11 ms·

Yahoo Sale ‘Book’ Reveals Financial Meltdown and Big Bet on Mobile Voice Search

107 points by shawndumas 11y ago

cft 11y ago
"stock-based compensation remains steady. At well over $400 million annually now, that’s double what it was only a few years previously and means CEO Marissa Mayer is loading up valued employees with outsize share grants to get them to stay." That's the cargo cult she follows from her days at Google: valuable employees like herself get lotza stock, and therefore the company magically prospers.
- acdha 11y ago
  Isn't that true of basically every modern company? A term like “cargo cult” is way too strident for a practice which is so widespread – we don't even know whether that's a few executives getting a big payout or a bunch of key lower-level employees being convinced not to bail.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    Yep. Giving a total dollar value is meaningless because at most places, the top execs get inundated with stock--millions and millions of dollars worth--and the rank and file get nothing or close to nothing. Would love to see the distribution.
    - throwaway_xx9 11y ago
      Under Marissa, engineers stopped receiving options and instead were being offered $40,000 in "stock replacement" over 4 years - worth about 3% - 5% of what a Google engineer would expect (unless they were hiring somebody away, and then they would match the previous company.) So, cab fare for most new engineering hires.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  The term cargo cult is getting way overused on Hacker News these days.
this_user 11y ago
I am having a hard time recognising any kind of strategy on Yahoo's part. Does anybody even know what the core of their business is? Are they a search engine? Are they some kind of media company? An ad agency? What is that they do? Meyer is seemingly done very little in her four years as CEO. She has shifted things around internally, fired a lot of people and acquired some things. But none of this seems to really go anywhere. The Tumblr acquisition was already a complete bust and has resulted mostly in write-offs. No technology company has ever dug itself out from a hole like this - no company except for Apple, that is, and it took Steve Jobs to do it.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  People keep mentioning Yahoo Finance and fantasy sports, but I have zero interest in and knowledge of them.
  - 36bydesign 11y ago
    They're top in class and very popular in the demographic of not you.
    - scotch_drinker 11y ago
      This is just a solipsist's world and you're just living in it.
- danso 11y ago
  I'll never not be able to think of how they spent $30 million on a text summarizing phone app created by a 15-year old. How humiliating that must be for Yahoo engineers, who have put out great technology and frameworks (such as Pure, in the case of the latter) and could've easily developed this in-house...but few people ever think of Yahoo engineers in nearly the same light as Google or Microsoft engineers, and yet Yahoo is spending millions to further the perceived impotency of their engineers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_D%27Aloisio#Summly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_D%27Aloisio#Summly Though on a nicer note, great to see that that 15-year old, who was already well-off before becoming a Yahoo millionaire, ended up quitting to go to school to study computer science.
dharmon 11y ago
The most relevant portion is buried at the very end: > While some are scared by the numbers, everyone I spoke to plans to make a bid of some sort, largely because even as financially precarious as it has become, Yahoo remains one of the biggest properties on the Web and it is hard to be able to buy that kind scale easily. > “It’s like a dilapidated house in Silicon Valley — you walk in and are overwhelmed by the work that needs to be done and how bad it has gotten,” said one potential buyer. “But then it’s in a good neighborhood, the market is nuts and there’s not many like it anymore, so you have to hope you can fix it.”
- gcb0 11y ago
  the most likely explanation is that Yahoo is being mismanaged to drive price down. there's a saying that translates roughly to "you bad-mouthing things you want to buy".
  - HelloRipley 11y ago
    nokia
    - bithush 11y ago
      Yes because that was an incredible purchase for Microsoft!
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - wodenokoto 11y ago
        Well, yes and no. I think the plan was to stop mismanagement after the purchase, but someone forgot to execute that part.
        bithush 11y ago
        I think it was more Ballmer not having a clue about mobile. When I first saw his idiotic response to the initial iPhone I knew he would fail hard in the mobile space. Even today I think his idea of a smart phone is a Windows Mobile 6 device.
radicalman 11y ago
Looks like Marissa did a fine job /s
chinathrow 11y ago
I am not going to use mobile voice <anything>. Not unless we have local AI processing natural speech on my own device. No cloud voice fingerprinting for me, ever. I imagine there must be companies already buying voice prints and cross referencing them with voiced heard in stores to identify/target customers somehow.
chris_wot 11y ago
I'm currently writing off Yahoo. No matter what happens, it's been managed to badly I just can't see how they can make a comeback. Years ago they had a chance to claw their way back, but not any more.
- estefan 11y ago
  I think they need to let yahoo.com burn and put their money into some new brands instead. Yahoo was never a clearly defined site and any changes they make will alienate whoever it is who actually visits. They should take their capital and diversify, creating entirely new products and brands, and/or become a VC company. I.e. milk the current company and plan to abandon ship.
- Nelson69 11y ago
  What would be considered a come back for them? Is it even possible to define that? Over the years they've had decent income, they have great traffic numbers, they have all these things that seem to indicate success inside the echo chamber. Now they've got a shit brand, the brand is right there with AOL. They aren't going to have google or facebook numbers though, I don't know that I'd expect any other company to match those though. It's just a game now, tons of people are envious of their traffic. they've probably got some great properties as well, sports, finance and fantasy sports seem to be universally enjoyed. Someone just wants to steal it for as cheap as possible.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Split the properties off into seperate companies, with their own management with little interference from the parent company. And remove Marissa Mayer, who has made some absolutely dreadful business decisions and continues to make them. Sorry this is harsh, but she's had many years to prove herself now, and she has shown that she's not the leader that Yahoo needs to restore its past glories. Unfortunately Yahoo is a shell of its former self, so I can't see how else they can resolve their problems except by giving different business more autonomy and zero interference. It's rather Darwinian, but those who will succeed will survive, and those who were never viable (of which there were many companies who were purchased for Mayer who would have ultimately folded eventually) will wither and die on the vine.
balozi 11y ago
Maybe Yahoo! should build a smartphone. That'll solve all their problems. Hey, I'm just trying to help.
wehadfun 11y ago
Don't understand why Yahoo is in such free fall. It is easy a top 10 website. Ads on the site probably sell for millions. Their content / engineers/tech can't be that expensive. What are they spending all that cash on.
- vthallam 11y ago
  Problem is they don't just focus on few products/sites, instead they make like random products(eg : livetext) and acquisitions(quite a few which were shutdown later). Focus is the key. Apart from flickr & Tumblr, there is no other product they own is very attractive.
  - nerfhammer 11y ago
    So, is the problem just that Yahoo doesn't have a good narrative about itself?
    - sirkneeland 11y ago
      In a narrative-focused discussion like this, yes. Conversations with a different focus might lead to Yahoo's problems with marketing, HR, technology, products, etc.
    - vthallam 11y ago
      Kind of! As a normal guy, i can only speculate. But, it's pretty obvious that they don't have a strong product line. The products like Tumblr,finance,fantasy sports,Flickr are good, but none of them has a monopoly over certain area. Also, the ad network media.net which is in collaboration with bing is no where a hit. Yahoo hires really good engineers(some friends work there), but i guess the people in the management clearly doesn't have a strategic vision.
  - htormey 11y ago
    I dont use any yahoo products but I seem ro recall fantasy sports, finance and yahoo mail still being pretty massive. Is that not still the case?
smegel 11y ago
> Yahoo Japan switched to Google many years ago What is Yahoo Japan? A completely different company or something?
- bduerst 11y ago
  Yes. It's a joint venture with Softbank.
draw_down 11y ago
They keep switching courses, now the new thing is a Siri "competitor" apparently. Except Amazon and Apple aren't even trying to make money on that, they're adjuncts to actual products. There is definitely room to improve on Siri (haven't used Alexa) but it's nonetheless markedly better than when it started. It seems like not only a tough thing to get right, but again, there is the issue of monetizing it. Just seems like a weird thing to go after.
spriggan3 11y ago
Yahoo had/has a cool products, mail, groups, pipes, boss, Flickr ... Instead of improving these products, Mayer went on a shopping spree and bought useless things , like Tumblr (I'm sorry but Tumblr is a complete failure under Yahoo), Sumly and basically let them rot, just like the previous products. And she want to stay 3 more years ? without a serious plan ? Ultimately, MSFT will buy Yahoo, so I'm sure Mayer will get a good bonus, but what a fiasco she was.
- duaneb 11y ago
  I disagree, tumblr as a social site has fluorished under Yahoo. If twitter, facebook, and pinterest have shown anything, you can build the community and pivot into profitability. If you want to see failures, look at flickr or delicious.
  - spriggan3 11y ago
    > I disagree, tumblr as a social site has fluorished under Yahoo Tumblr is a commercial failure under Yahoo. It didn't make money then, it won't make money now. > twitter, facebook, and pinterest have shown anything Neither of them have been acquired by another company... let alone Yahoo. > look at flickr Flickr has actual paid users and is one of the only service at yahoo that is still relevant.
- tcdent 11y ago
  > useless things , like Tumblr (I'm sorry but Tumblr is a complete failure under Yahoo) Buying Tumblr and then causing it to underperform are two separate points. The potential for success (before acquisition) would characterize it a useful thing. Yahoo has actively devalued Tumblr, like the other web 2.0 acquisitions, seemingly because they are stuck in a previous era. > Yahoo had/has a cool products, mail, groups, pipes, boss, Flickr You think they should compete with gmail? Groups is worthless. Pipes is a cute experiment and will never appeal to the mainstream. Flickr, if only they could target the camera in everyones pocket instead of the prosumer cream. None of these are good bets... Yahoo Shopping could be considered a success for it's time, should they do that again? If there is a next purchase, they should take the opportunity to learn from the new success, rather than try to re-apply the ways of old.
programminggeek 11y ago
So, they are doing a good job of selling an overvalued asset? Seems like the sales acumen exists somewhere in Yahoo!, just not in anything that is truly going to help the company succeed.
yanilkr 11y ago
Ya who?
jhulla 11y ago
IMHO, Yahoo Finance is a wildly undervalued asset. It has the deepest and highest quality data integration of any publicly available site. I use it every day. It has also been largely ignored for better part of a decade. Three areas where Yahoo just fumbled the ball: 1) Portfolio tracking, 2) Message boards and 3) Monetization. None of these have been upgraded in years. Portfolio tracking is an exercise in good UI & UX. Yahoo could and should have bought any number of good teams over the years that have built portfolio trackers. Yahoo finance message boards have very low signal to noise ratio. They should have either gone the reddit model of comments or even better, Yahoo should have bought Seeking Alpha a long time ago. Alternatively, when Seeking Alpha began to grow, Yahoo should have built a competitive product. Instead Yahoo let their message boards turn into a low value destination. Monetization - this is just comically inept. Visitors to finance sites have and care about their money. They also tend to be older. Some of the highest paid ads target these people: Credit cards, mortgages, health, travel, banking, personal loans, autos, etc. Yahoo finance should have been the center of a massive business unit at Yahoo generating a substantial percentage of their revenue. What went wrong?
- vidoc 11y ago
  I agree. I would think that the problem of yahoo finance is an engineering problem: in fact, Yahoo finance was built on a solid technology that was good 10 years ago, but has basically been kept under maintenance ever since. Several attempts have been made to modernize it and they have almost all failed. In addition to this, yahoo finance has been an interim property within yahoo for many years, the kind of place where middle managers would find shelter before their next career move, hence the lack of risk taking. So far, it remains the best finance website in my opinion, but it's sad when you think about how much better it could be.
daralthus 11y ago
The question is simple: You have deep learning, what would you build with Yahoo's data?

107 points by shawndumas 11y ago

cft 11y ago

"stock-based compensation remains steady. At well over $400 million annually now, that’s double what it was only a few years previously and means CEO Marissa Mayer is loading up valued employees with outsize share grants to get them to stay." That's the cargo cult she follows from her days at Google: valuable employees like herself get lotza stock, and therefore the company magically prospers.

acdha 11y ago
Isn't that true of basically every modern company? A term like “cargo cult” is way too strident for a practice which is so widespread – we don't even know whether that's a few executives getting a big payout or a bunch of key lower-level employees being convinced not to bail.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Yep. Giving a total dollar value is meaningless because at most places, the top execs get inundated with stock--millions and millions of dollars worth--and the rank and file get nothing or close to nothing. Would love to see the distribution.
  - throwaway_xx9 11y ago
    Under Marissa, engineers stopped receiving options and instead were being offered $40,000 in "stock replacement" over 4 years - worth about 3% - 5% of what a Google engineer would expect (unless they were hiring somebody away, and then they would match the previous company.) So, cab fare for most new engineering hires.
erikpukinskis 11y ago
The term cargo cult is getting way overused on Hacker News these days.

this_user 11y ago

I am having a hard time recognising any kind of strategy on Yahoo's part. Does anybody even know what the core of their business is? Are they a search engine? Are they some kind of media company? An ad agency? What is that they do? Meyer is seemingly done very little in her four years as CEO. She has shifted things around internally, fired a lot of people and acquired some things. But none of this seems to really go anywhere. The Tumblr acquisition was already a complete bust and has resulted mostly in write-offs. No technology company has ever dug itself out from a hole like this - no company except for Apple, that is, and it took Steve Jobs to do it.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
People keep mentioning Yahoo Finance and fantasy sports, but I have zero interest in and knowledge of them.
- 36bydesign 11y ago
  They're top in class and very popular in the demographic of not you.
  - scotch_drinker 11y ago
    This is just a solipsist's world and you're just living in it.
danso 11y ago
I'll never not be able to think of how they spent $30 million on a text summarizing phone app created by a 15-year old. How humiliating that must be for Yahoo engineers, who have put out great technology and frameworks (such as Pure, in the case of the latter) and could've easily developed this in-house...but few people ever think of Yahoo engineers in nearly the same light as Google or Microsoft engineers, and yet Yahoo is spending millions to further the perceived impotency of their engineers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_D%27Aloisio#Summly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_D%27Aloisio#Summly Though on a nicer note, great to see that that 15-year old, who was already well-off before becoming a Yahoo millionaire, ended up quitting to go to school to study computer science.

dharmon 11y ago

The most relevant portion is buried at the very end: > While some are scared by the numbers, everyone I spoke to plans to make a bid of some sort, largely because even as financially precarious as it has become, Yahoo remains one of the biggest properties on the Web and it is hard to be able to buy that kind scale easily. > “It’s like a dilapidated house in Silicon Valley — you walk in and are overwhelmed by the work that needs to be done and how bad it has gotten,” said one potential buyer. “But then it’s in a good neighborhood, the market is nuts and there’s not many like it anymore, so you have to hope you can fix it.”

gcb0 11y ago
the most likely explanation is that Yahoo is being mismanaged to drive price down. there's a saying that translates roughly to "you bad-mouthing things you want to buy".
- HelloRipley 11y ago
  nokia
  - bithush 11y ago
    Yes because that was an incredible purchase for Microsoft!
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - wodenokoto 11y ago
      Well, yes and no. I think the plan was to stop mismanagement after the purchase, but someone forgot to execute that part.
      - bithush 11y ago
        I think it was more Ballmer not having a clue about mobile. When I first saw his idiotic response to the initial iPhone I knew he would fail hard in the mobile space. Even today I think his idea of a smart phone is a Windows Mobile 6 device.

radicalman 11y ago

Looks like Marissa did a fine job /s

chinathrow 11y ago

I am not going to use mobile voice <anything>. Not unless we have local AI processing natural speech on my own device. No cloud voice fingerprinting for me, ever. I imagine there must be companies already buying voice prints and cross referencing them with voiced heard in stores to identify/target customers somehow.

chris_wot 11y ago

I'm currently writing off Yahoo. No matter what happens, it's been managed to badly I just can't see how they can make a comeback. Years ago they had a chance to claw their way back, but not any more.

estefan 11y ago
I think they need to let yahoo.com burn and put their money into some new brands instead. Yahoo was never a clearly defined site and any changes they make will alienate whoever it is who actually visits. They should take their capital and diversify, creating entirely new products and brands, and/or become a VC company. I.e. milk the current company and plan to abandon ship.
Nelson69 11y ago
What would be considered a come back for them? Is it even possible to define that? Over the years they've had decent income, they have great traffic numbers, they have all these things that seem to indicate success inside the echo chamber. Now they've got a shit brand, the brand is right there with AOL. They aren't going to have google or facebook numbers though, I don't know that I'd expect any other company to match those though. It's just a game now, tons of people are envious of their traffic. they've probably got some great properties as well, sports, finance and fantasy sports seem to be universally enjoyed. Someone just wants to steal it for as cheap as possible.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Split the properties off into seperate companies, with their own management with little interference from the parent company. And remove Marissa Mayer, who has made some absolutely dreadful business decisions and continues to make them. Sorry this is harsh, but she's had many years to prove herself now, and she has shown that she's not the leader that Yahoo needs to restore its past glories. Unfortunately Yahoo is a shell of its former self, so I can't see how else they can resolve their problems except by giving different business more autonomy and zero interference. It's rather Darwinian, but those who will succeed will survive, and those who were never viable (of which there were many companies who were purchased for Mayer who would have ultimately folded eventually) will wither and die on the vine.

balozi 11y ago

Maybe Yahoo! should build a smartphone. That'll solve all their problems. Hey, I'm just trying to help.

wehadfun 11y ago

Don't understand why Yahoo is in such free fall. It is easy a top 10 website. Ads on the site probably sell for millions. Their content / engineers/tech can't be that expensive. What are they spending all that cash on.

vthallam 11y ago
Problem is they don't just focus on few products/sites, instead they make like random products(eg : livetext) and acquisitions(quite a few which were shutdown later). Focus is the key. Apart from flickr & Tumblr, there is no other product they own is very attractive.
- nerfhammer 11y ago
  So, is the problem just that Yahoo doesn't have a good narrative about itself?
  - sirkneeland 11y ago
    In a narrative-focused discussion like this, yes. Conversations with a different focus might lead to Yahoo's problems with marketing, HR, technology, products, etc.
  - vthallam 11y ago
    Kind of! As a normal guy, i can only speculate. But, it's pretty obvious that they don't have a strong product line. The products like Tumblr,finance,fantasy sports,Flickr are good, but none of them has a monopoly over certain area. Also, the ad network media.net which is in collaboration with bing is no where a hit. Yahoo hires really good engineers(some friends work there), but i guess the people in the management clearly doesn't have a strategic vision.
- htormey 11y ago
  I dont use any yahoo products but I seem ro recall fantasy sports, finance and yahoo mail still being pretty massive. Is that not still the case?

smegel 11y ago

> Yahoo Japan switched to Google many years ago What is Yahoo Japan? A completely different company or something?

bduerst 11y ago
Yes. It's a joint venture with Softbank.

draw_down 11y ago

They keep switching courses, now the new thing is a Siri "competitor" apparently. Except Amazon and Apple aren't even trying to make money on that, they're adjuncts to actual products. There is definitely room to improve on Siri (haven't used Alexa) but it's nonetheless markedly better than when it started. It seems like not only a tough thing to get right, but again, there is the issue of monetizing it. Just seems like a weird thing to go after.

spriggan3 11y ago

Yahoo had/has a cool products, mail, groups, pipes, boss, Flickr ... Instead of improving these products, Mayer went on a shopping spree and bought useless things , like Tumblr (I'm sorry but Tumblr is a complete failure under Yahoo), Sumly and basically let them rot, just like the previous products. And she want to stay 3 more years ? without a serious plan ? Ultimately, MSFT will buy Yahoo, so I'm sure Mayer will get a good bonus, but what a fiasco she was.

duaneb 11y ago
I disagree, tumblr as a social site has fluorished under Yahoo. If twitter, facebook, and pinterest have shown anything, you can build the community and pivot into profitability. If you want to see failures, look at flickr or delicious.
- spriggan3 11y ago
  > I disagree, tumblr as a social site has fluorished under Yahoo Tumblr is a commercial failure under Yahoo. It didn't make money then, it won't make money now. > twitter, facebook, and pinterest have shown anything Neither of them have been acquired by another company... let alone Yahoo. > look at flickr Flickr has actual paid users and is one of the only service at yahoo that is still relevant.
tcdent 11y ago
> useless things , like Tumblr (I'm sorry but Tumblr is a complete failure under Yahoo) Buying Tumblr and then causing it to underperform are two separate points. The potential for success (before acquisition) would characterize it a useful thing. Yahoo has actively devalued Tumblr, like the other web 2.0 acquisitions, seemingly because they are stuck in a previous era. > Yahoo had/has a cool products, mail, groups, pipes, boss, Flickr You think they should compete with gmail? Groups is worthless. Pipes is a cute experiment and will never appeal to the mainstream. Flickr, if only they could target the camera in everyones pocket instead of the prosumer cream. None of these are good bets... Yahoo Shopping could be considered a success for it's time, should they do that again? If there is a next purchase, they should take the opportunity to learn from the new success, rather than try to re-apply the ways of old.

programminggeek 11y ago

So, they are doing a good job of selling an overvalued asset? Seems like the sales acumen exists somewhere in Yahoo!, just not in anything that is truly going to help the company succeed.

yanilkr 11y ago

Ya who?

jhulla 11y ago

IMHO, Yahoo Finance is a wildly undervalued asset. It has the deepest and highest quality data integration of any publicly available site. I use it every day. It has also been largely ignored for better part of a decade. Three areas where Yahoo just fumbled the ball: 1) Portfolio tracking, 2) Message boards and 3) Monetization. None of these have been upgraded in years. Portfolio tracking is an exercise in good UI & UX. Yahoo could and should have bought any number of good teams over the years that have built portfolio trackers. Yahoo finance message boards have very low signal to noise ratio. They should have either gone the reddit model of comments or even better, Yahoo should have bought Seeking Alpha a long time ago. Alternatively, when Seeking Alpha began to grow, Yahoo should have built a competitive product. Instead Yahoo let their message boards turn into a low value destination. Monetization - this is just comically inept. Visitors to finance sites have and care about their money. They also tend to be older. Some of the highest paid ads target these people: Credit cards, mortgages, health, travel, banking, personal loans, autos, etc. Yahoo finance should have been the center of a massive business unit at Yahoo generating a substantial percentage of their revenue. What went wrong?

vidoc 11y ago
I agree. I would think that the problem of yahoo finance is an engineering problem: in fact, Yahoo finance was built on a solid technology that was good 10 years ago, but has basically been kept under maintenance ever since. Several attempts have been made to modernize it and they have almost all failed. In addition to this, yahoo finance has been an interim property within yahoo for many years, the kind of place where middle managers would find shelter before their next career move, hence the lack of risk taking. So far, it remains the best finance website in my opinion, but it's sad when you think about how much better it could be.

daralthus 11y ago

The question is simple: You have deep learning, what would you build with Yahoo's data?