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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."

112 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Verizon is smart to do this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:Verizon is smart to do this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

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

    2. Re: Verizon is smart to do this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Verizon is smart to do this. by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

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

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    4. Re:Verizon is smart to do this. by GrumpySteen · · Score: 1, Funny

      Found Joe the Plumber!

    5. Re: Verizon is smart to do this. by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re: Verizon is smart to do this. by um...+Lucas · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    7. Re: Verizon is smart to do this. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

      ^ 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."

    8. Re: Verizon is smart to do this. by Karlt1 · · Score: 3, Informative

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

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

    9. Re: Verizon is smart to do this. by trabby · · Score: 1

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

    10. Re: Verizon is smart to do this. by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    11. Re: Verizon is smart to do this. by GTRacer · · Score: 1

      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!

      --
      Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
  2. Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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.

    2. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by Jahta · · Score: 5, Funny

      "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.

    3. Re: Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

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

    5. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by Bearhouse · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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

    6. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by cdrudge · · Score: 1

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

    7. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by Diss+Champ · · Score: 1

      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.

    8. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    9. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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.

    10. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by StormReaver · · Score: 2

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

    11. Re: Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by tsqr · · Score: 1

      You mean the break peddle?

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

    12. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by Alomex · · Score: 1

      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.

    13. Re: Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by jittles · · Score: 1

      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.

    14. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      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.

    15. Re:Really Meyers thinks she is staying? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

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

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  3. wait, what? by ihtoit · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    1. Re:wait, what? by guruevi · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    2. Re: wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:wait, what? by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    4. Re:wait, what? by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 1

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

    5. Re:wait, what? by MikeDataLink · · Score: 2

      They sold their FiOS business to Frontier Communications for billions.

      --
      Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
    6. Re:wait, what? by k6mfw · · Score: 1

      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."

      --
      mfwright@batnet.com
    7. Re: wait, what? by ihtoit · · Score: 1

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

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    8. Re:wait, what? by ihtoit · · Score: 1

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

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    9. Re:wait, what? by samwichse · · Score: 1

      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.

  4. Re:thats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  5. Next chapter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    I guess she means Chapter 11...

  6. Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave by guruevi · · Score: 1

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

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  7. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by drinkypoo · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  8. Think of the deck hands by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  9. Verizon slogan by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

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

  10. been using yahoo mail since inception by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  11. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by 110010001000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

  12. Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  13. Re:thats by GrumpySteen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  14. I care too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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?

  15. Chapter of death by tomxor · · Score: 1

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

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

  16. Saddest = Nokia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:Saddest = Nokia by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

      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.

    2. Re:Saddest = Nokia by Shatrat · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  17. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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?

  18. Yahoo! Finance is shit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  19. Pray tell, what assets? by shanen · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  20. Re:thats by Keick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  21. Re:thats by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  22. Re:thats by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

    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!

    --

    Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

  23. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  24. Re:thats by lexman098 · · Score: 2

    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.

  25. One of the oldest sites on the internet by tekrat · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
    1. Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet by operagost · · Score: 2

      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.

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    3. Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      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.

    4. Re:One of the oldest sites on the internet by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 2

      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").

  26. Re:thats by tsqr · · Score: 1

    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.

  27. Summary is jacked by justthinkit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I come here for the love
    1. Re:Summary is jacked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  28. Healthcare Reagan style by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:Healthcare Reagan style by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    2. Re:Healthcare Reagan style by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    3. Re:Healthcare Reagan style by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    4. Re:Healthcare Reagan style by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  29. Re:thats by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    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.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  30. Vote for a candidate who cannot win by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

    1. Re:Vote for a candidate who cannot win by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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 :-(

    2. Re:Vote for a candidate who cannot win by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      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.

  31. I guess the important question is... by b12arr0 · · Score: 1

    Can I still play Yahoo fantasy football?

  32. Marrisa? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    Is Marrissa selling her assets?

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  33. Re:thats by CaptainLard · · Score: 2

    >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.

  34. Yahoo bought to bolster AOL by bigdady92 · · Score: 1

    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...

    --
    Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
  35. Re:thats by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

    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/...

  36. Re:Vote for Gary Johnson friends by GrumpySteen · · Score: 1

    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."

  37. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    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

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  38. Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave by Malc · · Score: 1

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

  39. What's the plan here? by nine-times · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:What's the plan here? by BrinkeGuthrie · · Score: 1

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

    2. Re:What's the plan here? by tepples · · Score: 1

      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.

  40. Re:thats by operagost · · Score: 1

    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?

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  41. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by operagost · · Score: 1

    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.

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  42. Re: thats by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Earlier. Silver certificates.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  43. Real news. Uncompetitive company has billions. by DCFusor · · Score: 1

    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?

    --
    Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  44. Re:I Call Shenanigans by desdinova+216 · · Score: 1

    so you think she was being used as an Elop?

  45. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  46. Re:thats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  47. Re:thats by tnk1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  48. Re:thats by tnk1 · · Score: 2

    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.

  49. All of this has happened before by Solandri · · Score: 2

    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.

  50. Re:As a denizen of the net since 1996 by kaatochacha · · Score: 1

    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.

  51. Re:thats by Woldscum · · Score: 1

    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.

  52. Re:thats by StikyPad · · Score: 1

    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.

  53. Re:Vote for Gary Johnson friends by StikyPad · · Score: 1

    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???

  54. Re:Marissa Mayer can't leave by Lost+Race · · Score: 1

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

  55. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by kaatochacha · · Score: 1

    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.

  56. Re:thats by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  57. Re:thats by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  58. Re:thats by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  59. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  60. Re:Selling for $5B is sexist by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    > ...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.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  61. AOL by DarthVain · · Score: 1

    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)...

  62. No always bad either. by DarthVain · · Score: 1

    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.