Microsoft May Help Finance Yahoo Buyout, Says Report

Microsoft is in talks with equity firms that are considering making bids for purchasing Yahoo. The company says that it is willing to offer a significant financing for their efforts, reports Kara Swisher, who has a commendable track record. Swisher, however, adds that Microsoft is yet to make any commitments so far to investors. From her report at Recode: Microsoft wants to ensure that if Yahoo is sold, whoever buys it will be a good partner going forward. That makes sense, since Microsoft has close search and advertising ties with Yahoo, part of a longtime partnership. Many don't realize this but, Yahoo still has a number of web properties that are churning a lot of cash. According to web traffic monitoring website SimilarWeb, Yahoo website, for instance, alone is visited about 6.7 billion times every month. That's a lot of money in the advertising world. According to a report, Yahoo also recently got serious about advertising on Tumblr, one of the most popular blogging platforms. The company is considering a deal with Facebook to allow the social juggernaut to run ads on its network. Then we have popular photo storage and sharing service Flickr and also Yahoo's investment in Chinese technology conglomerate Alibaba. Although Yahoo has lost its "charm" over the years, it is still a pretty major company. For Microsoft, which has purchased a number of startups in the past two years, putting money in Yahoo could eventually turn out to be a great deal.

Comments

Great deal for who?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see Yahoo aging any better than they already have.

When Two Blinds Help Each Other

[Anonymous Coward]

...there must be a visionary outcome.

Or so the bozos think.

MSFT has a data structure in MFC which should correctly implemented be a hashtable. But these folks had no clue how to do this. VS2011 and later destroyed basic functions of the IDE. Yahoo runs an unusable search engine. They nicely fit into the same crapbin.

Still... Why?

[ausekilis]

It seems the only reason MSFT would do this would be for brand recognition and/or giving folks a shinier golden parachute.

I can count on zero hands the number of times I've been to Yahoo in the past decade.

Re:Still... Why?

[Gadget_Guy]

It seems the only reason MSFT would do this would be for brand recognition and/or giving folks a shinier golden parachute.

Maybe they don't want to see the collapse of such a well known player that could weaken confidence in the industry. Perhaps they want to ensure that Google doesn't buy Yahoo as they might prefer to compete with a number of smaller companies than a single, ever-growing giant. Or perhaps they are doing the same thing when they invested in Apple when everyone predicted that they company little chance of surviving (whoops; that backfired!).

If Microsoft needed the Yahoo brand recognition then they would buy the company itself rather than lend money to others to allow them to buy it. And I can't see them altruistically increasing another company's golden parachute.

I can count on zero hands the number of times I've been to Yahoo in the past decade.

So on one hand they get 6.7 billion visits a month, but on the other you haven't been visited there for a long time. What are we supposed to make of this? That the measure of any Internet company is whether you visit their sites?

NOOOO!!!!!

[mitcheli]

I feel a disturbance in the force.

But Hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill and his crew demonstrated how tactics of robber barons could be reapplied to the modern world. So thanks for this great contribution, Bill.

These days he is engaged with the NWO types, so maybe we can expect nastiness on a higher level...

Will cancel my Yahoo web hosting if MS buys ...

[UnknownSoldier]

I barely tolerate Yahoo "as is". I definitely move my web hosting off Yahoo if MS buys them.

Anyone got any good recommendations? (Require: Fast FTP, email aliases, just basic storage)

Re:Will cancel my Yahoo web hosting if MS buys ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about sticking your head even further up your ass?

Re:Will cancel my Yahoo web hosting if MS buys ...

[Just Some Guy]

IF - and I mean this, only if - you know what you're doing then check out NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. They're awesome hosting if you're able to do the setup on your own.

Re:Will cancel my Yahoo web hosting if MS buys ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's been years since they replaced their search engine with bing and changed the website layout to some Metro-like thing

Raspberry PI

[Anonymous Coward]

...behind your DSL Modem. DNS from afraid.org.

File exchange using ssh/scp.

Web server.

private chat server.

Private discussion forum, https-secured.

Show the middle one to the CreepCorps.

I don't get the Yahoo hate.

[LWATCDR]

I just don't get it. I still use the my.yahoo.com custom homepage now and then. Yahoo mail is fine but I moved most of my mail to gmail way back when. Yahoo sports is big.
I am pretty sure they are still making a profit so why do people seem to dislike them so?
And yes they used to run way too many ads.

Re:I don't get the Yahoo hate.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't hate something as silly as a portal or web site. But Yahoo was finished like AOL long ago. Its a part of the internet that is a relic of the past. I give both Yahoo and AOL credit fro trying to stay relevant. I know many people who still have email with one of them. Which is perfectly fine, lot's of people hate change and if it works for you why change? But the concept of a one site for all that's internet is long since past. Heck I still have some of those old AOL canisters around that came with the install CD for AOL Online. It did work well at one time, but now its much different. It might be good to shrink Yahoo into a bigger company and then maybe it could survive.

Re:I don't get the Yahoo hate.

[Dutch Gun]

I don't think it's "hate" so much as feelings ranging from "indifference" to "disdain" coming from the geek crowd. How to describe... I think these days Yahoo is sort of the Wal-Mart of the online world, except it works better if you imagine them as a sort of incompetent, once-successful-but-now-failing Wal-Mart. I'd be sort of embarrassed to have a yahoo.com e-mail address, because it announces to the world that you're not at least savvy enough to get a free gmail account.

I'm curious, why did you switch if Yahoo mail was "fine"? I'm betting if you think back, there was probably a good reason. When gmail was announced, most free online mail services were utter crap, with tiny storage capacities and attachment limits, unreliable spam filters, clunky interfaces, etc. Just like with search, it was actually Google that raised the bar tremendously. Personally, I'd never use a Yahoo e-mail simply for fear of their notoriously shaky security practices. E-mail is typically used to validate online accounts of all sorts, so from a security perspective, it's almost as important as my banking credentials.

Re:I don't get the Yahoo hate.

[LWATCDR]

Gmail was much better.
I actually have a gmail, yahoo, company, and outlook accounts. I like to try new stuff and frankly I was really interested in gmail when it came out and I got an invite so I used it.
I use my yahoo for throwaway accounts.
I use outlook for professional emails.
I use gmail now for friends and family.
I stopped using Yahoo a lot when they dropped the directory. I used to find it fun to drill down and find interesting websites. Sure now I can do a search but it is not interesting. For example if you search for Estes Model rockets you are not likely to find out about historical makers of model rockets like Centuri. I just went to the Yahoo page for the first time in years... Yea it has problems for sure. Too bad the old yahoo was a lot more interesting.

Re:I don't get the Yahoo hate.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope Yahoo! Mail sticks around. If they are bought up, I don't want to see major interface changes. I tend to like simplicity. Worst case scenario, I'll have to backup all my mail using a program, perhaps invest in a domain, and do my mail that way.

Would it be feasible to bring back the Directory with so many websites out there?

Re:I don't get the Yahoo hate.

[UnknownSoldier]

> I just don't get it.
That's because you don't manage multiple domains. Uploading files is D-O-G slow. I get ~130 Mb/s down, ~12 Mb/s up (bits) which is 16 MB/s down and 1 MB/s up (bytes) and it STILL takes ages to upload anything. Other sites upload wicked fast.

> Yahoo mail is fine
Maybe for you. But it blows for multiple reasons:

0. Ad spamfest
1. For the rest of us searching still sucks compared to Gmail. (Their Javascript rewrite was horrible for months: slow, crappy UI, etc.)
2. Their offline mail archive blows. Where the fuck is the ability to download ALL my mail FOLDERS + contents offline?? This may have changed recently -- I changed checked in years. For years they only offered folders via "mobile only" bullshit.
3. Gmail's UNDO is _awesome_.
4. You've never had to deal with all the spammers trying to hijack your account
5. You've never had to deal with technical support. Good luck even getting in touch with a live human to report an issue.
6. You've never had their mail system fail over without any explanation.

It this poll of 579 people is any indication, Yahoo sucks far more then Gmail or Hotmail.
* https://yahoomailreview.wordpr...

> why do people seem to dislike them so?
In addition to all the stuff mentioned above another reason is because of all the other bloated shit they throw on their "portal" page. I don't want nor need their crap. /Oblg. Yahoo vs Google Homepage
* http://i.imgur.com/kOjcHU5.gif

Back in the day they used to be good for custom domain + web hosting. Today they are overpriced.

Here's another opinion:
* http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/...

Re:I don't get the Yahoo hate.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pretty sure they are still making a profit so why do people seem to dislike them so?

It has a chick CEO.

Re:I don't get the Yahoo hate.

[LWATCDR]

"Would it be feasible to bring back the Directory with so many websites out there?"
Probably not.
In a way it is too bad. I like curation and it is something that I miss. I wonder what all the new sites are about. There not that many new sites for the subjects I am interested in.

UN DOOO yahoo

[__aanbvm4272]

How about undooing a few yahoo properties that they bought up and mismanaged, turned my "lifetime of upgrades" purchase of Musicmatch into another music company called eMusic and told me my "lifetime subscription" would need to be repurchased? Like hell. I bought winamp instead. I knew it would only be a matter of time before I will finally have to give up my yahoo email preference too. Dang anyone know of a good webhosting service overseas?

Re:UN DOOO yahoo

[Locke2005]

Did you also buy a "lifetime membership" in a health club, despite the well-known fact that all "lifetime membership" organizations change their name and invalidate all existing lifetime memberships every couple years, as a deliberate part of their business plan? Shame on you, my friend. Anybody that buys a "lifetime" subscription to anything on line knows in advance their access will only continue as long as there are other fools buying more subscriptions.

Well of course they will

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious to me this would eventually happen. It solidifies how both companies are so out of touch with users. We saw what Microsoft could do with MSN. So now let it totally kill off Yahoo too. Of course you do realize folks that Microsoft buys Yahoo it basically owns Mozilla and Firefox too? I am so glad I ditched Yahoo years ago before going through all the suffering it has over its recent past. Yahoo is a relic just like Microsoft so the two go together.

Kara Swisher, a "commendable track record"

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give this muckraker any credit. She's a purveyor of yellow journalism in the niche of tech insider news. She has an axe to grind (look up the KQED broadcast on women in tech in December and her backhanded congratulations on the birth of Mayer's twins), and her partner works at Google. Let her pass into irrelevance, unless you like watching her kick an old dog repeatedly. It's not a noble undertaking.

That would be the kiss of death

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Microsoft starts meddling you know that the target company is entering its death throes. With any luck (or lack thereof, depending on your point of view) Yahoo might end up becoming the Nokia of 2016.

Who The Fuck uses Yahoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. WTF. Yahoo is the modern replacement for AOL spurs. Nobody with knowledge uses Yahoo in any way.

Re:Who The Fuck uses Yahoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo has a mostly female demographic.

embrace/extinguish

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is a surprise?
Yahoo! jumped the shark 6 years ago... Making it ripe for A Micro$Slop acquisition. No, I do NOT own Micro$Slop or Bozoo!Hoo! stock.

Flickr

[Wowsers]

If Microsoft buys Yahoo, I'm closing my paid for Flickr account.

Microsoft Took Over a Looooong Time Ago

[mpapet]

Apparently someone from Microsoft's PR firm posted this "story." Yahoo owns Tumblr.

Remember this?
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Remember what happened next? New Board of Directors
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Who, just so happened made decisions where Microsoft was the winner. So, they went from a "meh" search company busy doing other stuff to "blech" re-wrapped Microsoft tech.

I think they are left with some kind of content generation things that are making money. Maybe fantasy sports or something? Microsoft is still hungry for Yahoo for some bizarre reason. More great decision making at Microsoft.