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As a consumer, it might make sense to say this. From a business perspective (he says having no business experience or expertise), Yahoo is a collection of asse

As a consumer, it might make sense to say this. From a business perspective (he says having no business experience or expertise), Yahoo is a collection of assets: Code, people, branding, community. They aren't in first place, and they aren't profitable at the moment, but I think the case that they have zero or negative value is a bit simplistic. Put it another way: Would you rather throw a pile of money at trying to build a collection of code, talent, business contracts, and users from scratch, or would you rather buy an EXISTING collection, on the cheap, and work instead to flip it into a profitable business? Both are risky ventures, but everything I've seen says it's harder to build from scratch than it is to keep existing users. Perhaps your answer is that you'd prefer to build it from scratch, but do you see why - if the answer takes some thought to determine - that someone else might come to a different conclusion? Heck, even if you want to completely toss the business model - even if you want to toss everything they've done and what they are trying to do - I'd imagine the servers, in-house expertise, and collected code and utilities, not to mention any purchased or licensed software, would make Yahoo worth considering as an acquisition.

deleted 10y ago
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bmuon 10y ago
Big misconception: Yahoo is profitable, it's just not growing.
- tosseraccount 10y ago
  Check. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/yahoo-quarter-losses-marissa-meyer-shareholders https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/yahoo-qua... Yahoo announced falling revenues and a quarterly loss of $99.2m on Tuesday - from April 19, 2016
  - taylorwc 10y ago
    You zoomed in on a quarter, which is not a good way to look at it. From an annual standpoint, they have been profitable for each of the last 4 years, excluding 2015. 2015 Included a massive impairment of goodwill (which is not a cash expense) at $4.4B[0] and would have otherwise been profitable. [0] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1011006/000119312516483790/d12894d10k.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1011006/0001193125164...
  - cscurmudgeon 10y ago
    Just one quarter due to accounting. Annually quite profitable. Ugh, I wish the Guardian was more financially literate.
    - easytiger 10y ago
      > Ugh, I wish the Guardian was more financially literate. Then how could it bend the facts to meet their bias?
- tomkin 10y ago
  Why does it need to grow? Maybe growth is limited, and when it's not, it's dangerous.
  - pkaye 10y ago
    You have to give shareholders a return through stock growth or through dividends.
    - tomkin 10y ago
      Mega-companies will only ever end up eventually creating a G+. 300 smaller companies each doing a few things well. That is true growth. Every time you use the word "growth" to describe "success", you will find that you only have new mouths to feed.
      - dgacmu 10y ago
        That's patently false. Pun intended. Innovation is not limited to startups. Underneath the hood, there's an absolutely massive amount of r&d and innovation that goes into Intel's chips year on year. Google's progress in machine learning for speech and photos is impressive. The big companies often do very well innovating. Intel producing another innovation that drives a billion dollars of sales isn't as exciting as a startup doing the same, but both are real.
        tomkin 10y ago
        You're talking about the economy in a "Plinko chip" sort of way, and I'm talking about community building. If you want good products and a well paying society, you need to promote more individual nodes rather than giant motherships. And by "promote", I mean actually want it instead of talking about how the rules apply to the current system.
        tomkin 10y ago
        And if something is patently false I shouldn't be able to point to hundreds of examples where you're wrong.
EdHominem 10y ago
Yes, of course it has some teardown value. Billions in Ali Baba stock if nothing else. But that's not what you're suggesting - doubling down by doing more of what they've been doing. This assumes that what they're doing has some useful foundation you can find and build on. There are essentially zero Yahoo users, especially of any service that's remotely monetizable. People who use Yahoo are people whose ISP set it as their default homepage ten years ago. You can hear the fail in their words. They're talking about retaining users, not offering value. They still want to be a portal (ie the base of every action you take), something users didn't want when it was new. That's the business legacy you'd have to reverse before you stop producing negative-value, let alone actually produce something that may actually be valuable.
- CPLX 10y ago
  > Billions in Ali Baba stock if nothing else. My understanding is that's the one thing that is not up for sale these days, and that all relevant discussions are regarding the spinoff of their core web businesses.
- ergothus 10y ago
  slight variation: I was talking about Yahoo ABSENT the profitable sub-groups. The part that apparently has negative value. I fail to believe that Yahoo, minus Ali Baba and Fantasy sports and similar bits, is actively NEGATIVE value. It might be poorly run and have the poor actions you're talking about. (okay, it DOES have the negatives you mention). That doesn't mean what's there "should just die" - it's a business opportunity to take that and use it profitably.
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  A fair number of people use Yahoo mail and Yahoo search. It's not a majority of the market by any means, but it's still tens to hundreds of millions of users all told.
  - drdeca 10y ago
    They also own tumblr iirc. I don't know if tumblr is profitable, but it has many users. edit: whoops this was already mentioned a number of times in other comments.
Cozumel 10y ago
Interesting insight, guess that explains why MySpace was bought as well.
- kristianc 10y ago
  MySpace was bought for exactly that reason. It has a large enough number of returning monthly visitors (accessing archived photos and what not) for that data to be valuable to the adtech vendor that bought it. If you're looking to acquire lots and lots of customer data, there are far cheaper ways to go about it than trying to build your own social network from scratch.

deleted 10y ago

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bmuon 10y ago

Big misconception: Yahoo is profitable, it's just not growing.

tosseraccount 10y ago
Check. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/yahoo-quarter-losses-marissa-meyer-shareholders https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/yahoo-qua... Yahoo announced falling revenues and a quarterly loss of $99.2m on Tuesday - from April 19, 2016
- taylorwc 10y ago
  You zoomed in on a quarter, which is not a good way to look at it. From an annual standpoint, they have been profitable for each of the last 4 years, excluding 2015. 2015 Included a massive impairment of goodwill (which is not a cash expense) at $4.4B[0] and would have otherwise been profitable. [0] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1011006/000119312516483790/d12894d10k.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1011006/0001193125164...
- cscurmudgeon 10y ago
  Just one quarter due to accounting. Annually quite profitable. Ugh, I wish the Guardian was more financially literate.
  - easytiger 10y ago
    > Ugh, I wish the Guardian was more financially literate. Then how could it bend the facts to meet their bias?
tomkin 10y ago
Why does it need to grow? Maybe growth is limited, and when it's not, it's dangerous.
- pkaye 10y ago
  You have to give shareholders a return through stock growth or through dividends.
  - tomkin 10y ago
    Mega-companies will only ever end up eventually creating a G+. 300 smaller companies each doing a few things well. That is true growth. Every time you use the word "growth" to describe "success", you will find that you only have new mouths to feed.
    - dgacmu 10y ago
      That's patently false. Pun intended. Innovation is not limited to startups. Underneath the hood, there's an absolutely massive amount of r&d and innovation that goes into Intel's chips year on year. Google's progress in machine learning for speech and photos is impressive. The big companies often do very well innovating. Intel producing another innovation that drives a billion dollars of sales isn't as exciting as a startup doing the same, but both are real.
      - tomkin 10y ago
        You're talking about the economy in a "Plinko chip" sort of way, and I'm talking about community building. If you want good products and a well paying society, you need to promote more individual nodes rather than giant motherships. And by "promote", I mean actually want it instead of talking about how the rules apply to the current system.
      - tomkin 10y ago
        And if something is patently false I shouldn't be able to point to hundreds of examples where you're wrong.

EdHominem 10y ago

Yes, of course it has some teardown value. Billions in Ali Baba stock if nothing else. But that's not what you're suggesting - doubling down by doing more of what they've been doing. This assumes that what they're doing has some useful foundation you can find and build on. There are essentially zero Yahoo users, especially of any service that's remotely monetizable. People who use Yahoo are people whose ISP set it as their default homepage ten years ago. You can hear the fail in their words. They're talking about retaining users, not offering value. They still want to be a portal (ie the base of every action you take), something users didn't want when it was new. That's the business legacy you'd have to reverse before you stop producing negative-value, let alone actually produce something that may actually be valuable.

CPLX 10y ago
> Billions in Ali Baba stock if nothing else. My understanding is that's the one thing that is not up for sale these days, and that all relevant discussions are regarding the spinoff of their core web businesses.
ergothus 10y ago
slight variation: I was talking about Yahoo ABSENT the profitable sub-groups. The part that apparently has negative value. I fail to believe that Yahoo, minus Ali Baba and Fantasy sports and similar bits, is actively NEGATIVE value. It might be poorly run and have the poor actions you're talking about. (okay, it DOES have the negatives you mention). That doesn't mean what's there "should just die" - it's a business opportunity to take that and use it profitably.
bzbarsky 10y ago
A fair number of people use Yahoo mail and Yahoo search. It's not a majority of the market by any means, but it's still tens to hundreds of millions of users all told.
- drdeca 10y ago
  They also own tumblr iirc. I don't know if tumblr is profitable, but it has many users. edit: whoops this was already mentioned a number of times in other comments.

Cozumel 10y ago

Interesting insight, guess that explains why MySpace was bought as well.

kristianc 10y ago
MySpace was bought for exactly that reason. It has a large enough number of returning monthly visitors (accessing archived photos and what not) for that data to be valuable to the adtech vendor that bought it. If you're looking to acquire lots and lots of customer data, there are far cheaper ways to go about it than trying to build your own social network from scratch.