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I don't think Yahoo is going anywhere. No amount of celebrity CEO newspaper pieces will change the fact that Yahoo's has: - no valuable proprietary technology
by jval 14y ago
I don't think Yahoo is going anywhere.
No amount of celebrity CEO newspaper pieces will change the fact that Yahoo's has:
- no valuable proprietary technology
- no network effects with users
- no supply chain or scale/cost advantages; and
- a brand which is of waning value.
I'm still not sure why they sold their stake in Alibaba Group. In addition to Alibaba itself, the company has some great Chinese e-commerce assets in the form of Taobao and Tmall, and Yahoo could have been a great partner for a westward expansion. Maybe I'm being too ambitious here but I think that was probably the clearest shot they had at doing something which was sustainably profitable. Probably already out of Marissa's hands by the time she took over though.
- rorrr 14y agoPrecisely. When it comes to their search engine, Yahoo has a brand problem. They let Google take the lead, and now everyone says "let me google this". Nobody says "let me yahoo this". That's all. No matter how good Yahoo's search engine is, people aren't using it. They are not synonymous with search anymore. Yahoo slept through the mobile revolution - everyone has a mobile OS, except for them. Yahoo needs to get over this stigma and start working on other shit, just like Google does (self-driving cars, amazing ISP, google glass, biotech).
- rpm4321 14y agoMy impression was that they were pressured into selling off their shares of Alibaba in order to generate cash to buy off some activist shareholders with either a dividend or share buyback. Marissa then reconsidered after taking the helm, and they are now in a holding pattern.