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Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit From Yahoo Deal (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the in-the-aftermath dept.

Verizon is reconsidering its $4.8 billion purchase of Yahoo, according to Bloomberg. Citing a source, the publication claims that Wednesday's announcement by Yahoo -- theft of info from one billion users -- has led Verizon to consider scrapping the deal entirely. From the report: While a Verizon group led by AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong is still focused on integration planning to get Yahoo up and running, another team, walled off from the rest, is reviewing the breach disclosures and the company's options, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. A legal team led by Verizon General Counsel Craig Silliman is assessing the damage from the breaches and is working toward either killing the deal or renegotiating the Yahoo purchase at a lower price, the person said. One of the major objectives for Verizon is negotiating a separation from any future legal fallout from the breaches. Verizon is seeking to have Yahoo assume any lasting responsibility for the hack damage, the person said.

52 comments

  1. Run, Verizon. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Run far, run fast, don't look back.

    1. Re:Run, Verizon. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Run far, run fast, don't look back.

      AGREED!

      The liability assumption for Verizon seems too big to me. I can only imagine how much work Verizon would have to invest (laugh if you want) in fixing those "weak" Yahoo! systems. It would be like buying a used car only to have to spend a fortune fixing it before you can drive it off the dealer's lot.

    2. Re:Run, Verizon. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Verizon had asked, Barnie would have admitted that being purple has its downside.

    3. Re:Run, Verizon. by Jawnn · · Score: 2

      Run far, run fast, don't look back.

      Yahoo's CSO, Alex Stamos sure did. He clearly saw this train-wreck a'comin' and jumped just in time.

    4. Re:Run, Verizon. by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Run far, run fast, don't look back.

      As a Verizon subscriber, fully agree. You just bought AOL, didn't you? That's adequate. No reason to acquire Yahoo! as well. I myself just deleted my account a few weeks ago

    5. Re:Run, Verizon. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a stockholder, I AGREE!

    6. Re:Run, Verizon. by AmazingRuss · · Score: 1

      You got FUCKED!

  2. Who exactly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Verizon is seeking to have Yahoo assume any lasting responsibility for the hack damage, the person said.

    LOLWAT? Are they going to try to stick Jerry Yang with the fallout? If Verizon buys Yahoo, there will be no "Yahoo" left to assume responsibility. The Yahoo business unit of Verizon will still be part of Verizon, and Verizon will still have exposure. When you buy a business, you acquire both its assets and its liabilities, you don't get to pick and choose. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

    I can't imagine why they'd still go through with it now.

    1. Re:Who exactly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are not buying the whole Yahoo.

    2. Re:Who exactly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When you buy a business, you acquire both its assets and its liabilities, you don't get to pick and choose.

      Actually, you can.

      Here's how it could go down, Verizon makes a deal to buy only Yahoo!'s advertising and content business assets. That includes the customer contracts and all assets associated with that revenue stream - and it may even include the name Yahoo! and other trademarks. Yahoo! Inc. (the legal entity) is then stuck with any debts and liabilities; which they can use the proceeds to pay down or buy more Alibaba stock and pay Mayer her bonus for doing such a great job.

      Of course in the case of real estate there's a whole bunch of other issues associated with that.

    3. Re:Who exactly? by Comboman · · Score: 1

      Conceivably they could buy the Yahoo! brand without buying the company's other assets (the brand/logo and it's 90's nostalgia are about the only thing of value left at Yahoo). That would presumably limit their liability (for example, if my Atari 2600 burns down my house due to a latent design flaw, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to sue whoever it is that currently puts out shovelware games under the Atari brand that had nothing to do with the old hardware company).

      --
      Support Right To Repair Legislation.
    4. Re:Who exactly? by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      When you buy a business, you acquire both its assets and its liabilities, you don't get to pick and choose. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

      I can't imagine why they'd still go through with it now.

      Businesses don't have to be sold in whole. It very popular in New Korporate Amerika to now buy all the assets and key employees that make a business work, but not technically buy the business. Then you leave the liabilities and people you hate behind for bankruptcy and all the company's shareholders get screwed, while the executives take golden lifeboats to their new positions with the purchasing company.

    5. Re:Who exactly? by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      LOLWAT? Are they going to try to stick Jerry Yang with the fallout? If Verizon buys Yahoo, there will be no "Yahoo" left to assume responsibility. The Yahoo business unit of Verizon will still be part of Verizon, and Verizon will still have exposure. When you buy a business, you acquire both its assets and its liabilities, you don't get to pick and choose. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

      You could not be more wrong. Companies buy some of the assets of other companies all the time.

      In this case, specifically, this is an asset sale, so that the original Yahoo company remains and continues to own the Alibaba shares, thus avoiding a huge tax bill on these shares.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    6. Re:Who exactly? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Thing is, if I was facing bankruptcy I couldn't put the good stuff in my right pocket (or give it to my cat) and the creditors only get to pick the left one, sucks to be them LOL.

      Why can Yahoo?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    7. Re:Who exactly? by Qzukk · · Score: 1

      Because they aren't bankrupt yet. And if they can limp along another year or two they'll be past any clawback provisions in the law.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  3. gross by Osgeld · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While a Verizon group led by AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong is still focused on integration planning to get Yahoo up and running

    its like watching two rotten old corpses fuck

    1. Re: gross by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Maybe they can get assistance from Compuserve and Prodigy.

    2. Re:gross by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ya I know -- I mean who the fuck even uses Verizon?
      Hurrrrrrr

      fucking asshat

    3. Re:gross by trudyscousin · · Score: 1

      Ghouls, apparently.

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
    4. Re:gross by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yikes! How would you know that? Or did you watch Time Inc. bitchify (tm) MySpace?

    5. Re:gross by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately those of us in the back woods where no other carrier would dare rape us!

  4. Verizon is so dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They'd be better off merging with Sears/Kmart.

    1. Re:Verizon is so dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      heh radio shack

  5. Dumbest business ever by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yahoo turning down Microsoft's offer to buy them out for $45B has to go down as one of the dumbest business decisions of all time. Conversely Microsoft might win the award for biggest bullet (unintentionally) dodged of all time. Yahoo is just an absolutely pathetic company which has been badly managed for a long time.

    1. Re:Dumbest business ever by Tharkkun · · Score: 1

      I bet Marissa Mayer is still fuming about ever taking the CEO position and associating herself with such a f'd up company. If she had only known in advance.

    2. Re:Dumbest business ever by Virtucon · · Score: 1

      Her parachute is guaranteed, not that I agree she was worth that much to begin with but still she'll come out fine.

      --
      Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    3. Re:Dumbest business ever by speedplane · · Score: 1

      I bet Marissa Mayer is still fuming about ever taking the CEO position and associating herself with such a f'd up company. If she had only known in advance.

      I hope this is a joke... Yahoo has been in a tailspin for years, there was no way Meyer wouldn't know about it.

      --
      Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
    4. Re:Dumbest business ever by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Oh what the fuck? Talk about bullshit, yet another I get paid millions to take no responsibility for fuck all because I have the brains of an M&M, all melty and full of corn. When you are paid to be in fucking charge, than it is your fuck up. So what did the M&M manage to achieve, make Yahoo an undesirable place to work by forcing all the remote workers into the office so the M&M could listen in and steal their ideas and claim them as it's own, apparently a track record for it. If the Yahoo board had only known in advance why the M&M was demoted and on the way out (the demotion after demotion route).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    5. Re:Dumbest business ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll bet she was happy she was Brins girlfriend at Google though. It is a dirty little secret.

    6. Re:Dumbest business ever by Dorianny · · Score: 1

      Yahoo turning down Microsoft's offer to buy them out for $45B has to go down as one of the dumbest business decisions of all time. Conversely Microsoft might win the award for biggest bullet (unintentionally) dodged of all time. Yahoo is just an absolutely pathetic company which has been badly managed for a long time.

      Very likely however for the sake of accuracy I would like to note that the Microsoft sale would have included the Alibaba stake (which was much larger back then.) This stake is not included in the Verizon sale, only it's core business (largely the yahoo portal)

  6. It's dead, Jim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yahoo just needs to die and go away. They have been marginal or even irrelevant for a very long time.

    1. Re:It's dead, Jim by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

      Yahoo just needs to die and go away. They have been marginal or even irrelevant for a very long time.

      Yahoo has actually been a has-been *far* longer than it was ever top dog.

      If you think about it, their time at the top was pretty short- essentially beginning and ending with the late 90s dotcom era. The original directory was created in early '94, the domain only registered a year later, and the IPO was in 1996. Four years after *that*, the dotcom crash happened, Google rose out of nowhere to leave them in their dust, and they never seemed to move on successfully from that.

      They've seemed like a relic almost since the 90s ended; if they don't feel *more* like a Geocities "remember the dotcom era" retro nostalgia thing, it's only because they've hung around so long, seemingly going nowhere, but not really dying either- the service you occasionally check your burner email account on, sitting around in the background

      Well, until now, anyway....

      --
      "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
    2. Re:It's dead, Jim by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Still, it was not completely worthless. Marissa changed that with her bad policies that made the hack possible. At this time, the actual worth of the company is probably a few hundred millions in the negative. She will still get to keep all the money she got paid despite delivering less than nothing. Power without responsibility is something that never produces a good outcome.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  7. Yahoo assume lasting responsibility? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Verizon is buying Yahoo. Who would be left to assume responsibility? The shareholders?

    1. Re:Yahoo assume lasting responsibility? by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      Verizon buys rights to the Yahoo! name and other assets, properties, etc. A small dessicated husk of a company remains that assumes any legal liabilities and so on... then promptly gets wound up as soon as the money from the sale can be shuffled away, leaving all Yahoo!'s former users that might feel inclined to sue legally high and dry.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    2. Re:Yahoo assume lasting responsibility? by Tharkkun · · Score: 1

      Verizon is buying Yahoo. Who would be left to assume responsibility? The shareholders?

      When Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems they had to deal with the fallout of Java when suddenly realizing it was highly insecure. So you take full ownership of both the good and the bad when purchasing a company.

    3. Re: Yahoo assume lasting responsibility? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh Jesus! Even back then the bulk of any serious (not toy) applications ran strictly SERVER SIDE, not in the browser in the crappy applet plugin. It was not much of an issue in the real world at all since the vulns existed only for the little-used crapplets.

  8. Leave it to Verizon... by tlambert · · Score: 1

    Leave it to Verizon... to invent the "Vexit".

  9. Not likely. by SeaFox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As I said last night

    , it's just posturing to get the company for a cheaper price. They'll go through with it either way.

  10. WTF kinda name is that? by TimothyHollins · · Score: 4, Funny

    A legal team led by Verizon General Counsel Craig Silliman

    I'm not sure Craig is taking his job seriously...

  11. Don't you say... by XSportSeeker · · Score: 1

    Even vultures are selective about the rotten carcass they eat, apparently. xD

  12. At least we'll get a number out of this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How much does it cost if you fuck up information security.

  13. Killing the deal? by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 1

    Meaning, they may Verexit?

  14. This deal never made sense by Virtucon · · Score: 1

    I realize Verizon buys content but the core search engine, web services, apis, and other things that make up yahoo. After the initial disclosure a few months ago and now this, I can't see Yahoo as being worth much of anything other than a name for epic failure.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    1. Re:This deal never made sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They do own a rather sizable parcel of land in the Silicon Valley Area...

  15. bringing back the '90s by mschaffer · · Score: 1

    Well, if they are trying to bring back the 90s, they will need Yahoo as well as AOL.
    What's next? Bringing back CompuServe?

    1. Re:bringing back the '90s by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Well, Compuserve was acquired by AOL. But seriously, both Yahoo and AOL were competing services - both w/ their own mail services, own internet dashboards and so on. Why would Verizon need both? Let AT&T or T-Mo acquire Yahoo! Actually, best idea would be what I once suggested - that Apple take it over, and then make it their answer to both Google and Bing

    2. Re:bringing back the '90s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well Both AOL and Yahoo actually produce a huge amount of successfully syndicated content online. Verizon wants in on this for some reason, and owning Yahoo and AOL, they would be the 800lb gorilla in this segment. Verizon being verizon, I'd assume they have some plan just this side of legal to abuse the shit out of that fact.

      Besides that, Yahoo has some cloud scale infrastructure that deals with business needs that verzion as consultants bid on and lose regularly due to cost. It is possible Yahoo's assets and licensing would help them lower these costs.

      Regardless, they are looking at about a billion a year revenue for a company they were going to pay $4.8 billion for. That's not bad. If they can leverage this to undervalue their assets even further, that's even better.

  16. haha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you didn't read the subject; haha (that is directed at yahoo shareholders)

  17. Establishing a base value of a data breach? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, could this be used to come up with some sort of value estimate for the "cost" of a data breech on a per-user basis?

    1 billion users. So VZ doesn't buy YHOO for $5 billion or so. That could possibly be construed to put an upper intrinsic value on a given member's account and information, at about $5 or so, right? The next logical step then is in another data breech lawsuit, and the litigant is alleging the "damages" to the users at $1000 each, say, to come up with damages... well, if I'm the defending counsel, I almost look above and say, "well, your member's user account [and the data associated with it or derived from it] is worth no more than about $5.00", thus arguing it has no significant intrinsic value, and hence, that's the only intrinsic damage that was done, to the value of said account...

    US courts have already judged in some cases in the past that costs for credit monitoring, etc. may be questioned as being "damages" as well or that said "damages" are theoretical and all that, too...

  18. Why spend $4.8B by thomn8r · · Score: 1

    They could have got it for $300k https://yro.slashdot.org/story...