage they do.
- moonchrome 11y agoBut that's not what's happening here is it ?
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoRemains to be seen, right?
- empath75 11y agoThere are many, many many content providers and only a relative few ISPs. It would be pretty easy for ISP's to coordinate or even just act independently and abuse their oligopoly status and extort money from content providers who don't have the same leverage they do. And the nature of wired internet access is such that the barrier to entry for a potential new competitors are pretty much prohibitive, so even if customers wanted more options, there is almost no chance that they will become available.
- mortenjorck 11y agoThat practice is called zero-rating, and the reason T-Mobile’s Music Freedom and Binge On initiatives have thus far escaped FCC scrutiny is likely twofold: The services included are not owned by T-Mobile, and T-Mobile is receiving no payment from the services to zero-rate their traffic. If Verizon were to start a large-scale, first-party zero-rating scheme, I have to think there would be at least some calls for FCC action. And given that Wheeler’s FCC actually passed Title II, there is the real potential of an actual regulatory stick being wielded against Verizon.
- LargeCompanies 11y agoComcast is running around Net Neutrality with their new Stream TV service. It uses their cable network to stream to your IP devices and it won't count against your cap like using every other IP streaming service will. Overall this needs to be stopped, it's highly anti-competitive! If it walks and quacks like a duck it's a duck.
- mindslight 11y agoEconomics interprets law as damage and routes around it. The only way to preserve "net neutrality" is for most people's actual usage to rely on the long tail of P2P or at least P-2-cottageindustry, opaque to the network provider. Once "the Internet" is effectively just centralized "channels" like Google/Facebook/Netflix/etc, it's only a matter of time until business runs its age-old playbook and coalesces power.
- hammock 11y agoIt is already common in other countries. I was in South America last week and saw ads for a wireless service there (Claro) advertising "free WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter and/or [streaming music service, can't recall the name] doesn't count against your data cap." https://www.google.com/search?q=claro+free+facebook+whatsapp https://www.google.com/search?q=claro+free+facebook+whatsapp
- ck2 11y agoThis image from 2009 used to be a joke: https://i.imgur.com/5RrWm.png https://i.imgur.com/5RrWm.png Now apparently it is a roadmap for corporate. (source: https://www.reddit.com/9yj1f https://www.reddit.com/9yj1f )
- snowwrestler 11y agoThis is essentially how cable TV packages are priced now, and most people believe that software apps will replace TV channels eventually, so yeah--it's believable that cable companies would try to do this.
- teaneedz 11y agoA bad proposition unless folks forget about that whole UIDH tracking thing. Who really uses Yahoo! these days?
- JoshTriplett 11y agoSeems surprising to me that any company would make a pseudo-non-announcement like this. What would they have to gain by acknowledging rumors or speculating like this?
- maxerickson 11y agoThe other answer to the question would be no comment. The press could (would!) turn that into a story just as easily.
- Someone1234 11y agoWould announcing this not increase the value of Yahoo!, which would in turn increase the cost Verizon would have to pay? Doesn't seem very rational to comment on the rumours unless they have no intention to buy.
- saosebastiao 11y agoNot significantly more than waiting to announce. This is because of SEC rules that require anyone intending to buy more than 5% of a publicly traded company to publicly announce with some time period before actually purchasing shares. These rules were intended to prevent the pervasive private equity pump and dump schemes of the 90's by making it harder to take a company private. These rules are also pretty heavily blamed for our current problem of outsized CEO compensation because CEOs now rarely have to worry about hostile takeovers.
- mindslight 11y agoFloating the idea to regulators/public opinion to gauge how strong the immediate backlash is, and to manage expectations going forward.
- mtgx 11y agoIf the new Engadget is any indication of Verizon's vision for these content companies, I think we can safely say that Yahoo has not seen the worst of it yet.
- empath75 11y agoVerizon hasn't really touched the day to day operations at AOL very much yet outside of the ads groups. They've been pretty hands-off so far.
- astockwell 11y agoShocking coincidence: "Marissa Mayer's severance package could reach $110 million [upon sale of the company]."[1] And right when the press is dragging her tenure through the mud. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/07/technology/marissa-mayer-severance-package/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/07/technology/marissa-mayer-sev...
- colmvp 11y agoWell the press has been covering her disappointing tenure basically throughout 2015. Everything from a slew of VPs/C-levels leaving (including those she hand picked) to increased turmoil between managers and employees to product decisions that didn't result in noticeable ROI.
- snowwrestler 11y agoThe wire-management companies are racing to become content companies before their wire-management business becomes totally commoditized by net neutrality, content companies (Google), and municipalities (municipal fiber programs are gaining steam). Verizon essentially ended their FiOS buildout once Ivan Seidenberg retired, in favor of putting all their investment into wireless. Why? Because they saw the writing on the wall: wires and fiber are infrastructure, and infrastructure always becomes a commodity.
- cft 11y agoLooks like this is the outcome of the 5 day long bard meeting. They got a "maybe" from Verizon and promised Mayer $110m so that she tries hard to close.
- cft 11y agoLooks like this is the outcome of the 5 day long bard meeting. They got a "maybe" from Verizon and promised Mayer $110m so that she tries hard to close.
- yuhong 11y agoReminds me of this fiasco: http://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html http://ryanspahn.com/my-google-NDA-experience.html https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=LargeCompanies https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=LargeCompanies (the first comments are not hard to find)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- biot 11y agoYou keep bringing this up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10497114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10497114 -- do you have some kind of axe to grind here?
- yuhong 11y agoParent was talking about acquisitions. There is a reason for the "LargeCompanies" HN account name, and the first comments from that account is not difficult to find.
- biot 11y agoYou said that already. I'm wondering why the name or comments from a specific user is so important to you. Certainly many others on HN have discussed acquisitions (a search by comment or story gives tons of results). The fact that you repeatedly single out a specific user seems a bit "stalkish".
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dang 11y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10691110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10691110 and marked it off-topic.
- 11y ago
- cpeterso 11y agoWhat would Verizon acquiring Yahoo! mean for Mozilla? Given Verizon's history of user tracking, that would be an awkward partnership.
- teaneedz 11y agoIndeed. I think Yahoo is already a liability to the Mozilla brand. DDG should just become the default for search. That move would at least create goodwill for Mozilla.
- what_ever 11y agoBut not enough money?
- cpeterso 11y agoI assume DDG does not have $300M in the bank to pay Mozilla for year one, but perhaps DDG could scale that big with Firefox traffic? I prefer DDG's privacy, UI, and search results over Google, so Firefox users might conceivably be less likely to dump DDG than they were Yahoo!.