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Yahoo Preps Auction For 3,000 Patents Worth $1 Billion (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Wall Street Journal reports that bids are being accepted for nearly 3,000 Yahoo patents and pending applications. In April, Yahoo moved 2,659 patents into a patent-holding company called Excalibur IP LLC, which was seen as a first step toward a patent sale. "This represents a unique opportunity for companies operating in the Internet industry to acquire some of the most pioneering and foundational patents related to Web search and advertising," Yahoo said in a statement. Those invited to join the auction include "strategic buyers, private-equity firms, and investment firms focused on intellectual property," according to the Journal. Preliminary bids are due by the middle of this month, and the patents are expected to fetch more than $1 billion, according to "people familiar with the matter" who spoke to the Journal. Bloomberg, which also reported on the patent sale, said there was no official reserve price or bidding guidelines. Yesterday, Verizon submitted a $3 billion bid for Yahoo's core internet business. The sale will include 500 U.S. patents and more than 600 pending applications, but will not include the larger collection of patents going in the patent sale.
I'm definitely telling all of my friends/family who remain on Y!mail to get out of dodge.
Verizon and privacy (much like Verizon and security) are more like oil and water.
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Marissa Mayer is widely expected to stand down as CEO with any takeover deal and will leave with a severance package of around $110m.
Run a business into the ground and make $100 million? What a great scam.
Just remember Eastman-Kodak. Their patent portfolio was supposedly worth somewhere around $2B. They tried to sell it as a last ditch to save the company but their competitors joined up and kept the price down. They ended up getting only a tiny fraction of what they thought it was valued at and now there is effectively no more Eastman-Kodak. Granted, Yahoo isn't in nearly the predicament that Eastman-Kodak was, but it still may not be as lucrative as they think.
> does Yahoo seem to be dismantling their company piece by piece until nothing of value is left?
There's already not much of value left. 90% of Yahoo's value (market cap) is the Alibaba stock they own. Investing in Yahoo is just an indirect way of investing in Alibaba, with a small serving of "maybe Yahoo has some potential" on the side. Yahoo hasn't been doing well in their business, so the best course of action may well be to sell off assets to other companies who can manage them better. The other option may well be having the assets slowly rot under Yahoo's control.
The golden parachute makes sence for a failing company like Yahoo!. As a new leader to try to save a company is really hit or miss this isn't something most people would want to do. So the golden parashute covers the risk of failure and reputation. Sometimes company no matter how good the leadership will fail.
I have more issues with the Golden Parashute gave when the company it up and growing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Run a business into the ground and make $100 million? What a great scam.
Marissa Mayer did not run Yahoo into the ground. That had been accomplished before she ever arrived at the company. Frankly if anything she's done a fairly good job of mitigating the damage. Yahoo lost it's way a long time ago and has largely been coasting on previous accomplishments for the better part of a decade. I doubt anyone could have really fixed the problems Yahoo had. The best solution was always likely to be to sell the company. Anyone with a brain coming into a train wreck like Yahoo would have negotiated a severance package because why else would you bother taking on the job? The long term prospects of the company were poor and anyone with the chops to run the company would know it.
does Yahoo seem to be dismantling their company piece by piece until nothing of value is left?
Yahoo hasn't been in good shape for quite a while now. The only real assets the company had that were really worth much were the stake in Alibaba and some residual business from 10+ years ago when the company was still relevant. A sale of the company and it's assets, together or separately, was clearly the most likely outcome even before Marissa Mayer became CEO. That's the way things go sometimes. Most companies don't last forever and Yahoo is no exception. It will continue to exist as a portion of some other company or companies and nothing of value will be lost. Yahoo hasn't been well managed for a while. The dumbest thing their management ever did was declining the buyout offer from Microsoft for an absurd amount of money. (Conversely that might be the biggest bullet Microsoft ever dodged...)
Patents have no inherent value. You buy a patent because you intend to "monetize" the patent by developing a product or service that generates cash.
OR
You buy a patent for use as a legal weapon. The value of that patent is only relative to the potential legal costs of not holding the patent.
If these patents were worth $1 billion in either case - why wouldn't Yahoo hold on to them and develop them for the benefit of their shareholders?
The truth is they aren't worth this much - and Yahoo has FA ideas of how to monetize them.
Yahoo is an old car heading to the junkyard to be chopped up for parts.
Oracle is going to ... try some Scooby Doo-esque scheme to screw Google over.
"Zoinks!! Old Man Ellison!"
"And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadnt been for you pesky kids!"
I think many of these people serve on each other's boards and they make sure they are all mutually taken care of.