Once Valued at $125B, Yahoo's Web Assets To Be Sold To Verizon For $4.83B, Companies Confirm

The reports were spot on. Verizon Communications on Monday announced that it plans to purchase Yahoo's Web assets for a sum of $4.83 billion in cash. The multi-billion dollars deal will get Verizon Yahoo's core internet business and some real estate. The announcement also marks a remarkable fall for the Silicon Valley web pioneer, which once had a market capitalization of more than $125 billion. For Verizon, the deal adds another piece to the mammoth digital media and advertising empire it owns. The deal is expected to close early 2017. CNBC reports: The transaction is seen boosting Verizon's AOL internet business, which the company acquired last year for $4.4 billion, by giving it access to Yahoo's advertising technology tools, as well as other assets such as search, mail, messenger and real estate. It also marks the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it only as the owner of a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, as well as its 15 percent interest in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. In December, Yahoo scrapped plans to spin off its Alibaba stake after investors worried about whether that transaction could have been carried out on a tax-free basis. It instead decided to explore a sale of its core assets, spurred on by activist hedge fund Starboard Value. Forbes has called it one of the "saddest $5B deals in tech history."Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who was expected to leave -- or get fired -- said she intends to stay. "For me personally, I'm planning to stay," Mayer said in a note on Yahoo's Tumblr page. "I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter."

Comments

Verizon is smart to do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing sweeter than those juicy Geocities page views. That's the crown jewel as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Verizon is smart to do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the Yahoo front page is made with the same aesthetic it is hard to separate them. Seems like a win/win for Verizon.

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo is fifteen year old irrelevant garbage. Their search engine is junk and just littered with ads. They aren't worth 4.3 thousand let alone billion. Their site looks like a 1998 Netscape demo.

Re:Verizon is smart to do this.

[Big Hairy Ian]

DAMNIT! And I was about to buy Yahoo for $5

Re:Verizon is smart to do this.

[GrumpySteen]

Found Joe the Plumber!

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[Hognoxious]

Ah. I'd assumed Verizon were getting paid to take them.

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[um... Lucas]

I'm actually worried about what will happen to Yahoo Finance and their free API - I imagine a LOT of sites draw from it in some way (I'm working on one as I write this for instance).

So, there definitely is some value in there.

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[UnknownSoldier]

^ This.

Proof:

Yahoo homepage vs Google homepage history

--
Slashtard / Redditard, noun, Someone too immature / ignorant / stupid to understand the down-vote is NOT "I disagree" but rather "this post adds nothing interesting to the discussion."

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[Karlt1]

Yahoo is still the 5th most visited site in the world....

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/...

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably by people wondering: Does yahoo still exists?

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[trabby]

The only thing worth using on yahoo is mail, which I suspect is where the traffic comes from.

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[fyngyrz]

The only thing worth using on yahoo is mail, which I suspect is where the traffic comes from

Flickr is all I'm concerned about. Other than that, Yahoo is valueless to me.

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo was irrelevant even back in 1996 - 20 years ago. Altavista had a super technology, and then google picked up in early 1999. Yahoo should have been on the chopping block ages ago

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[GTRacer]

It's worth noting that not everyone wants to search for everything. There was definitely a time and a place for curated news and lifestyle site sections. Being able to search in a literate fashion is likely the top needed computer skill for non-CS types, but after that, let people have fun!

Re: Verizon is smart to do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually worried about what will happen to Yahoo Finance and their free API - I imagine a LOT of sites draw from it in some way (I'm working on one as I write this for instance).

So, there definitely is some value in there.

That site is so horrendous. The data is terrible and if you try and use the forums to communicate it's 100% bots talking back and forth to each other.

Re:Verizon is smart to do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

lmfao

thats

[Anonymous Coward]

What female leadership brought us. Fiorena is a disaster, Hillary is one too.

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the phenomena you are trying to refer to is called the Glass Cliff. Although, we can argue whether or not the US is a sinking ship given that it is better shape than 7 years ago.

Re:thats

[GrumpySteen]

1) Fiorina has not declared bankruptcy.
2) HP did not declare bankruptcy under Fiorina.
3) Hillary Clinton has not had to declare bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Trump has had four bankruptcies and is the subject of multiple class action suits over the scam that was Trump University.

If the only choice is between a disaster that doesn't bankrupt the country and an apocalypse that does, I'll take the disaster.

Re:thats

[will_die]

Don't forget the lawsuits for Clinton university.
Also that the clintons were is so bad a financial shape that if they had any businesses or any source they personally created for income they would of had to plead bankruptcy, that is according to hillary.
Doesn't make the things about Trump false but since you have such a small window that you are judging the candidates on you might as well stop wearing blinders.

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump has never personally filed for bankruptcy only his businesses. Hillary Clinton does not own a business.

Re: thats

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm hoping this is a joke. Otherwise, this is why murcia is screwed. The country is going bankrupt. You think Clinton will stop it? How did bill do? Remember how the economy tanked while he was in office and the blame was on bush before he was even in office? Yeah, Hillary all the way. That's logical.

Re:thats

[Keick]

Fact is neither Clinton nor Trump have ever declared personal bankruptcy.

Yes at least 4 businesses owned/run by Donald Trump have filed bankruptcy, and likely a few more.

http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

But have you bothered to look up how many businesses Trump owns and/or runs? The answer is over 500. That's a whole lot of successes for relatively few failures. Even conservatively, 95% of his businesses were/are successful.

http://qz.com/461688/a-list-of...

So your choice is really; Some loud mouth bozo with a 95% success rate in running businesses of all types, or a useless puppet with not a single success in her life.

Re:thats

[Ol Olsoc]

1) Fiorina has not declared bankruptcy. 2) HP did not declare bankruptcy under Fiorina. 3) Hillary Clinton has not had to declare bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Trump has had four bankruptcies and is the subject of multiple class action suits over the scam that was Trump University.

If the only choice is between a disaster that doesn't bankrupt the country and an apocalypse that does, I'll take the disaster.

Agreed. It is the height of dumbshittedness for males to point to any female top executive that has failed or is failing and declare that is some sort of proof that females cannot lead or are otherwise unsuited because of their gender.

Certainly Yahoo's problems were well in place before Mayer ever showed up.

Fiorina is a bad CEO, as witnessed by her trying to make her way as a political candidate, where many of her traits that caused problems at HP have shown up, which is an inability to alter course or change her mind when given irrefutable proof that she is wrong. Which is not remotely a female trait - history is littered with men with the same issue.

And who would even know about Clinton? Once you have that last name, there are people who will attempt to use any infraction and amp it up, and take much worse actions performed by their preferred political leaders and outright ignore them. Interestingly enough, before she showed presidential aspirations, she was generally admired and dare we say liked by Republican colleagues. Now Behghazi is called the worst disaster ever, ignoring the orders of magnitude more embassy attacks and deaths during the first 8 years of this century, and what was at best a security violation now merits a call for imprisonment, the attack dogs just make it difficult to assess her actual performance.

But back to the subject, given that the vast number of bankruptcies and poor business management is performed by males, it probably isn't a good idea to point at Mayer and declare Yahoo's problems at base are because she is female.

Re:thats

[Big Hairy Ian]

Meanwhile, Trump has had four bankruptcies and is the subject of multiple class action suits over the scam that was Trump University.

Multiple is a bit of an understatement 3500 would be more accurate http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

Wasn't Bill Clinton raked over the coals by the Reps. for having just one!

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

This anti Trump astroturfing is really funny.
So some hand full of his ventures failed.
How many more didn't fail? And why shouldn't those companies declare bankruptcy? Should he just have continued to pump money into a failed company?
Of course not. He did the smart thing. He noticed it wasn't working and cut his losses. This is how business is supposed to work.

Re:thats

[lexman098]

What lawsuits? The "Clinton University" was (is?) basically a program where they get prominent people to speak at real universities. There's no tuition.

Trump University scammed people into paying tuition for what they though were going to be classes that would give them useful business skills. This is very similar to other for-profit university scams.

Re:thats

[fche]

Aw, a bankruptcy for a level of government (which is not the same thing as a country) is not that bad. The US has already gone bankrupt the moment it went off the gold standard, defaulting on those obligations.

Re:thats

[tsqr]

Meanwhile, Trump has had four bankruptcies and is the subject of multiple class action suits over the scam that was Trump University.

Multiple is a bit of an understatement 3500 would be more accurate http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

Wasn't Bill Clinton raked over the coals by the Reps. for having just one!

Of the 3500 lawsuits mentioned in the USA today article, Trump was the plaintiff in 1900 and the defendant in 1450. I say 'was' because the number of current open civil suits is 50.

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

3) Hillary Clinton has not had to declare bankruptcy.

Well, she waits to become president so she can bankrupt the whole US. That's going out with a bang!

Re:thats

[AmiMoJo]

But have you bothered to look up how many businesses Trump owns and/or runs? The answer is over 500.

"Owns" and "runs" are two very different things, as are "bought a going concern", "rescued a failing business" and "started something from scratch". If the ones that went bankrupt where the ones he started and ran personally, and the others were just ones he owns a stake in but doesn't have much to do with the day-to-day operation of...

I'm just sayin', I don't actually have the figures or anything.

It's also worth looking at the number of other transactions that have failed, like real-estate purchases that lost money or failed to deliver anything. His university seems like a massive scam too, which makes me think calling Hilary a crook is a bit rich, pardon the pun.

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

..Certainly Yahoo's problems were well in place before Mayer ever showed up.

True, but she didn't exactly help..
as to the sale, I was expecting it to be sold to Bobbie, for a nickel..

I am so disappointed.

Re:thats

[CaptainLard]

>But have you bothered to look up how many businesses Trump owns and/or runs? The answer is over 500. That's a whole lot of successes for relatively few failures. Even conservatively, 95% of his businesses were/are successful.

Interesting statistic. I'd like to see some further analysis done on it though (yeah I'm not going to be the one to do it). "trump" is a branding enterprise. I'd say that list has a very loose definition of "runs". You really think one person can run 500 businesses effectively? That's just enough time to tell each of them "gimme lower cost and MOAR profit" once a quarter. I'm qualified for that!

My guess is for 99% of it, trump probably walked into (or phoned into...yeah just realized he loves to literally phone it in) a room where *somehotel approached him about a marketing license and he gave a quick speil about "winner" and "luxury" and "best brain". His team took the initiative to draw up a contract listing trump as an executive and added the proverbial notch onto his belt and forgot about the whole thing until he needed stump speech material. The people actually running it are doing well enough that this plan has worked pretty well although I'd be surprised if he is worth 1/4 of what he claims, which is still a lot but also tells me all I need to know about him.

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you looked at that list? Its basically a list of real estate management companies that manage one building each. And how many of them does he actually "run" rather than just have his name on? All he has done is split up his liabilities so that if one messes up, it doesn't have enough cash to compensate for the pending law suit, goes bankrupt, and doesn't touch his other stuff.

Also, I doubt he owns controlling or majority share in any of these. Else one of those lawsuits would have leaked into his other holdings.

Splitting them up like that is smart and sadly supported by the US legal system. But that is basically a cop out of "social responsibility". Imagine you run a retail store, but each type of product that you have on the shelf is actually owned by a partially owned subsidiary. If one of those products is in a lawsuit and it doesn't fall to the maker, then it will liquidate the product sub and you continue on as before. Make a new sub that continues buying from maker and renting onto your shelf space.

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

As a business leader, going bankrupt is not necessarily a bad thing. Bankruptcy laws is what makes America great, it allows inefficient assets, to become efficient assets again. This is the major difference between e.g. US and Japan. Japan almost no one goes bankrupt and look at what has happened. Massive debt, inefficient conglomerates, etc.

When you allow for bankruptcies, that allows people to take risk, and let's face it if people weren't taking risks, then much of society/technology would simply remain static.

Re:thats

[Karlt1]

According to most analysis, if Trump had just put the money he got from his father in an S&P 500 Index fund, he would have seen greater returns.

http://www.moneytalksnews.com/...

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

According to that very link, Trump could've retired in 1982. Maybe. But he actually worked since 1962, so simply living off of the daddy's inheritance would not have made him who he is.

And even if it did, some other flaw would've been found by the careful "opposition researchers", who did such a great job on Mitt Romney, for example. "Mittens", you may recall, donated his entire inheritance to charity — and made his own fortune himself...

Re:thats

[operagost]

3) Hillary Clinton has not had to declare bankruptcy.

No, instead she just stuck other people with the failure of Whitewater.

She also bought cattle futures under an unlawfully large margin, although she could probably claim ignorance on that. Wouldn't we all like to have a buddy who would do that for us, though?

Re: thats

[fyngyrz]

Earlier. Silver certificates.

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm not a fan of Trump but that's bullshit. Somebody has to receive the money in those funds and actually do something with it, or the "greater returns" will not correspond to any actual value and just devalue the currency and the work (by redistributing the resulting value among people who did not actually contribute anything to it but resource-juggling).

So he made other people more "money" than himself. Of all the things you can blame him for---and there is no shortage of them---that seems to be the least problematic.

Re:thats

[tnk1]

So, I'm not planning on voting for Trump and would prefer that no one did, but I'd have to ask, of those businesses that Trump went bankrupt on, perhaps all four of them were phone-ins too?

The business world does have ups and downs, and if you're a major player you're going to have them. Even Warren Buffett has the occasional bankruptcy in one or two of his holdings.

So, I think I agree that using something like the four bankruptcies (which in this case were Chapter 11 reorganizations, not liquidations), against Trump is magnifying a certain expected level of failure or error into a big deal. If he really does have 500 investments, then is four bankruptcies actually a big deal?

I actually think Trump needs to be taken very seriously as someone who knows exactly what they are doing, and I'd probably vote for Clinton if I didn't think she'd only make the problem worse. And that's a big deal, because I think the Democratic party platform is divisive and pandering, just like the Republican party platform, they just have fewer rednecks. Electing her is going to keep the pressure cooker from exploding one more term or two, but that just means the explosion is going to be even greater when she's done. She has nothing to help with this current situation, and the DNC mails only show the level of tone-deafness that her and the rest of the Democratic party are experiencing.

Re:thats

[tnk1]

3) Hillary Clinton has not had to declare bankruptcy

That's like saying that I've never declared bankruptcy. I haven't, but I've never actually run a major business, and neither has she.

And Fiorina, while probably preferable to Trump, was someone who thought that losing a Senatorial election meant that now she was qualified to run for a Presidential contest as well. It was like she had this script in her head about

1. Run HP successfully
2. Win Senate Election
3. Become President

And no one bothered to mention to her that she hadn't actually accomplished either of the first two steps before trying the third one.

Re: thats

[Anonymous Coward]

Earlier. When they gave away all those good mirrors and booze in exchange for furs.

Re:thats

[Woldscum]

or a useless puppet with not a single success in her life.

No. She did manage to get fired from the Watergate investigation for gross incompetence. Also to marry a successful man to pull her career along. To be fair.

Re:thats

[StikyPad]

If your "university" courses are all about pitching the next level course where the *real* secrets are, at a higher fee, you may be enrolled in a scam. Actually, if it alleges to sell secrets at all.

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

If your "university" courses are all about pitching the next level course where the *real* secrets are, at a higher fee, you may be enrolled in a scam. Actually, if it alleges to sell secrets at all.

Actually, it may be a tax-exempt religion... Hmm...

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

which makes me think calling Hilary a crook is a bit rich...

False dichotomy. They both can (and probably are) crooks...

Re:thats

[Anonymous Coward]

>bankruptcy

From one business owner to another, bankruptcy is just another 'financial tool' to be used in certain situations.

But to regular household citizens a bankruptcy is a blight on one's life. One takes a direct hit financially, reputationally, and professionally. It is not absorbed by LLCs, shells, and such. So when Joe Q. Public hears someone has been bankrupt more than once? Shame on them! Such irresponsible gamblers and clumsy wolves they must be!

Re:thats

[david_thornley]

In business, bankruptcy isn't just another tool. It's a way to screw people over, to get out of inconvenient obligations, and leave lots of people asking where their money went.

Re:thats

[david_thornley]

I'm not an anti-Trump astroturfer. I'm anti-Trump for my own reasons and don't charge a penny for it. He'd be a disaster if elected to public office.

Re:thats

[david_thornley]

You know which President as far back as I can remember (and that's a long time, sonny, now get off my lawn) got an actual balanced budget? Some guy named Clinton. If we're talking about keeping the US solvent, I favor Clintons.

Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[bloodhawk]

I don't think much of Verizon but I would be fucking shocked if Meyers arse isn't on the sidewalk 10 seconds after it goes through. Yahoo was on its way down, but she put the peddle to the floor and accelerated it into oblivion.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is SOP for the CEO of an acquired company to stick around for about 18 months to ease the transition. It would be a really bad sign if she wasn't planning to stick around. The kind of sign that would hurt verizon's share price.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Jahta]

"For me personally, I'm planning to stay," Mayer said in a note on Yahoo's Tumblr page. "I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter."

Presumably she means Chapter 11.

Re: Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the participation trophy CEO will be just fine. All the people who actually work there whose lives got ruined are another story but in the US workers are irrelevant anyway to most people including other workers.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[bloodhawk]

Far better to take the pain and cauterize the wound than let the gangrene spread further.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shave your neckbeard or you're getting kicked out of the basement.

-Mom

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Bearhouse]

You're right, she should go, having added no value. But I'm sure she negotiated a sweet deal with stakeholders as part of the overall package.
(BTW, this is not an anti-fem rant; plenty of good female and bad male bosses out there, and while I'm here let me extend a hearty "fuck you" to all the SJWs trying to ruin /.)
Back on topic, quite what she means by "It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter..." one can only speculate.
Selling the remaining minority interests they have? That'll be done by the bankers, my dear, they don't need you.
Talking of banks, she's crying all the way to one:
Salary $117 million over 5 years; $36.6 million for first six months.
Net worth US$500 million

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[cdrudge]

If you quit, do you still get your golden parachute? Or is that only available if you're forced out?

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Diss Champ]

Depends on the parachute, but it isn't unusual as part of the deal that if the board wants one sticks around exactly as long as desired and then acts like one left of ones own free will.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[rmdingler]

Yeah, she probably has a picture of Michael Milken on a shrine somewhere, but to be fair, there's no difference between the deal she gets and the the deal the CEO always gets.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. You are such a retard. Yahoo was in the shitter long before she showed up. Her failure to bail out a ship that had been sinking for over a decade means nothing more than she took on a herculean task beyond her ability.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[StormReaver]

She will stay exactly long enough for her golden parachute to deploy, then she will D.B. Cooper the place.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real failure here is Yahoo's board of directors. They should've seen the wiring on the wall and hired a CEO to either sell-off or streamline the operating business from the start. Not only did Yahoo employ way too many people relative to its output, but the company's most popular sites and services languished. If you eliminated the bullshit, there was probably a good and profitable business there -- but that would require large layoffs and a more humble management. People at the C- and board-level seem to prefer empire building to winding things down, even if the latter is more beneficial to shareholders.

Instead, the board hired Meyer, failed to reign her in as she spent billions of dollars on mickey mouse acquisitions, and presided over significant destruction of shareholder value.

Still, this is a good case study in mediocre corporate governance and provides another reason why investing in so-called Silicon Valley "technology" companies can really bite you in the ass.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

She is sticking around as the resident idiot, collecting a huge compensation for doing nothing much.

Re: Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the break peddle?

Re: Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[tsqr]

You mean the break peddle?

More likely "brake pedal". Unless you mean "break the company, then peddle it to somebody."

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[AmiMoJo]

(BTW, this is not an anti-fem rant; plenty of good female and bad male bosses out there, and while I'm here let me extend a hearty "fuck you" to all the SJWs trying to ruin /.)

Don't drink the kool aid, there is no need to preemptively defend yourself. You aren't under attack and the only people who might post something nasty are MRAs and other assorted trolls who are trying to create another fake victim.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Alomex]

Yahoo was on its way down, but she put the peddle to the floor and accelerated it into oblivion.

She didn't do any worse than the previous four CEOs to be honest.

Re: Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[jittles]

I'm sure the participation trophy CEO will be just fine. All the people who actually work there whose lives got ruined are another story but in the US workers are irrelevant anyway to most people including other workers.

She probably worked something into the sale that gives her a guaranteed position at the company for a fixed term. This is very common, I have never seen a company acquired without such a deal for the executives who wanted it. And it's a pretty cushy gig, too. You get paid to watch someone else run the company while you cash checks.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. You are such a retard. Yahoo was in the shitter long before she showed up...

So, are you saying she hadn't actively contributed to the increasingly rapid demise of Yahoo? if so, you'd better read more of the business reports on the consequences of her actions there.

...Her failure to bail out a ship that had been sinking for over a decade means nothing more than she took on a herculean task beyond her ability.

Here's a thing, I get approached to do a job, I look at the job spec, go, either "ok, I'll do it" or "WTF?, no way!" and don't take it on, and, yes, I've had to do this on numerous occasions over a 30odd year career in IT, as an example, turning down the opportunity to set up an entire country's networking infrastructure was a hard one, apart from the cachet aspect, it also meant turning down a seriously impressive relocation package with a requisitely massive 'upwardly mobile' change in lifestyle (plus future share options..), all you really need to know about why I eventually turned that one down is that the country's late leader was a bit of an unstable fraggle...and I have a bit of a 'nut' allergy.

'A man's got to know his limitations..' a phrase which will never be made 'gender neutral'

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

She's bad, but she's no Carly Fiorina.

Re: Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the break peddle?

More likely "brake pedal". Unless you mean "break the company, then peddle it to somebody."

No, more likely
'brake paddle'
Intended Use: to retard further forward progress when up the 'brown' creek..
(Normally people lose this, hence the popular phrase..)

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Retard this ... It's one thing to board a sinking ship with the idea to keep it from sinking, it's another to board the ship and poke more holes in her hull.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

say what you want about Meyer, but dressing up Yahoo for eventual turnover is beyond anyone's abilities.

she managed to sell something with negative value for $5 billion! that's pretty good!

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[bloodhawk]

Lol. You are such a retard. Yahoo was in the shitter long before she showed up. Her failure to bail out a ship that had been sinking for over a decade means nothing more than she took on a herculean task beyond her ability.

Yes it was in the shitter, That is why they hired her for an insane amount of money to pull it out of the shitter. She failed completely and utterly.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

She was hired at a huge salary which was justified by the fact she was coming in to turn Yahoo around. When you are on a 7 figure salary and fail at what you were hired to do you have to expect considerable flack, what is being said here will be coming at her a 100 times worse from the shareholders who are paying her overinflated salary while she underperformed.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[Anonymous Coward]

While yahoo online services may suck, they still have a considerable user base and those users are what is worth money even if their tech is complete shit. As such $5 billion is really quite terrible and values the service as basically ZERO. users are gold, companies pay a premium to get them even when the services behind are complete shit.

Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying?

[david_thornley]

A seven-figure salary for a company that big is huge?

Marissa Mayer threatens to stay

[Anonymous Coward]

See Yahoo into its next chapter. 11?

Have you seen her tight body?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you think she got this and the Google jobs? Those sweet lips ain't going nowhere.

Re:Have you seen her tight body?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the feminists win, and all leaders are female, the tongue will become a more important part of her body. But now its only the lips.

Re:Have you seen her tight body?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the feminists win, and all leaders are female, the tongue will become a more important part of her body.

Once the feminists win, and all leaders are female, the tongue will become the most important part of the male body.

wait, what?

[ihtoit]

Where did Verizon find 5 billion in *cash*?? Inside the mattress??

Re:wait, what?

[guruevi]

They just hiked rates on their plans and are kicking their less profitable customers out. They haven't invested in new technology or speed increases for decades only begrudgingly implementing 3G speeds and then marketing it as 4G.

Re:wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem with today's global economy - cash hoarding by the largest corporations. Threatened with tax bills of gargantuan proportions, they cannot move cash around the world where it can be used effectively, so they are just sitting on it, waiting for a more favorable tax environment to come around.

Companies can facilitate transactions like this within one nation since they've already paid the taxes on that income. But, for example, if Verizon wanted to move $5B in cash from one of its entities in another country to the US, they would have to pay an enormous tax bill on the repatriation of that cash, and this is on top of whatever taxes they paid in the host nation.

Populists have moved in across the globe and instituted these catastrophic tax policies "for the little people" who all lose their jobs when their employers can't move the money into the country to pay them with. And, if we elect someone like Trump, it is only going to get worse as he'll immediately start a global trade and tariff war. Same would have happened under Sanders.

Clinton is probably the only candidate that actually understands how a global economy works, but I doubt she is one to relax these laws because she is a socialist and still wants to take the money to create more dependence.

The world is fucked.

Re: wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. What you meant to say is that corporations might actually have to pay taxes to the nation that enables them to work internationally in the first place. We guard their overseas assets with our military, threaten any leaders of countries who think their assets should benefit their people, and generally allow them to externalize costs and internalize profits.

Corporations need to be made to behave and pay their own expenses. That they're not being made to is why the world is fucked.

Re: wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cash rich companies can move cash when they want to by borrowing, as Apple has done to buy back stock and pay dividends. The interest on the bonds is offset by Interest earned on the cash held elsewhere, so the cost of doing this is modest.

Re:wait, what?

[LWATCDR]

Yea... no.
Besides you act as if the US is the only nation. It will not matter if the US allows it if other nations don't since it is between nations.

Re:wait, what?

[Fire_Wraith]

They found it in your data caps and overage fees, naturally. Where else would a telecom company go to for cash?

Re: wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guide to move cash around the world for big businesses:
1. Create offshore shell company
2. Sell IP like patents to that shell company for pennies.
3. Pay taxes on those pennies earned.
4. Pay billions in royalties to the shell company
5. Profit.

Re:wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think they are raising all their plans by 5 bucks or more next month?

Re:wait, what?

[MikeDataLink]

They sold their FiOS business to Frontier Communications for billions.

Re: wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cash is not an asset to acquire, it is a commodity to be created. It's supply is infinite, controlled by a few select gate keepers.

Re:wait, what?

[k6mfw]

It's an expression like "film at 11" even though news stations haven't done film in decades. However, $5B in actual cash is a huge volume, a lot more than a mattress. I'm thinking the book by Bernie Rhodes "DB Cooper, the Real McCoy" talking about Richard McCoy who hijacked, jumped with $500K from a 727 but was caught few days later. His M.O. was very similar to the previous hijack by "Dan Cooper." When Richard arrived home he found it quite difficult to hide $500K, not much time to dig a deep hole or find someplace in the house to make it hard to find that large about of cash.

Speaking of mattresses, on subject of banks getting hacked, someone posted, "I bank with Sealy Posturepedic."

Re: wait, what?

[ihtoit]

no, money is infinite, it's generated and stored as numbers on an electronic ledger. Cash is the foldy stuff.

Re:wait, what?

[ihtoit]

mod this guy hysterical, Sealy mattresses are a foot and a half thick!

Re:wait, what?

[samwichse]

They probably financed with that bullshit forced sale of another router email they sent out last week. "Buy a new garbage router from us, or we'll start tacking on a monthly fee for the privilege of continuing to pass through our old one to your actual, good router."

Fuck you, Verizon.

Marissa Mayer can't leave

[guruevi]

Mayer has made herself unemployable by running this company further into the ground. Obviously she is going to stay until someone gives her enough money to quit, where else would she go? Perhaps a bid for republican nomi... oh...

Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Yahoo have always been a waste of money. The CEO will get a fucking massive payoff, and be picked up by another virtual commodity business to repeat the cycle. Some CEOs raison d'etre is to manage obscenely overpriced corps through their asset stripping demise, while allowing the primary shareholder to discretely dump their stock while capitalising on the sold assets.

Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave

[guruevi]

Yahoo went the other way, they got fatter by buying 50+ startup companies and trying to fold them into Yahoo (Tumblr for 1B)

Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave

[Mashiki]

Twitter should be the next one to watch. They've only got around $550m in assets and just blew $200m on a tech company to fold into theirs, that of course led to a very small stock bump of around $1.25/share, which is already declining. Keep in mind they're burning through around $125m yearly in losses. Anyone want to take a bet who will buy them up? I can't think of any company that would, especially with the self-imposed trashing of their own brand they've been going on for the last year.

Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave

[Malc]

She's made millions and doesn't need to work. Perhaps she could go and work on being a positive parenting role model instead?

Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point, why does anyone own Twitter? Given the entire universe of public companies, and Twitter's mediocre underlying business, why put your dollars there, or hold onto any existing shares? This chart says it all: management, aided and abetted by the board, continues to dilute shareholders by issuing more shares, probably as stock-based comp which isn't transparently called an expense in filings. https://ycharts.com/companies/TWTR/shares_outstanding

It'll be good for the Bay Area and equities markets when this bubbly bullshit goes away -- until the next bubble starts, anyway.

Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave

[Lost Race]

I'll put a dollar on NewsCorp buying them. The infotainment industry loves the shit out of Twitter.

CEO Marissa Mayer intends to stay

[Anonymous Coward]

She doesn't want a golden parachute, but a golden slide.

Re:CEO Marissa Mayer intends to stay

[Anonymous Coward]

She doesn't want a golden parachute, but a golden slide.

Golden teleporter
As is usual with these 'manglement' types, she'll want to move immediately and magically from one success to forging another in a similar/higher profile position,

Selling for $5B is sexist

[Trachman]

Selling for $5B is sexist.

A new law is required, which says that if CEO is a woman, and a sale occurs at a loss, a loss should be subsidized by the taxpayers. We are subsidizing Obamacare for almost everyone.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[drinkypoo]

We are subsidizing Obamacare for almost everyone.

The middle class (taxpayers) are subsidizing Obamacare for the poor, while the rich are opting out because they can afford to. Which is why over 10% still haven't signed up. They're part of the middle class, and they can afford rent or insurance but not both.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[110010001000]

Wow! A whole 10%! What a disaster...oh by the way, you were subsidizing the poors healthcare anyway. Where do you think it came from? The magic fairy tree?

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

Say, what? Are you a European, or something?

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! A whole 10%! What a disaster...oh by the way, you were subsidizing the poors healthcare anyway. Where do you think it came from? The magic fairy tree?

Yep.

Obamacare is great.

It's failure (how many exchanges have NOT gone broke?) is demonstrating to a new generation of voters that the US government is hopelessly inept and corrupt.

Thus letting them know that giving it even more money and more power is BAD idea.

Or do you really think you can rail at the TSA, excoriate spying against everyone, and yet pine for single-payer and not be an incoherent fool?

Re: Selling for $5B is sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

herpa trump derp

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

Emergency rooms in the US can't deny medical care. Therefor hospitals jack up the price for paying customers to compensate.

One way or another you're subsidizing the poor.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Ol Olsoc]

Wow! A whole 10%! What a disaster...oh by the way, you were subsidizing the poors healthcare anyway. Where do you think it came from? The magic fairy tree?

For all of the bluff and bluster of the anti-Romneycare folks, the USA was in a positive feedback loop of the poorest using emergency rooms as basic healthcare - the most expensive healthcare in the world. The costs were passed up the foodchain, and as you note, subsidized by us via larger insurance premiums. What was happening was as the premiums were increasing the people who were increasingly unable to afford healthcare was increasing, which was moving more to the emergency room model of healthcare, which was then charged upwards .......

The health insurance system in use was going to die in a few years, and we would have ended up with the weirdest Universal healthcare system imaginable.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason most of the healthcare costs are the way they are because of what we used to lovingly call hillarycare. Mandated health insurance changed the dynamic of who paid and what was paid. A visit that would cost 50-100 bucks can now cost upwards of 1500 dollars. Why? Insurance pays. I still only pay 50 dollars 'out of pocket' (their words) meanwhile those who do not get the luxury of insurance try to negotiate 1500 dollars down. It is truly the tragedy of the commons. The big white elephant in the room no one wants to look at is that gov interference in mandating this stuff made the problem MUCH worse.

What was happening was as the premiums were increasing the people who were increasingly unable to afford healthcare was increasing
My healthcare costs have gone from ~2-3k a year to ~15k a year. That is with 0 medical issues. That is 100% insurance. I know I am not alone. The AHA was a giant love letter to the insurance companies. They are now finding 'oh wait that was not such a good thing for us'. All but one of the large insurance companies have dropped out. Leaving very little choice.

The 'new' system is not much better than the old. Anyone who tells you different is mighty fine on 'derp de derp the poor' and ignoring everyone else.

There is only one proven method to lowering costs on anything. That is to squeeze out the margin. That means lots of companies providing and a transparent playing field of costs. Instead we have consolidation and costs that are hidden from the public. Both recipes for monopoly behavior and costs. Both of which screw the poor even harder.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Ol Olsoc]

The reason most of the healthcare costs are the way they are because of what we used to lovingly call hillarycare.

Jeebuz christa on a pogo stick. Your post is just like people blaming President Obama for world war 2 Thanks for playing, I have no need to read any posts that blame the healthcare Issues on a person who didn't have a gaddamned thing to do with them.

Now get bact to infowars, because next you'll tell us that the Clintons, th eO'bamas, and FDR have time machine where they go back in time to make certain things are all fucked up

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[operagost]

And... how is it doing now? The poorest people I know are still getting no health care for themselves-- their employers give them fewer than 33 hours so that they don't have to subsidize it-- and you can't pay for even the cheapest plans on $30,000. At least their kids are on CHIP.

Obamacare has been given enough time to have results, and all it's done is tax the middle and lower class. Obamacare is a failure.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Ol Olsoc]

And... how is it doing now? The poorest people I know are still getting no health care for themselves-- their employers give them fewer than 33 hours so that they don't have to subsidize it-- and you can't pay for even the cheapest plans on $30,000. At least their kids are on CHIP.

Obamacare has been given enough time to have results, and all it's done is tax the middle and lower class. Obamacare is a failure.

First off, there is no doubt that Obamacare sucks. Then you have to ask yourself why.

It's a bastardized system, this Romneycare, that tries to apply greed to a system that shouldn't be run by greed.

Any system that requires profit via healthcare is doomed to failure by it's very nature. When you need higher profits the next quarter, and when you can profit largely be making expenditures go away, it simply isn't going to work.

I'm a firm believer that there are some things in this world that show how unbridled greed makes them run well. And I believe that the US healthcare system is starting to show that we are the big powerful nation that can't. - any more. The profit model doesn't work so weell in matters of life and death.

So under our healthcare, and especially under the way it was heading, the adage of "die quickly" wasn't anything other than the profit model, as when people die off before they can extract money from the system, the system profits. As much as some opponents of that pejorative might have bristled, it is a path to profit.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...the poorest using emergency rooms as basic healthcare - the most expensive healthcare in the world.

TRUE! Here we are in the emergency room, my wife had fallen & hurt her back- and cannot feel her legs and is incontinent. We're talking spinal injury here. Who gets to go before us? Little Jimmy being coached by mom to cough, so they can 'get some sort of physical' needed by the next morning at school. The cough was to legitimize their visit. Yeah we were there 8 hrs, and the spinal operation is forthcoming but thank god Jimmy got some Robotussen and a clean bill of health for school.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[kaatochacha]

Greed is OK if funneled correctly and controlled. Greed is understandable and direct.
In fact, simple greed works better than than altruism, as altruism is often just uncontrolled greed masquerading as goodness.

For example, who would you trust more: the guy who offers to mow your lawn for $20, or the guy who tells you he'll do it because "he just wants to help".
Without knowing either person, you'd trust the $20 guy more. His motivation is obvious.

Keep in mind I said Controlled. Uncontrolled greed is a blight.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[david_thornley]

Also, due to political pressure, the ACA was set up to not allow downward pressure on the profits of insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies. I don't think that it's the profit model that's at fault here, since we've all got to allocate resources somehow, it's the looting model that sucks.

Re:Selling for $5B is sexist

[Ol Olsoc]

> ...the poorest using emergency rooms as basic healthcare - the most expensive healthcare in the world.

TRUE! Here we are in the emergency room, my wife had fallen & hurt her back- and cannot feel her legs and is incontinent. We're talking spinal injury here. Who gets to go before us? Little Jimmy being coached by mom to cough, so they can 'get some sort of physical' needed by the next morning at school. The cough was to legitimize their visit. Yeah we were there 8 hrs, and the spinal operation is forthcoming but thank god Jimmy got some Robotussen and a clean bill of health for school.

> ...the poorest using emergency rooms as basic healthcare - the most expensive healthcare in the world.

TRUE! Here we are in the emergency room, my wife had fallen & hurt her back- and cannot feel her legs and is incontinent. We're talking spinal injury here. Who gets to go before us? Little Jimmy being coached by mom to cough, so they can 'get some sort of physical' needed by the next morning at school. The cough was to legitimize their visit. Yeah we were there 8 hrs, and the spinal operation is forthcoming but thank god Jimmy got some Robotussen and a clean bill of health for school.

During the runup to my father's death, we had the experience of a few visits to the ER. And yes, there were people there who were not suffering from anything a general practitioner couldn't provide. But as the doctor said when I queried him - "There are no other choices for them." No doubt we all want our loved ones to receive the best of treatment and as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, to extremely loosely paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: "You Use the Healthcare You Have---not The Healthcare You Might Want Or Wish To Have At A Later Time."

When Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor act in 1986 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... it mandated just that. It is one of th dlargest unfunded mandates I know of. And I don't see much possibility of the faithful going against the mandates of their patron saint.

looking up #'s do lie on alphabet.com

[Anonymous Coward]

wmd starvation & deception remain as leading killers of us... cease fire stand down,there's moms & babys in all of our towns,, the little ones like it/us quiet.. that's the spirit.. thanks again...

Next chapter

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter."

I guess she means Chapter 11...

Mall shooting in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

What Germany needs is common-sense gun control, an assault-style weapons ban and for the 2nd amendment to be repealed. Get the guns off the streets. Tell those conservative repukianz Germans that they don't need their metal dicks to feel safe. White men in Germany should be pretty ashamed of their gun culture.

Re:Mall shooting in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this anonymous coward is trying to be ironic. It's hard to tell on slashdot sometimes.

Murder rate in Germany is 0.86 murders per 10,000, while in America it is 5 per 10,000; so whatever Germany is doing in the way of gun control: it seems to be working.
(http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Murder-rate )

Re:Mall shooting in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany needs mall control. It's their own fault. If they didn't have malls, no one would have been shot at the mall.

Think of the deck hands

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you.

Ah, the old "take their eyes off the ball" trick. Don't look the Captain as the ship goes down -- think of all the deck hands who worked so hard.

Verizon slogan

[110010001000]

The new Verizon slogan: we give you the 1990s Internet. #blinktag #dialup

been using yahoo mail since inception

[Anonymous Coward]

Rats. Now I will most likely have to switch. Based on my regular interactions with Verizon, I have very high confidence they will LEC the performance of the mail infrastructure.

Re:been using yahoo mail since inception

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Verizon already outsourced some of their stuff to Yahoo! before this.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28647244-I-have-Verizon-Yahoo-email-Pros-and-Cons-of-switching

I Call Shenanigans

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe she was a Google plant to sink Yahoo. Lets see if they take her back.

Re:I Call Shenanigans

[desdinova 216]

so you think she was being used as an Elop?

I care too

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Marissa Mayer: "For me personally, I'm planning to stay, I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter."

2. Marissa Mayer's salary is $117 million over 5 years; $36.6 million for first six months.

3. For that sort of money I'd love and offer to stick around because "It's important to me" too.

4. "It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter." That would be Chapter 11, Amirte?

Did They Screw Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want to know is if Mozilla's $1B guarantee is still in place. As long as they are getting their money with no strings attached, I couldn't care less about else Verizon does with Yahoo.

Chapter of death

[tomxor]

It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter

Well I guess someone has to see it into death :P

Saddest = Nokia

[Anonymous Coward]

Melissa will get a big bonus most likely paid by the new owners, because they'll have paid her a bonus to encourage her to do the deal.
Very similar to the deal Elop got for gutting Nokia, locking it into a Microsoft world where it was doomed to fail and yet he got a big fat bonus (paid from the *merged* company, i.e. from Microsoft) for doing the deed.

To me Nokia was far sadder, it went from the top slot in the smartphone industry to virtually bankrupt in the space of one obviously malicious CEO. Whereas Yahoo was vapour valuation to less vapour in one obviously incompetent CEO.

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/07/the-sun-tzu-of-nokisoftian-microkia-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-whose-the-baddest-of-them-all-waterloo.html

Re:Saddest = Nokia

[jareth-0205]

To me Nokia was far sadder, it went from the top slot in the smartphone industry to virtually bankrupt in the space of one obviously malicious CEO. Whereas Yahoo was vapour valuation to less vapour in one obviously incompetent CEO.

And incompetent board. Don't forget the leadership before Elop was horrendously lacking. Sure Elop might well have been a Trojan Horse, but the only reason he could do what he did was because Nokia were in such a pisspoor state by the time he arrived. They'd squandered their lead and were so far behind the times, it's plausible that Windows Phone was their only option. A terrible one, but the chances of Meego having any chance in 2010 after iOS and Android had been running riot for 3 years was pretty slim. They were selling lots of phones but their trajectory was down.

Re:Saddest = Nokia

[Shatrat]

Don't confuse Nokia handsets with Nokia. Nokia itself is alive and well and had about $25 billion in revenue last year. The handset business was spun off to Microsoft because Microsoft was willing to write a big check. Making money on handsets is pretty hard if you don't have either a walled garden store (Apple) or make the actual components like processors, memory, screens (Samsung). Otherwise margins are very thin relative to Nokia's actual network products aimed at carriers.

Re:Saddest = Nokia

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo had a chance to sell for $44.6 billion in early 2008, when Microsoft made an unsolicited offer. At the time, the offer represented a 62% premium.

If that deal had gone through Nokia would be alive today.

Quarter billion

[Anonymous Coward]

I just saw on Bloomberg TV that she's getting $250 million out of this deal for what? 14 months of work?

It's good to be queen.

Re: Quarter billion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, and she's celebrating this pennies on the dollar sale. What a joke. Yahoo spent 1.1b on tumblr too

It's important to me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter."

Would that be Chapter 11, or something else?

Yahoo! Finance is shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually worried about what will happen to Yahoo Finance and their free API - I imagine a LOT of sites draw from it in some way (I'm working on one as I write this for instance).

So, there definitely is some value in there.

Really? Yahoo!'s data is filled with errors. Occasionally, someone on SeekingAlpha uses Yahoo! for their analysis and it fucks everything up.

Bloomberg or best, one's broker for data.

And the news feed on Yahoo! Finance is also shit - Google Finance isn't much better. Robo articles, ads presented as articles, analysis from shit sites like SeekingAlpha and Zacks, please ....

Yahoo! Finance died a few years ago as far as I'm concerned.

Re: Yahoo! Finance is shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why he was modded, but he definitely hit the nail on the head. There is a reason so many yahoo services have been dropped.

For example, when was the last time any stock mobile system used yahoo api for their apps? They've all been replaced now.

Re: Yahoo! Finance is shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much everyone in finance uses some mix of Bloomberg, FactSet, and Capital IQ.

Yahoo! Finance is to financial data as Yahoo! Search is to Bing. It's worse than even the desperate runner-up.

Pray tell, what assets?

[shanen]

Near as I can tell, the only significant asset would be the personal information, AKA the email address and associated data. Is there anything else of unique value in Yahoo? What could the assets be?

Anyway, I had been hoping that Yahoo would get desperate enough to fix their email system to try to avoid this sad ending. Nomad said "I shall effect repair", but his EQ was much higher than mine and I can't persuade anyone of any solutions, even when they are intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.

Re:Pray tell, what assets?

[Anonymous Coward]

15% of Alibaba.

Verizon service

[Anonymous Coward]

The new Verizon slogan: we give you the 1990s Internet. #blinktag #dialup

Would that be better or worse than the service they currently provide?

YAWCFU - When you really want to fail, Female CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another woman CEO fucking up.

Nice reduction in valuation, about 96%. There's a feather to put in her cap the next time she does a photoshoot. Ms. Mayer will no doubt be paid handsomely for driving Yahoo into the ground, while she looks for the "next chapter" or sucker, to take her on next.

What an unmitigated disaster. Oh, and I'm sure none of it is her fault, since she's a woman, because then that would mean facing uncomfortable realities.

LOL.

What do exec who destroy $100B in value get?

[Anonymous Coward]

a nice fat departing payout (or a raise).

Vote for Gary Johnson friends

[Anonymous Coward]

If the only choice is between a disaster that doesn't bankrupt the country and an apocalypse that does, I'll take the disaster.

Ahh, yes, everyone's favorite chestnut. You HAVE to vote for one of the two establishment candidates or it's throwing your vote away. That's right, in America, relatively intelligent people open admit that voting for a "disaster" rather than a consistent, self-made millionaire who wants to get reduce the power of the central banks is the only way to have a real say. Gag me!

Re:Vote for Gary Johnson friends

[GrumpySteen]

consistent, self-made millionaire

ROFLMFAO

Trump's father left an estate valued somewhere between $100 and $300 million when he died. Trump won't say how much he inherited (and he sure as hell isn't releasing his tax forms, despite demanding them from Obama), but he took over his father's business and most likely got the majority of the inheritance along with it. Trump is exactly the opposite of a "self made millionaire."

Re:Vote for Gary Johnson friends

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, re-read the title. Gary Johnson 2016!

Re:Vote for Gary Johnson friends

[Anonymous Coward]

consistent, self-made millionaire

Well, he is about as consistent as self-made. There is hardly any issue where Trump did not commit himself to both sides vociferously (heck, he has no problems doing that within one sort-of sentence) while you cannot wheedle out an unambigious non-equivocating commitment to either from Clinton. Of course, his fans have remarkably selective hearing and can just minimize what they don't want to register, while the Clinton fans have to do the reverse and imagine hearing what they wanted to hear. Of course, having a definite statement to refer to is more satisfactory than not having a definite statement contradicting what you want to hear, so Trump's manner of not delivering a dependable statement is getting a better response than Clinton's. At least Sanders had a bit more of a perspective (whether you considered it a good pitch or not) than "I'll play this by palm grease once I get the job".

I digress. And it's not like the "self-made millionaire" you were talking about didn't start his career with a few hundred millions from daddy.

Re:Vote for Gary Johnson friends

[StikyPad]

Oh, sure. Next you'll tell us that Sam Branson, Allegra Versace, and Athina Onassis didn't work for every penny either?!? Do you have any idea how hard it is to ride horses? DO YOU???

As a denizen of the net since 1996

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sad at this news :(

Re:As a denizen of the net since 1996

[Anonymous Coward]

Other things to be sad about:
- the obsolescence of the Sony Walkman
- Eradication of Polio in North America
- Disco
- Fountain pens
- Business.com

Re:As a denizen of the net since 1996

[kaatochacha]

Get a little older and you'll see it too, unless you're one of those absurd "new=beautiful" idiots.
Hell, My yahoo email account dates WAAAAAAY back, and I still use it as primary for many things.

Re:As a denizen of the net since 1996

[Anonymous Coward]

Get over yourself and take your self-righteousness with you. Older doesn't exactly mean it's better; one tends to look at the past with rose-tinted glasses. Things evolve, get over it.

Ask yourself, what search engine do you use? Yes, there you have it. I liked Altavista. It's crap compared to what Google or even Bing offers.

marissa

[Anonymous Coward]

"I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter."

which will be chapter 11 you dumb bitch!

What should Meyer have done differently?

[Anonymous Coward]

People talk like Meyer didn't make decisions and drive the company with a strategy. Do you all think its simple to compete on the internet in the the Google and Facebook age?

Re:What should Meyer have done differently?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then put a man in charge and put the woman behind the counter at the cafeteria. Simple.

Chapter 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Mayer said in a note on Yahoo's Tumblr page. "I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter." The next chapter for Yahoo is Chapter 11.

One of the oldest sites on the internet

[tekrat]

Maybe you young'ns can't remember, but I remember when you had to access Yahoo by an IP address (since DNS wasn't a thing then), and then all it really was, was a directory of links to other sites that existed. No such thing as a search engine back then.

The founders capitalized on that, and at one point, Yahoo was the biggest, best thing on the world wide web. Then they decided that the "portal" thing was the way to go, and after that, it was kinda downhill from there.

And then Google came and ate their lunch, and after that were a series of terrible CEOs that didn't understand the company at all (probably because there was no cohesive strategy to understand -- they grew too rapidly at the start for that).

Bye Bye Yahoo. You were great for a little while in the early days, and I appreciated what you did for the web. But I don't think you were ever meant to be a commercial venture, and essentially that was your downfall.

Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you young'ns can't remember, but I remember when you had to access Yahoo by an IP address (since DNS wasn't a thing then), and then all it really was, was a directory of links to other sites that existed. No such thing as a search engine back then.

The founders capitalized on that, and at one point, Yahoo was the biggest, best thing on the world wide web. Then they decided that the "portal" thing was the way to go, and after that, it was kinda downhill from there.

And then Google came and ate their lunch, and after that were a series of terrible CEOs that didn't understand the company at all (probably because there was no cohesive strategy to understand -- they grew too rapidly at the start for that).

Bye Bye Yahoo. You were great for a little while in the early days, and I appreciated what you did for the web. But I don't think you were ever meant to be a commercial venture, and essentially that was your downfall.

More like DNS wasnt a thing in whatever world you lived in... DNS (early mid 80's) was in use far before HTTP (late 80s/early 90's) existed. The yahoo/lycos/ask jeeves sites (mid 90's) didn't exist until after HTTP was more widely used.

Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet

[operagost]

Your network stack or your ISP was defective. DNS existed on ARPANET in the 1980s, and I used fully qualified host names in the early 1990s to access hosts via TELNET and FTP before Yahoo even existed. Otherwise, you're correct.

Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you young'ns can't remember, but I remember when you had to access Yahoo by an IP address (since DNS wasn't a thing then)

Hard to say, would guess you are either an unemployed IT staffer or an IT Director.

Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet

[luis_a_espinal]

Maybe you young'ns can't remember, but I remember when you had to access Yahoo by an IP address (since DNS wasn't a thing then), and then all it really was, was a directory of links to other sites that existed. No such thing as a search engine back then.

The founders capitalized on that, and at one point, Yahoo was the biggest, best thing on the world wide web. Then they decided that the "portal" thing was the way to go, and after that, it was kinda downhill from there.

And then Google came and ate their lunch, and after that were a series of terrible CEOs that didn't understand the company at all (probably because there was no cohesive strategy to understand -- they grew too rapidly at the start for that).

Bye Bye Yahoo. You were great for a little while in the early days, and I appreciated what you did for the web. But I don't think you were ever meant to be a commercial venture, and essentially that was your downfall.

I remember everything you said except the "access Yahoo by an IP address" (or that "DNS wasn't a thing then").

Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that rang a bit false to me as well. DNS was certainly a thing by that time. That's why they chose the clever name.

Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you young'ns can't remember, but I remember when you had to access Yahoo by an IP address (since DNS wasn't a thing then),

Yeah, that never happened.
Signed, Old Guy Who Was There

Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably just didn't know the original DNS address (akebono.stanford.edu :) )

Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Your network stack or your ISP was defective.

Yeah, this is why it wasn't a "thing" then ;)
I remember adding common sites to hosts because it wasn't at all that unusual for both dns servers being fucked. Sure it wasn't because of dns in general but many isps tended to suck in a different magnitude from now.

Summary is jacked

[justthinkit]

Current Yahoo shareholders will keep the company's lucrative investments in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. They will be spun into a separate, yet-to-be-named, publicly traded company. The deal also excludes some patents and Yahoo's cash.

In short, the deal doesn't include Alibaba shares, which are the lion's share of Yahoo!'s value. So, mentioning the $125B value in the summary, not clarifying what the deal is, but saying the deal is for $5B, is ...pretty typical for a Slashdot summary.

Re:Summary is jacked

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the $125 billion evaluation was of its core business back around the year 2000 or so, and predated the Alibaba investment. So the core business was valued at $125 billion, now the core business is valued around $5 billion. Neither number includes Alibaba.

Healthcare Reagan style

[Anonymous Coward]

For all of the bluff and bluster of the anti-Romneycare folks, the USA was in a positive feedback loop of the poorest using emergency rooms as basic healthcare - the most expensive healthcare in the world.

This was, interestingly, a Reagan initiative: the law that hospital emergency rooms cannot turn away patients simply because they cannot pay. (Reagan was not quite as heartlessly libertarian as he is now portrayed.)

This was the single most expensive government-imposed healthcare mandate ever passed in the US. Obamacare (or, as you call it with some accuracy, Romneycare) is more or less just a tweak to try to ameliorate some of the side effects of that law.

Re:Healthcare Reagan style

[Ol Olsoc]

This was, interestingly, a Reagan initiative: the law that hospital emergency rooms cannot turn away patients simply because they cannot pay. (Reagan was not quite as heartlessly libertarian as he is now portrayed.)

This was the single most expensive government-imposed healthcare mandate ever passed in the US. Obamacare (or, as you call it with some accuracy, Romneycare) is more or less just a tweak to try to ameliorate some of the side effects of that law.

True. The problem of course, is that very often the traits that make for a good physician are not those that make for a good social conservative. Doctors do have a tendency to want to treat sick people.

My guess if that the emergency room initiative hadn't gone through, that Doctors Without Borders would have most of it's operations inside the US, as we would need it.

Re:Healthcare Reagan style

[operagost]

True. The problem of course, is that very often the traits that make for a good physician are not those that make for a good social conservative. Doctors do have a tendency to want to treat sick people.

For free? No, for cold, hard cash. A doctor still works in his self interest. Don't kid yourself, we all have to eat. You just want to eat on someone else's dime.

Re:Healthcare Reagan style

[Ol Olsoc]

True. The problem of course, is that very often the traits that make for a good physician are not those that make for a good social conservative. Doctors do have a tendency to want to treat sick people.

For free? No, for cold, hard cash. A doctor still works in his self interest. Don't kid yourself, we all have to eat. You just want to eat on someone else's dime.

Oh so very clever, to take may statement and say that I'm saying that Doctors work for nothing.

That is so incredibly weak, most trolls wouldn't think of it.

This is going to be shocking, so cover the kids ears.

Not everyone adheres to the concept of I don't give a fuck unless I'm getting wealthy, and if you don't pay me, you can FOAD. Some people are actually nice to others without being paid for it. That doesn't mean they don't want paid, it just means that they don't connect the two.

And don't for a minute thing that the farthest right leaning social conservative doesn't have a bucket list of things that people are supposed to do for them on others dimes.

Re:Healthcare Reagan style

[Anonymous Coward]

True. The problem of course, is that very often the traits that make for a good physician are not those that make for a good social conservative. Doctors do have a tendency to want to treat sick people.

For free? No, for cold, hard cash. A doctor still works in his self interest. Don't kid yourself, we all have to eat. You just want to eat on someone else's dime.

Oh so very clever, to take may statement and say that I'm saying that Doctors work for nothing.

That is so incredibly weak, most trolls wouldn't think of it.

This is going to be shocking, so cover the kids ears.

Not everyone adheres to the concept of I don't give a fuck unless I'm getting wealthy, and if you don't pay me, you can FOAD. Some people are actually nice to others without being paid for it. That doesn't mean they don't want paid, it just means that they don't connect the two.

And don't for a minute thing that the farthest right leaning social conservative doesn't have a bucket list of things that people are supposed to do for them on others dimes.

Show me ONE doctor who doesn't adhere to the concept of I don't give a fuck unless I'm making money. ONE. Every medical student starts out with the goal of wanting to help people, and every medical school drills that out of them before they complete internship, let alone residency. Programs like Doctors Without Borders are usually the method by which they soothe their troubled consciences.

Re:Healthcare Reagan style

[david_thornley]

I know one. She once complained to me that she lost money on Medicare patients (her overhead was larger than what Medicare would pay - I'm not sure she's all that good at running a business), but she treated them anyway.

Re:Healthcare Reagan style

[Ol Olsoc]

Show me ONE doctor who doesn't adhere to the concept of I don't give a fuck unless I'm making money.

Ask and ye shall receive: http://www.doctorswithoutborde...

You are confusing altruistic people with your own personal selfishness, my dear Coward.

Re:Healthcare Reagan style

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. You're confusing charity donations of labor with altruism.

You have yet to show a doctor who cares without having made money, no matter where they spend their vacations.

I know many doctors. NONE of them are disinterested in being as wealthy as possible. It's the greed that put them in the pockets of the insurers and now they're kept there because they can't afford to let go of it. I will acknowledge that my experience is limited to the United States.

Re:Healthcare Reagan style

[Anonymous Coward]

Medicare patients are considered a loss in the medical world, because that doctor was right, Medicare will only pay a certain amount, no matter what the actual costs were, the doctor/practice/hospital has to eat the difference (and why anyone that says we should have Universal Medicare is a daft idiot).

This event cements Jerry Yang's legacy

[Anonymous Coward]

as the worst CEO ever. He threw away billions by not selling out to Micro$oft.

Vote for a candidate who cannot win

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 435 congressional districts in the United States. How many of these congressional districts have Libertarian party candidates-- or, for that matter, any third party candidates-- as their congressmen?

Yeah, that's right: zero. None. Nada.

If the Libertarian party can't even manage to win one single congressional district , why in the world would anyone think they'd have any chance at winning a presidential election?

Voting for a third party candidate is, from all the evidence, voting for a candidate that cannot win. That is my definition of throwing your vote away.

Re:Vote for a candidate who cannot win

[Anonymous Coward]

Voting for a third party candidate is, from all the evidence, voting for a candidate that cannot win. That is my definition of throwing your vote away.

As opposed to doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? You're fucking broken :-(

Re:Vote for a candidate who cannot win

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Libertarian party can't even manage to win one single congressional district , why in the world would anyone think they'd have any chance at winning a presidential election?

Seems to be that there are a lot of idiots who seem to think that voting third-party is useless, actually, in this case, worse than a "disaster." Until that mindset changes, you're right. But, one way to shift the mindset is by voting third-party. If the numbers start to rise, everyone and their grandma start taking a look at third-party candidates more seriously.

I guess the important question is...

[b12arr0]

Can I still play Yahoo fantasy football?

Dear Sir or Madam:

[Anonymous Coward]

An open letter to US voters:

Stop letting content delivery companies own content.

Thank you,
Consumers

Marrisa?

[Tough Love]

Is Marrissa selling her assets?

Re:Marrisa?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just her ass. I'll buy that for a dollar

Diversity

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out that the tech bias against diversity prevented blonde hair and big boobs from saving the company.

Yahoo bought to bolster AOL

[bigdady92]

Read that again. read it good. That is insane to purchase the mammoth company that is yahoo to increase the activity of AMERICAN ONLINE. Jesus Tap Dancing christ M. Myers should never get into a management position ever again if the best hope for your company is to be a feeder into AOL...

Because nothing says 'I'm in the 2010s'

[Anonymous Coward]

than using email or IM. I mean, really? That's rubbish. Fuck Verizon.

What's the plan here?

[nine-times]

So Verizon bought AOL, and now they're buying Yahoo. What's next? Are they going to buy Compuserve, Prodigy, Lycos, or Excite?

But really, what's the plan here? I find it a little frightening that Verizon's strategy seems to be to acquire whatever large content sources they can get their hands on. They (and Comcast) have given some indications that they'd like to leverage their control over infrastructure to push their own content and services.

Re:What's the plan here?

[BrinkeGuthrie]

oooooooo Prodigy. First Net experience. You always remember your first.

Re:What's the plan here?

[tepples]

AOL had already bought the consumer-facing side of CompuServe back in 1998. The networking side went to WorldCom. Both AOL and WorldCom are part of Verizon now.

SBC (now called AT&T) bought Prodigy in 2001. Ybrant bought Lycos. Excite.com is owned by IAC.

Real news. Uncompetitive company has billions.

[DCFusor]

In cash to by a worthless piece of junk. Yet also has money to fight the FCC to avoid any hint of being fair to consumers, keep other companies off their "turf" and so forth - can't even let you have a set top box they don't get rent on - they'll die. Yet they can afford this loser?

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Very ironic, because Yahoo existed to me solely as a news outlet that wasn't controlled by Viacom. Now that it is, there is no reason to use any yahoo services.

Remind me again why Mozilla integrated yahoo as the default search?

All of this has happened before

[Solandri]

All of it will happen again. Before Yahoo (before the Web actually), there was a Veronica which did a fairly reasonable job of cataloging the big gopher sites. And before that, there was an ftp site (can't recall the name) which tried to mirror most of the content hosted on other popular ftp sites (and was eventually displaced by Archie).

Yahoo foundered because their core web search was built on people hand-picking what should be the best results for a search term. I remember trying to find a decent car mechanic in Boston, and being able to drill down their indexing tree for businesses, Massachusetts, Boston, car mechanics. And there was a list of repair shops who'd either registered themselves with Yahoo, or someone else had taken the time to add an entry for them. AltaVista gave that tedious indexing job to a computer, with mixed results since computers don't understand context or what people find valuable. Google succeeded because they realized the very structure of the web itself (i.e. number of links to a site) gave them that context - what sites other people found valuable.

Same email security holes, just under known spies

[Anonymous Coward]

CIA/NSA spy on all Yahoo already. Now it's just spy on Verizon...

Can you fear me now?

"useless puppet with not a single success..."

[Anonymous Coward]

[Keick wrote: "So your choice is really; Some loud mouth bozo with a 95% success rate in running businesses of all types, or a useless puppet with not a single success in her life." ]

Puppet?!!

Will this change or reinforce your opinion:

https://youtu.be/YMHOcmDVBP0

The raw version:
https://youtu.be/lJjHTeo6mVw

From another angle (look at the facial reactions of the journalist on the left):
https://youtu.be/jtU5nMbEsQ4?t=18s

AOL

[DarthVain]

WOW! So now Verizon owns both AOL AND Yahoo... The 1990's called. They want their technology back!

Though likely the most valuable assets were the 15 percent interest in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, what's left of the Yahoo user base, and the real estate (which was probably all purchased at the height of Yahoo's value)...

No always bad either.

[DarthVain]

No to defend Trump, but this was always something that bugged me. It seemed the media liked the soundbite more than the actual facts. Bankruptcy isn't really all that uncommon in business, and in many cases all it is just a way to protect yourself (corporation) from creditors, while you restructure and realign the business into a more successful one. Not all of them as I understand it lead to a sell off of all assets and dissolution of everything. In addition to all that, as you say Trump has had more than a few businesses over the years, it is to be expected that some of them would fail. Indeed it sounds like a lot of ventures he wasn't really all that involved with, but his partnership pretty much just included the "Trump" name, which when they fail isn't great for his "brand", but probably have little other impact.

If you recall American Companies GM and Chrysler recently went through Bankruptcy. However they are still around and worth hundreds of billions employing hundreds of thousands of people. Even Ford who managed to avoid it, did go through it twice in its early years. Considering likely most of Trump's assets are in real estate, and given the housing issues around the same time, it is hardly all that surprising.