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This was never in doubt. Everyone knew this was going to happen. Are non tech companies really that foolish to think they can salvage a brand that was relevant

This was never in doubt. Everyone knew this was going to happen. Are non tech companies really that foolish to think they can salvage a brand that was relevant 10 years ago and revive it? I have a feeling this is some kind of tax avoidance scheme. Knowing nothing about taxes and accounting I will let knowledgeable people correct me.

debacle 6y ago
With AOL and Yahoo and all the pieces, there was definitely a value play here. Verizon may just not have been the right company to execute that.
mfer 6y ago
Yahoo is still in wide use by people and AOL owns a number of properties and has a decent ad business. It may be that these companies were trying to extract value from them. This happens a decent amount these days. It's less about salvaging a brand.
- devoutsalsa 6y ago
  I still use Yahoo Finance. Not extensively, but I haven't found a site I like better for getting random stock quotes & sifting through lightweight financial information.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Yeah same. They have an API that is fairly consistent for stock stuff. If you're gonna do deep diligence there are better tools but for sniffing around, yeah they're good.
- treesknees 6y ago
  In the past few years I've come across several businesses (landscaping, home repairs, etc.) that have been communicating with me using Yahoo email addresses. Many people forget that Yahoo mail was the "Gmail" of its time, and many of those users are still around, especially non-tech oriented users and businesses who have no incentive to switch to anything else.
- rootbear 6y ago
  I still have a verizon.net email address (managed by AOL) that I use exclusively for sites that are likely to spam me. The torrent of political email I got at that address before the last election was amazing to behold.
comeonseriously 6y ago
Maybe all Verizon wanted were the names of the people who were signed up with Yahoo so they could glean all their ones and zeros as well as some cash selling them phone plans?
throwaway823882 6y ago
> Are non tech companies really that foolish to think they can salvage a brand that was relevant 10 years ago and revive it? Sure you can, though branding isn't the only way to make a successful business. Kleenex knock-offs thrive even though nobody ever says "please hand me the Generic Tissue Paper". Assuming there are professionals involved (not just rich techbros that have held on since founding) tech companies should be operated the same as non-tech companies. Build a good product, keep costs down, drive sales, put away cash, grow your market. Once AOL and Yahoo were acquired, it should have been possible to convert them into factories for generic content and services, and service many small brands. But you need an experienced executive and management class that can do this efficiently. It's much easier to turn an acquisition into an poorly-run independent cash cow, or plunder its IP and eliminate it. I've seen acquisitions go many ways. In some, the parent company may end up more like the acquisition because its business or product was more robust. Other times the point was to obtain some tech and absorb it into the parent company's products. Other times they just wanted a steady cash flow and a foothold into a new market. Sometimes they keep the acquisition fairly independent, because it already has a strong brand and products and they seem to be fucking up less than other acquisitions. Sometimes the companies' execs were literally just golf buddies and one just decided to help the other out of a bind. Sometimes they have no idea why the fuck they bought it or what to do with it, some moron at the top just thought "we need an X, we'll figure out what to do with it later". Sometimes
- yalogin 6y ago
  Give me an instance this kind of salvaging happened in tech. Tech and non tech differ a lot in this case, one cannot use the generic business pattern there. People run of tissues and every time they run out, they seize being a customer and are new customers in the market looking for a brand. That is when discounts, shiny packaging etc help. Tech is not that way. There is an enormous entrenchment with things like email and even news readers. Particularly in online services, People don’t switch, that is the reason why the biggest sites are so loathe to changing the smallest things on their pages. In the same vein, companies that go out of favor don’t ever come back. I am trying to think of examples of any that might have but am unable to. There are tons of brands that are either sold off as acquihires or just left for dead and ignored though.
evanelias 6y ago
> Are non tech companies really that foolish to think they can salvage a brand that was relevant 10 years ago and revive it? Apparently so. Or at least that's my distinct impression from working at a Yahoo subsidiary at the time of acquisition by Verizon. It appeared that Tim Armstrong had legitimately convinced the top Verizon execs that a combination of AOL + Yahoo would somehow create an advertising titan capable of competing with Google and Facebook. It's quite surprising that they went through with this, given that it's a pretty ludicrous notion: a single major brand/company comeback is challenging enough in tech, but the merger of two of them at once? There's no historical precedent for that succeeding, as far as I can think. Especially with a new name as objectively terrible as "Oath". Internally, morale was never good. It didn't help that Tim would send out weekly all-company emails that were, at best, a nonsensical word salad of business strategy jargon straight from HBO's Silicon Valley. Literally all of the Verizon execs who were involved with this calamity are long gone now, and Verizon's previous CEO retired in 2018. My impression is the new CEO basically just wants to focus on 5G and get rid of this mess of bad acquisitions.
utopcell 6y ago
Ahh.. retrospect prophets, the scarcest HN resource.

debacle 6y ago

With AOL and Yahoo and all the pieces, there was definitely a value play here. Verizon may just not have been the right company to execute that.

mfer 6y ago

Yahoo is still in wide use by people and AOL owns a number of properties and has a decent ad business. It may be that these companies were trying to extract value from them. This happens a decent amount these days. It's less about salvaging a brand.

devoutsalsa 6y ago
I still use Yahoo Finance. Not extensively, but I haven't found a site I like better for getting random stock quotes & sifting through lightweight financial information.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Yeah same. They have an API that is fairly consistent for stock stuff. If you're gonna do deep diligence there are better tools but for sniffing around, yeah they're good.
treesknees 6y ago
In the past few years I've come across several businesses (landscaping, home repairs, etc.) that have been communicating with me using Yahoo email addresses. Many people forget that Yahoo mail was the "Gmail" of its time, and many of those users are still around, especially non-tech oriented users and businesses who have no incentive to switch to anything else.
rootbear 6y ago
I still have a verizon.net email address (managed by AOL) that I use exclusively for sites that are likely to spam me. The torrent of political email I got at that address before the last election was amazing to behold.

comeonseriously 6y ago

Maybe all Verizon wanted were the names of the people who were signed up with Yahoo so they could glean all their ones and zeros as well as some cash selling them phone plans?

throwaway823882 6y ago

> Are non tech companies really that foolish to think they can salvage a brand that was relevant 10 years ago and revive it? Sure you can, though branding isn't the only way to make a successful business. Kleenex knock-offs thrive even though nobody ever says "please hand me the Generic Tissue Paper". Assuming there are professionals involved (not just rich techbros that have held on since founding) tech companies should be operated the same as non-tech companies. Build a good product, keep costs down, drive sales, put away cash, grow your market. Once AOL and Yahoo were acquired, it should have been possible to convert them into factories for generic content and services, and service many small brands. But you need an experienced executive and management class that can do this efficiently. It's much easier to turn an acquisition into an poorly-run independent cash cow, or plunder its IP and eliminate it. I've seen acquisitions go many ways. In some, the parent company may end up more like the acquisition because its business or product was more robust. Other times the point was to obtain some tech and absorb it into the parent company's products. Other times they just wanted a steady cash flow and a foothold into a new market. Sometimes they keep the acquisition fairly independent, because it already has a strong brand and products and they seem to be fucking up less than other acquisitions. Sometimes the companies' execs were literally just golf buddies and one just decided to help the other out of a bind. Sometimes they have no idea why the fuck they bought it or what to do with it, some moron at the top just thought "we need an X, we'll figure out what to do with it later". Sometimes

yalogin 6y ago
Give me an instance this kind of salvaging happened in tech. Tech and non tech differ a lot in this case, one cannot use the generic business pattern there. People run of tissues and every time they run out, they seize being a customer and are new customers in the market looking for a brand. That is when discounts, shiny packaging etc help. Tech is not that way. There is an enormous entrenchment with things like email and even news readers. Particularly in online services, People don’t switch, that is the reason why the biggest sites are so loathe to changing the smallest things on their pages. In the same vein, companies that go out of favor don’t ever come back. I am trying to think of examples of any that might have but am unable to. There are tons of brands that are either sold off as acquihires or just left for dead and ignored though.

evanelias 6y ago

> Are non tech companies really that foolish to think they can salvage a brand that was relevant 10 years ago and revive it? Apparently so. Or at least that's my distinct impression from working at a Yahoo subsidiary at the time of acquisition by Verizon. It appeared that Tim Armstrong had legitimately convinced the top Verizon execs that a combination of AOL + Yahoo would somehow create an advertising titan capable of competing with Google and Facebook. It's quite surprising that they went through with this, given that it's a pretty ludicrous notion: a single major brand/company comeback is challenging enough in tech, but the merger of two of them at once? There's no historical precedent for that succeeding, as far as I can think. Especially with a new name as objectively terrible as "Oath". Internally, morale was never good. It didn't help that Tim would send out weekly all-company emails that were, at best, a nonsensical word salad of business strategy jargon straight from HBO's Silicon Valley. Literally all of the Verizon execs who were involved with this calamity are long gone now, and Verizon's previous CEO retired in 2018. My impression is the new CEO basically just wants to focus on 5G and get rid of this mess of bad acquisitions.

utopcell 6y ago

Ahh.. retrospect prophets, the scarcest HN resource.