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Hows that working for Yahoo now? Pretty well, considering they are still around more than a decade after they stopped being "cool". They're not trendy in tech

by mehwoot 13y ago

Hows that working for Yahoo now? Pretty well, considering they are still around more than a decade after they stopped being "cool". They're not trendy in tech circles, they are just a business that makes money. Yahoo and Facebook are time-wasters... Time-wasters are basically unprofitable Yeah, unprofitable to the tune of $600 million a year. That's Yahoo's net profit last year. I swear to god, the blindness of people to anything that's not hip right now is amazing. People assume because they personally stopped caring about something that it must have failed.

hrjet 13y ago
IIRC, they were the top destination 15 years back. They were the default homepage in most browsers. From that spot to "just a business that makes money" is perhaps not the best thing to happen to them. At the same time, I don't think Yahoo is purely money-minded. From what I read, they were the only company which challenged the FISA orders last year (even before the Snowden leaks).
- vidarh 13y ago
  How many others of the top destinations from that era are still around? Look at Lycos. Excite. Altavista. Even the nominal survivors like AOL are largely shadows of their old selves. Frankly, it's fairly impressive that they've held out. Consider their starting point: Just a directory. The bubble in retrospect makes them look faded and tired, because they're "only" $36bn today. But $36bn is $36bn... And being "the default homepage" with an audience so much smaller was a much less impressive position to be in than their current reach.
teacup50 13y ago
$600 million? So they're doing a bit better than AOL, then.
wisty 13y ago
When I last heard, Yahoo seemed to have a net value of less than zero (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-17/is-yahoo-s-business-worth-less-than-nothing http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-17/is-yahoo-s-... ), once you exclude their minority stakes in alibaba and Yahoo Japan. That could just be investors / analysts being stupid (either the ones valuing alibaba too highly, or valuing Yahoo too low). But Yahoo doesn't make a ton of money off its core business. It's still quite possible for them to turn it around. They are really very good at what they, and they have the eyeballs.
- prostoalex 13y ago
  Since Alibaba doesn't pay them dividends, owning a share of it has no effect on profit & loss.
zimpenfish 13y ago
I can't find any links ("Yahoo finance 2013" is exceedingly useless) but wasn't that $600M partially/mostly from them selling off stakes in things like AliBaba and not from the core business?
- tanzam75 13y ago
  No. None of that $590 million came from the sale of Alibaba shares, as the Alibaba sale took place in 2012, not in 2013. In addition, $590 million is not Yahoo's net income, but their pretax income from operations. In other words, excluding Alibaba. Here's the breakdown for 2013, in thousands: Income from operations 589,926 Other income, net 43,357 ----------------------------------------- Provision for income taxes (153,392) Earnings in equity interests 896,675 ========================================= Net income 1,376,566 "Earnings in equity interests" is Alibaba. See 10-K at Yahoo's investor relations site: http://investor.yahoo.net/sec.cfm http://investor.yahoo.net/sec.cfm
  - zimpenfish 13y ago
    It appears that $80M of that $590M came from a one-off patent sale - which was the kind of thing I was talking about. That's a ~14% (artificial) boost in profit that takes them from "$65M down on 2012" (bad) to "$23M up on 2012" (adequate).
205guy 13y ago
Nobody jumped on your "time-waster" comment. I think that's an interesting concept. Is your startup a "time-waster" or a "time-saver"? 2 things about Yahoo: 1) I'm still paying for their email service, and have been for 10 years. Their UI redesigns have been horrendous at times, but email lockin is powerful. 2) I really don't think dominance on the internet should be expected or desired, just because its possible. There's an example below about Yahoo Japan "owning" auctions in Japan. Sure, eBay has cornered peer-to-peer non-local vending in the US (let's not kid oursevelves what "auctions-buy-now" really are), but why should they be the preferred platform in Japan? Yes the internet allows it, but in the end, for a variety of historic and social reasons, different companies will fill different niches in different places, even if the internet looks like one gigantic niche and place. In other words, there is very little benefit seen from dominating auctions in US and Japan. Sure a few people would be able to order items more easily across the Pacific, but that effect pales in comparison to other internal factors. Maybe some local website had a marketing deal with a popular franchise in a certain country and got more popular initially, and then dominated that local market by network effect. To summarize: I think it's normal to have local companies cornering local markets at the country/cultural level, even though the internet and e-commerce could theoretically be dominated globally. Google and search is a unique case, and expecting all companies to be like them in every market is misguided. I think that leaves a lot of space for Yahoo and many other similar companies to survive.

by mehwoot 13y ago

hrjet 13y ago

IIRC, they were the top destination 15 years back. They were the default homepage in most browsers. From that spot to "just a business that makes money" is perhaps not the best thing to happen to them. At the same time, I don't think Yahoo is purely money-minded. From what I read, they were the only company which challenged the FISA orders last year (even before the Snowden leaks).

vidarh 13y ago
How many others of the top destinations from that era are still around? Look at Lycos. Excite. Altavista. Even the nominal survivors like AOL are largely shadows of their old selves. Frankly, it's fairly impressive that they've held out. Consider their starting point: Just a directory. The bubble in retrospect makes them look faded and tired, because they're "only" $36bn today. But $36bn is $36bn... And being "the default homepage" with an audience so much smaller was a much less impressive position to be in than their current reach.

teacup50 13y ago

$600 million? So they're doing a bit better than AOL, then.

wisty 13y ago

When I last heard, Yahoo seemed to have a net value of less than zero (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-17/is-yahoo-s-business-worth-less-than-nothing http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-17/is-yahoo-s-... ), once you exclude their minority stakes in alibaba and Yahoo Japan. That could just be investors / analysts being stupid (either the ones valuing alibaba too highly, or valuing Yahoo too low). But Yahoo doesn't make a ton of money off its core business. It's still quite possible for them to turn it around. They are really very good at what they, and they have the eyeballs.

prostoalex 13y ago
Since Alibaba doesn't pay them dividends, owning a share of it has no effect on profit & loss.

zimpenfish 13y ago

I can't find any links ("Yahoo finance 2013" is exceedingly useless) but wasn't that $600M partially/mostly from them selling off stakes in things like AliBaba and not from the core business?

tanzam75 13y ago
No. None of that $590 million came from the sale of Alibaba shares, as the Alibaba sale took place in 2012, not in 2013. In addition, $590 million is not Yahoo's net income, but their pretax income from operations. In other words, excluding Alibaba. Here's the breakdown for 2013, in thousands: Income from operations 589,926 Other income, net 43,357 ----------------------------------------- Provision for income taxes (153,392) Earnings in equity interests 896,675 ========================================= Net income 1,376,566 "Earnings in equity interests" is Alibaba. See 10-K at Yahoo's investor relations site: http://investor.yahoo.net/sec.cfm http://investor.yahoo.net/sec.cfm
- zimpenfish 13y ago
  It appears that $80M of that $590M came from a one-off patent sale - which was the kind of thing I was talking about. That's a ~14% (artificial) boost in profit that takes them from "$65M down on 2012" (bad) to "$23M up on 2012" (adequate).

205guy 13y ago

Nobody jumped on your "time-waster" comment. I think that's an interesting concept. Is your startup a "time-waster" or a "time-saver"? 2 things about Yahoo: 1) I'm still paying for their email service, and have been for 10 years. Their UI redesigns have been horrendous at times, but email lockin is powerful. 2) I really don't think dominance on the internet should be expected or desired, just because its possible. There's an example below about Yahoo Japan "owning" auctions in Japan. Sure, eBay has cornered peer-to-peer non-local vending in the US (let's not kid oursevelves what "auctions-buy-now" really are), but why should they be the preferred platform in Japan? Yes the internet allows it, but in the end, for a variety of historic and social reasons, different companies will fill different niches in different places, even if the internet looks like one gigantic niche and place. In other words, there is very little benefit seen from dominating auctions in US and Japan. Sure a few people would be able to order items more easily across the Pacific, but that effect pales in comparison to other internal factors. Maybe some local website had a marketing deal with a popular franchise in a certain country and got more popular initially, and then dominated that local market by network effect. To summarize: I think it's normal to have local companies cornering local markets at the country/cultural level, even though the internet and e-commerce could theoretically be dominated globally. Google and search is a unique case, and expecting all companies to be like them in every market is misguided. I think that leaves a lot of space for Yahoo and many other similar companies to survive.