8 ms·
Microsoft meets with private equity over Yahoo deal
- stale2002 11y agoOh the Irony! I bet they wish they took the 45 billion 8 years ago.
- jasonjei 11y agoIn their defense, their Alibaba stake is actually still quite formidable. But the bid back then was for Yahoo's core businesses...
- stale2002 11y agoThe funny thing is that Yahoo's alibaba stake + cash on hand is worth something like 40 billion, but yahoo's current market cap is ~35 billion. AKA, Yahoo's core business is worth negative 5 billion dollars.
- Retric 11y agoYou are ignoring taxes. Getting 35 billion dollars from selling Alibaba shares into the hands of there stockholders is not simple.
- limeyx 11y agoI'm sure they will find a way to pipe the deal through Ireland and offshore that profit
- adventured 11y agoIt's the Alibaba stake and cash that are being discounted, as assets typically are on a public balance sheet. AOL was worth $4.4 billion to Verizon, and was worth several billion publicly traded. Yahoo's operating business is blatantly worth more. Simple test: show me one example in the last several decades, of a publicly traded company that was sporting a positive balance sheet, with billions in revenue, that traded with a negative market cap. You won't find a single example. It's also the same reason Yahoo didn't trade for a negative valuation prior to Alibaba becoming highly valuable: Yahoo's core business is actually worth something.
- stale2002 11y agoThe reason why the core business has a negative value is that investors are afraid that Marissa is going to use the money from an Alibaba sale to fund an unprofitable, failed turnaround.
- cscurmudgeon 11y agoThen why don't you try and buy Yahoo core for a cent . Microsoft and others don't seem to know what they are doing.
- stale2002 11y agoMeyers and management isn't going to let anyone do that if they can help it. Just like how last time the management didn't let anyone do it. Management != the shareholders. Just because the right thing for shareholders is to sell yahoo doesn't mean that management will go along with it. THAT is why the core business is worth negative 5 billion dollars. Because management will do everything to drive the company into the ground in order to prevent themselves from loosing control.
- fweespee_ch 11y agoLol, good luck shoring up Bing. I'm sorry but Bing has no real value proposition vs. Google or even Yandex. :/
- sremani 11y agoI disagree, I use Bing on regular basis (also their rewards which I use to donate to local school helps). The results are comparable with Google, and are not that far off by any standards. Its the habit of Googling rather than Objective result set, that is impediment to Bing adoption. Now that Cortana is on Windows 10, lets see.
- fweespee_ch 11y ago> The results are comparable with Google, and are not that far off by any standards. What is the value proposition that differentiates them from Google?
- sremani 11y agoIts a strange question, as a consumer, I enjoy choice of Search Engines and hopefully there will be more than two. I may be minority, but my Bing search results feel much much closer to what I am looking for than Google. It could be my own bias or the simple fact that there is too much SEO gaming targeted to Google compared to Bing.
- fweespee_ch 11y agoFair enough but honestly, I pretty much find this true: * Google * DuckDuckGo [ Although with the Ad changes, if I don't have an Ad Blocker enabled, this tends to beat Google. As such, it tends to my default since I use JS blocking. ] * Yandex / Bing
- curiousDog 11y agoI think DuckDuckGo gets it's results largely from Bing.
- mbesto 11y agoThis looks like another Informatica deal [0]. It actually makes a ton of sense. Yahoo needs to get out of the scrutiny of the public markets and into a private ownership that wants long term results (EBITDA growth year over year) and less trendy bets that try to raise the status of the company (i.e. Tumblr). [0] - http://www.computerworld.com/article/2960729/enterprise-applications/microsoft-salesforcecom-join-53-billion-informatica-buyout.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2960729/enterprise-appl...
- kolbe 11y agoThat doesn't mean Microsoft needs to get involved. Generally speaking, entities that provide debt financing for private equity investments are the biggest suckers in the investment community.
- drited 11y agoArticle says one of reasons for Microsoft's interest is to preserve search and ad deals with Yahoo
- sangnoir 11y ago> Article says one of reasons for Microsoft's interest is to preserve search and ad deals with Yahoo Note that preservation of the search deal might not be in Yahoo's best interest, so depending on where you stand, Microsoft doesn't "need" to be involved in this.
- zappo2938 11y agoI had to use Bing and Yahoo search APIs because Google won't let me programmatically use Google search. They are awful and combining them won't help.
- rory096 11y agoYahoo Search is already powered by Bing – since 2009.[1] [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm
- gcb0 11y agowhich proves the anecdote comment above is probably BS
- rory096 11y agoThat's a little much. They do offer a Search API [1] (well, until Friday). Just not terribly surprising it wasn't any better than Bing (since it is Bing). [1] https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/ https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/
- lesdeuxmagots 11y agoIndeed. BOSS was available until recently; the XML API for search is available as a replacement.
- zappo2938 11y agoDuckDuckGo is a proxy for Bing searches. However, DuckDuckGo uses Yahoo BOSS Search API for images, SoundCloud Search API for audio, and YouTube Search API for video. At first I tried scraping DuckDuckGo but couldn't because my IP was being recorded at some point where it was being throttled. So I looked a little deeper and found the sources of their search data. So I use the services listed above directly. lol I didn't realize that the Yahoo image search was powered by Bing. The web based search for images return the same, however, the APIs are returning different image sets. The Yahoo version is better.
- simonw 11y agoJust out of interest, anyone know why the dateline on that article would be Healdsburg? > Healdsburg, CALIFORNIA (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) executives are in early talks with potential Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) investors...
- newobj 11y agoGreat little town on the fringe of wine country, why not?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rokhayakebe 11y agoCan someone explain to me why Facebook isn't buying Yahoo? Perfect Fit.
- this_user 11y agoIn what regard? FB has been know to buy hot start-ups that might threaten their business (e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp). Yahoo is a boring old dinosaur whose core business is failing. The only thing worth anything is their stake in Alibaba. The sole thing they own that might interest FB is Tumblr. But Yahoo recently disclosed that they may write down all of the remaining value of that service, which would be $1.1B down the drain.
- inthewoods 11y agoI'd be curious what Yahoo Finance is worth - I don't know any other finance site as dominate - but again probably not a good match for FB
- rokhayakebe 11y agoThey are both portals. Facebook social portal. Yahoo personal portal. Go to FB to check friends and discuss things with those you know. Go to Yahoo to check emails, and news and discuss with those you do not know. Facebook is your world. Yahoo is the world at large.
- cududa 11y agoThat's like saying Tesla should buy a couple small auto makers - you know, because they both make cars and it'd be a perfect fit.
- SeeDave 11y agoI still believe that Steve Ballmer is the only man who can rescue Yahoo.