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Verizon To Submit Bid For Yahoo (thestack.com)

Posted by msmash on from the interest-in-Yahoo dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Sources close to the company have confirmed that Verizon will submit a first-round bid to purchase Yahoo's web business early next week, and that they may offer to take on Yahoo Japan as well. Time Inc. and Google are said to still be considering whether or not to make an offer, while AT&T, Comcast, and Microsoft have decided against entering a bid. Verizon's willingness to take on Yahoo Japan in the bid may give it a strategic advantage over other bidders. The combined value of Yahoo web and Yahoo Japan Corp. could put the value of the bid out of range for all but the largest investors, potentially putting interested private equity firms such as Bain or TPG out of the running.

11 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Can't make it any worse... by wardrich86 · · Score: 3, Informative

    They can't make it any worse than it already is... why bid for a sinking ship?

    1. Re:Can't make it any worse... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      That's a bet I wouldn't touch. I wouldn't trust Yahoo to strategize out of a paper bag; but sheer incompetence helps make any attempts at overt malice somewhat self limiting. Verizon, unfortunately, is amply evil and not bumbling enough to stop themselves.
      br> Plus, if anyone can outdo Yahoo's garish .com bubble era UI designs, it'd be the terrible human beings behind Verizon's flay-and-reskin phone UI work.

    2. Re:Can't make it any worse... by H3lldr0p · · Score: 2

      Because marketing.

      For their internet offerings, this makes some sense. Here is a company that has some (however you may feel about that) experience being a hub for the internet. Now it's your hub. It has a web advertisement arm, it has a lot of emails and tracking data to be mined and spit back up into your larger marketing apparatus, and you can use it to capture an audience through momentum (I don't want to move my email account. it's too much trouble!) as well as exclusive offerings (join now and get the first six episodes of SitCom online for free!).

      As for the rest, that can just be part of the slash and burn portion of the purchase. Wrote down, wrote off, and eventually turned off. No muss, no fuss, and who cares if some artists have been using it to promote their work for the better part of a decade? Not us! They were getting something for free that the rest of us pay for. Those dirty, socialist loving, teat-sucking, freeloaders. What did they ever do to make our lives better?

    3. Re:Can't make it any worse... by epiphani · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The Yahoo Japan comment is interesting. Yahoo Japan is completely separate from Yahoo Inc -- Yahoo Inc owns 34% of Yahoo Japan, Softbank (A Japanese conglomerate and major telco in Japan) owns 41%. It's a completely independent, publicly traded entity, of which Verizon wouldn't even be getting a controlling or even largest shareholder position in.

      It's an odd thing, sort of like saying "we'll buy your web, oh and also a really good investment position - we'd like that too".

      Yahoo Japan is valued at ~25B USD... and Yahoo Inc is valued at ~34B USD. That would suggest that without Yahoo's 31% stake of $8.5B in YJ, Yahoo Inc would be worth less than Yahoo Japan.

      It could very well be that Verizon is buying their Yahoo Japan position and taking their web business as part of the deal, rather than the other way around.

      --
      .
    4. Re:Can't make it any worse... by jetkust · · Score: 2

      Believe it or not, Yahoo is still ruining their website to this day.

  2. The 44.6 billion dollar question. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2

    Will the offer be more or less than 44.6 billion dollars.

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    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:The 44.6 billion dollar question. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2

      [Citation Provided]

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    2. Re:The 44.6 billion dollar question. by rahvin112 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Even if they get 5 billion they'll have gotten more money in the long run than the microsoft purchase. At the time Microsoft offered to purchase Yahoo, they still had all the shares of Alibaba, something that ended up being sold for right around 40 Billion and distributed to shareholders. By that measure alone the Microsoft deal was severely undervalued.

  3. I'm curious.... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm curious....what kind of head injuries do the people at Verizon have, anyway?

    It's like they all got together and said, "We have a shitload of money...how can we flush it down a toilet to best effect?"

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    1. Re:I'm curious.... by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

      Verizon wants to own web services they can zero-rate the data on.

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      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  4. No, because quality of service is no longer by waspleg · · Score: 2

    a priority. It's how many people can you harvest data from. Remember, Verizon is home of the Super Cookie. Now, most Yahoo users are using it because they're probably used to it (i.e. elderly) and/or they don't know how to change their default Firefox search.

    It's a whole new world of spying and tying that across the phone they might already have bugged means some more Google style multi-angle fuckery. It means they can set Yahoo as the default search on their phones and get ad revenue for the spying they're already doing too. It makes sense if you assume people are stupid (most are), the market has limited choices (it does), and you make more money from B2B than from your plebian "customers" who will *pay you* to be spied on.