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Yahoo misses profit expectations in what could be its last-ever earnings report
- aioprisan 10y agoA bit dramatic of a title, no?
- azinman2 10y agoYet accurate?
- jonknee 10y agoHow so? They put themselves up for sale and the deadline for final bids was today. They also missed profit and revenue forecasts, it was another ugly quarter for a quickly shrinking company.
- duaneb 10y agoDramatic? Yea. Click bait? Only for those who didn't know it was coming. Yahoo has a very meagre future as a company hoping to retain their revenue (let alone profit)
- shams93 10y agoIts taken them a while, all their peers except for Amazon have essential gone to the dust. If Geocities had been bought by say Google instead of Yahoo I could have easily flipped my options into my own startup. However dot bomb hit so hard instead of wealth I was left holding a huge capital gains tax bill that forced me into 10 solid years of hardcore poverty as most of my income was confiscated to pay off the debt. Not a nice outcome for companies bought by yahoo back in the 90s!
- encoderer 10y agoUgh. The era before amt credits was bleak.
- karma_vaccum123 10y agoYup. A lot of Yahoo's impaled themselves on "exercise and hold". "Same day sale" ended up being less risky.
- themartorana 10y agoHow do you not make money and still owe a lot in capital gains?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- throwaway76543 10y agoGenerally this occurs when you exercise an option to purchase stock, then hold the stock while it significantly depreciates in value. Fairly common scenario during the dot-com bubble. 1) Option at $1 2) Exercise at $100, spending $1 to buy. Tax on $99 short term capital gains owed, or ~$35. 3) Stock falls to $10 and sold for a $9 profit. You still owe $35 capital gains and spent $1. Net loss of $25 per share.
- ajmurmann 10y agoDid you mean "2) Exercise at $100 [..]"?
- tuna-piano 10y agoWouldn't the prudent thing to do be to sell at least enough stock to pay the tax? If not allowed to sell at that point- just short stock to have the equivalent effect (minus fees)? Something else I've never understood to be rational - If you wouldn't buy $10 in yahoo stock- why would you hold it because you have it? My uninformed but seems logical answer would be sell the stock you got, pay the tax and buy and index fund.
- stepanhruda 10y agoThe stock needs to be public by the time you exercise to be able to do this.
- trimbo 10y agoWhen Yahoo bought Geocities, both were public.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- a_small_island 10y agoHave you written more about this? I would love to read more details.
- hkmurakami 10y agoOne person who avoided this was Mark Cuban, who bought a bunch of Yahoo! put options when broadcast.com was acquired, hedging himself against the stock crash.
- option_greek 10y agoNice strategy. I wonder why others didn't do it.
- majani 10y agoIf you read Mark's story, it's clear that he was aware of what was happening at the time but didn't drink the kool-aid, while if you look at the other dot bombs, they definitely thought the world was changing and the rules had changed.
- aerovistae 10y ago"Read his story" --> Can you provide a link to this particular story? I would be interested to read it.
- chkuendig 10y agohttp://investmentxyz.blogspot.ch/2006/05/cubans-collar-anatomy-of-famous-trade.html http://investmentxyz.blogspot.ch/2006/05/cubans-collar-anato...
- fdanconia 10y agoWhat it seemed like to me reading over the stories of Mark Cuban was that he realized (with the help of some frugal advisors) that he just made a ton of money on paper and didn't want to lose out transferring that into real actual dollars in the bank. It just seemed he had different goals than everyone else: everyone around him wanted to get as rich as possible, Cuban seemed to want to have as much money in his bank account as possible. Two very different things.
- retube 10y agooh man the US tax code is so f*cked
- elgabogringo 10y agoHas the valley ever seen a more hyped, yet disappointing hire than Mayer?
- cloudjacker 10y agoTheranos. The valley is very sensitive towards women running companies with large valuations, that company's woes would otherwise have flown completely under the radar. The next one on the "overhyped but disappointing and in the valley list" would be Clinkle and its now 24 year old CEO. No women there but as you will see the valuations drop off a cliff pretty quickly in this list.
- danso 10y agoWhy is the primary factor behind Theranos's bubble the fact that its founder was a woman? That is a notable aspect but Elizabeth Holmes also leveraged powerful connections and a TED-friendly dream to get that hype. There are plenty of female-led startups that did not reach any notable status despite having a woman at the helm.
- cloudjacker 10y agoThe bubble and valuation? Thats not the real discussion here. The meltdown of a company that has no consumer product would never have drawn clicks. Fidelity could have marked it down 50 times and never made the news. There are tons of biotech startups with lofty valuations.
- danso 10y agoThere was a consumer product. They performed thousands of blood tests, which were available in Palo Alto and Arizona. But it's false that companies that don't have a consumer product don't draw intense interest. Ask Enron. Or WorldCom. Or Blackwater. Or Lehman Brothers. Or the folks behind the AOL and Time Warner merger
- 10y ago
- guard0g 10y agoPoor execution, lack of innovation. At least Mayer can run for public office now...
- cloudwalking 10y agoWe have no idea what happened at Yahoo. They may have failed two years earlier without Mayer, for all we know.
- AJ007 10y agoI thought she was the most qualified CEO they had in a very long time. Yahoo Mail has been a huge driver of their user retention, webmail usage has almost fully shifted to mobile. Facebook has gobbled up a big chunk of display ad revenue along with Youtube and video ads in general. Pretty much everything they can't control sucks for Yahoo.
- carterehsmith 10y agoI don't see how she was qualified at all. She had one job. And that was in the company she was with from the beginning. So she had zero experience working anyplace that is not Google, and zero experience as a CEO. So she is not qualified and it shows. Example 2: Robert Nardelli. He was such a great leader at GE. Then went to Home Depot as a superstar and managed to fuck everything up. He also never had a job outside GE, the place where he became superstar. Anyways why anyone thinks that hiring a CEO that had a total of one jobs, is a good idea, I just can't figure out.
- burnitdown 10y agoAt on of the first "all hands" meeting, she decided to read a children's book. We know what happened: terrible leadership and terrible judgement.
- mistermann 10y agoThey spent $ to "improve" Yahoo Finance, a service that is still relevant and popular, and ruined it: https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/207809 https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/207809
- dexwiz 10y agoHas there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Mayer has been tech news' pinata for over a year now, but the company was sliding before she was even hired. Looking through a list of dead Yahoo services, it reads as an obituary of region specific social networking sites and forgettable web services[1]. Social sites are notoriously fickle, and boosting one to popularity is somewhat of a dark art. Web services are a dime a dozen, and Google or Facebook probably has a better one. Yahoo seemed like it failed to break into any enterprise offerings either. Poor leadership, and failure to attract talent. They didn't have the same culture pull as Google/Facebook/Apple in the latest tech bubble. And why work for Yahoo if you could do the same thing with VCs funneling you money? I think one of the most telling things is the lack of OSS from Yahoo. Their top repo on github has been effectively dead for around a year [2]. Yahoo hasn't been a tech company is almost a decade, and it shows in their products. Not even their numerous acquihires have netted them anything. EDIT: Looking at a timeline of Yahoo, they haven't launched a major product since 2006 (10 years). All new products have been bought [3]. Imagine if Google's last product was Docs. No Android, no Doubleclick, no Street View, no autocomplete in search, no Chrome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yahoo!-owned_sites_and_services#Closed.2Fdefunct_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yahoo!-owned_sites_and... [2] https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=user%3Ayahoo&ref=searchresults&s=stars&type=Repositories&utf8=%E2%9C%93 https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=user%3Ayahoo&ref=searchre... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Yahoo!#2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Yahoo!#2006
- jldugger 10y ago> Has there ever been a successful turnaround of a software company of Yahoo's scale? Intel and IBM come to mind.
- dexwiz 10y agoNeither of which are software companies. That is to say they offer hardware and services.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
- antoineMoPa 10y ago"Yahoo"... The brand is the problem. It sounds like a good name for a personal website in 1998 (with 85 gifs and a turquoise background).
- RankingMember 10y agoWith the right products, I'm of the opinion that you can name your company just about anything and be successful. I mean is Google's name any better if you don't keep their products in mind? Let's also not forget about GoDaddy, which for a time was successful with that name and hobbles along (operating at a loss) even today.
- mikeash 10y agoIndeed, if the roles were somehow reversed and Yahoo! was the juggernaut and Google was dying, people would no doubt be saying the same stuff.
- antoineMoPa 10y agoI don't think there is a major problem with Yahoo products. I tried Yahoo mail yesterday and the signup process was nice. It looks like a viable alternative to gmail. Google is a nicer name, it comes from googol which gives it some math meaning beyond the sound. Yahoo is only an onomatopoeia that sounds dumb to me (I am not a native English speaker though). Also, if you look in the dictionnary (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/yahoo http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/yahoo): yahoo: a rude, loud, unpleasant person, especially one who has little education
- sp527 10y agoI still remember when some were attempting to portray Mayers' demotion from the exec ranks at Google as sexism. In reality, Google had probably already recognized certain issues in her managerial style.
- throwaway6497 10y agoAgreed. If Mayer was awesome, she would have been CEO of Google, infact she was best positioned to be one at some point. All the people she hired were getting promoted over her. She was pissed, obviously could never show it. Bided time and took up the CEO position at Yahoo. Anyone with big ego would. I wouldn't blame her. She did what is best for her. Just like any other economic actor. What I really felt bad for - Yahoo's employees and customers. Only qualified person who was willing to take up the job was Marissa. Rest were no-name hacks who had no idea how to build products. Board had no choice but to hire her. Hailing her as Obama with Obama change posters, I felt was a little over the top. Yahoo's employees were desperate. She improved morale initially. Had she shown results, she would have won huge loyalty from employees and board. She tried. Made some bold moves and failed. Not bad in my opinion. I wonder, if any other CEO would have made such bold product moves. Acquisitions - lots of them, mail, home page improvements, new redesigned apps, attempting to build an internal product for search. She at least tried. RIP yahoo.
- ddebernardy 10y agoWhatever the price will be, it won't be the $44.6 billion MS offered back in the days. Shareholders are probably furious at Yang for turning that offer down.
- nojvek 10y agoThat would have been another shit move by Ballmer. He already destroyed Nokia and cost MS a fortune. Let's hope LinkedIn brings value with a deeper integration in office.
- ddebernardy 10y agoFrom where I'm standing it looks more like a shit move by Ballmer for making the offer and a clusterfuck move by Yang for refusing it. ;-)
- ProfChronos 10y agoWhen reading the article I was remembering the words of Dominique Vidal, former Yahoo MD Europe, quoted by Criteo's cofounder Rudelle in his book: "Yahoo had everything to be Google. But when we reached a peak of users, we stopped investing in R&D to focus on other expenses. That is the most terrible mistake we did". When you look at Google or Facebook and their R&D investments in non core-business projects, I am definitely thinking that someone got Yahoo's lessons right
- joebergeron 10y agoSigh... "To keep reading, please enter your email address". Welp.
- ars 10y agoYou should be able to press and hold the back arrow, click on the story directly and quickly press escape to stop the javascript that does that.
- l33tbro 10y agoThis is probably a really dumb question - but I have 17 years worth of Yahoo email. Most of it is for nostalgia, but how likely is it that this would be wiped away if/when Yahoo goes under?
- throwaway7767 10y agoIf you care about it, keep your own backups. This applies to all cloud services at all times. The fact that you ask yourself this question now implies that you should really start preparing.
- l33tbro 10y agoYou're right. I'm completely liable here if it does go.
- jlgaddis 10y agoThe same question, from a different perspective: How likely is it that your mail would be kept (and remain accessible to you) if/when Yahoo! goes under? I think I'd start making a local backup/copy of it. Can you access it via IMAP? I'd recommend offlineimap or imapsync as starting points.
- l33tbro 10y agoYou can get via IMAP here: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN4075.html?impressions=true https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN4075.html?impressions=true ... so going through those steps now.
- imaginenore 10y agoI doubt yahoo properties will just disappear. Too many users, too many ad views. They will likely be bought and supported. But it's a good idea to back up your email anyway.
- tim333 10y agoI had a lot of discussion going back years on the Yahoo finance stock boards which used to be a bit like HN and they arbitrarily decided to delete them. I kind of gave up on Yahoo as a user after that.
- nashashmi 10y agoYahoo's problem was that it was masquerading as a tech company when the only valuable asset it had in its books was its media side of the business. Yahoo had many media agreements, and it had developed much negotiating strength in that business. Unfortunately, Yahoo also had these random properties like mail and games that made it difficult to forge one path. Further, Mayer was someone who had reputation as a tech leader. She saw everything from a tech angle which made it difficult for her to direct the company in another direction apart from tech. This was the reason why Flickr and Delicious were being shutdown.
- swalsh 10y agoBeing first to market is rarely a long term advantage, it's more like a shot of adrenaline. Over time you build up technical, and structural debt. As the front runner you have to make all the mistakes, after you've made them a competitor can swoop in, avoid your mistakes, and outperform. You may not pivot because hey what you're doing seems to work, or you may avoid a pivot because you have too much technical debt. But it seems to prove itself over and over again to be a very weak advantage. Yahoo finance sucks compared to google finance, yahoo search sucks to google search, yahoo content sucks. Yahoo mail sucks, yahoo shopping sucks. Everything they do is not as good, but they were one of the first to do it all.
- codingmyway 10y agoI still don't see why Yahoo didn't stick to their original purpose of human powered search instead of buying up random companies to try anything. All they had to do was work out how to outsource the work to users. Why did they not buy StumbleUpon or PearlTrees, which few have heard of? That and email would have given them a lot of data on their user base.