4 ms·

To the guys on this thread who talk like they're some mini-pundits who know it all saying this is what Yahoo gets for walking away from larger valuation offers

To the guys on this thread who talk like they're some mini-pundits who know it all saying this is what Yahoo gets for walking away from larger valuation offers from a decade ago: No one thinks you're intelligent for pointing out something years after the fact. Tech companies come and go, and I would bet that a lot of the hottest tech companies right now will meet the end just like Yahoo did in a decade (or less). Imagine if Google becomes irrelevant in 10 years, and end up selling itself to whichever hottest tech company that will be around then. Will you say "Told ya! Google should have sold to Yahoo when Yahoo was going to acquire them for $3 billion!"

fma 10y ago
It's hard to determine when a company is at peak value. Everyone here thinks it's easy - in which case they should spend their lives as short traders, selling the stock of every company that is at its peak, rather than working on their own startups which will see the same success as Yahoo.
manigandham 10y ago
I think most of the comments were just pointing out how much and how fast fortunes can change, but yes, the only right way to judge a decision is within the context in which it was made. Were they the right choices given all the information those people had back then? It seems that they were.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  It's arrogant to think one can predict any single thing in the world, no matter how successful you are. You could say the same thing ("Given all the information those people have back then, the best decision would have been to sell") about Apple right before Steve Jobs came back and turned it around. In fact here's what Michael Dell famously said: ("What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders")
subsection1h 10y ago
Are you seriously suggesting that when Microsoft made its final offer in 2008, Yahoo was one of "the hottest tech companies"?
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  no
- paganel 10y ago
  Not the OP, but I remember that from a developer's perspective (mine) Yahoo was pretty hot back in 2006-2007. Their dev center and API's were on par with Google's, if not better, while Yahoo Pipes was a very cool and interesting thing which has not been successfully replicated until now. Companies like FB were cool only because they had an exponential user growth and because of the rumors of them poaching engineers from Google or Yahoo for insane financial packages. That started to change around 2010 I'd say, when the FB devs started to open themselves up more to the world.
  - basch 10y ago
    who is replicating pipes?
    - paganel 10y ago
      I remember reading somth about a proof-of-concept replica of Pipes here on HN, I might be wrong, though, can't remember the source.
      - basch 10y ago
        part of pipes was the community of work that you could clone and contribute to. just recreating the technology isnt the same thing.

fma 10y ago

It's hard to determine when a company is at peak value. Everyone here thinks it's easy - in which case they should spend their lives as short traders, selling the stock of every company that is at its peak, rather than working on their own startups which will see the same success as Yahoo.

manigandham 10y ago

I think most of the comments were just pointing out how much and how fast fortunes can change, but yes, the only right way to judge a decision is within the context in which it was made. Were they the right choices given all the information those people had back then? It seems that they were.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
It's arrogant to think one can predict any single thing in the world, no matter how successful you are. You could say the same thing ("Given all the information those people have back then, the best decision would have been to sell") about Apple right before Steve Jobs came back and turned it around. In fact here's what Michael Dell famously said: ("What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders")

subsection1h 10y ago

Are you seriously suggesting that when Microsoft made its final offer in 2008, Yahoo was one of "the hottest tech companies"?

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
no
paganel 10y ago
Not the OP, but I remember that from a developer's perspective (mine) Yahoo was pretty hot back in 2006-2007. Their dev center and API's were on par with Google's, if not better, while Yahoo Pipes was a very cool and interesting thing which has not been successfully replicated until now. Companies like FB were cool only because they had an exponential user growth and because of the rumors of them poaching engineers from Google or Yahoo for insane financial packages. That started to change around 2010 I'd say, when the FB devs started to open themselves up more to the world.
- basch 10y ago
  who is replicating pipes?
  - paganel 10y ago
    I remember reading somth about a proof-of-concept replica of Pipes here on HN, I might be wrong, though, can't remember the source.
    - basch 10y ago
      part of pipes was the community of work that you could clone and contribute to. just recreating the technology isnt the same thing.