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The End of Yahoo: Marissa Mayer To Resign; Yahoo To Change Its Name To Altaba (arstechnica.com)
maxcelcat writes: Spotted on The Register's twitter feed: Yahoo! Submission to The SEC. Most of the board is leaving, including CEO Marissa Mayer. The company has been bought by Verizon and is changing its name to Altaba Inc. I'm old enough to remember when Yahoo was a series of directories on a University's computers, where you could browse a hierarchical list of websites by category. And here I am watching the company's demise. According to the regulatory filing, the changes will take place after the sale of its core business is completed with Verizon for roughly $4.8 billion. The Wall Street Journal notes: "Verizon officials have indicated all options remain possible, including renegotiating the terms of the deal or walking away."
According to the regulatory filing, the changes will take place after the sale of its core business is completed with Verizon for roughly $4.8 billion.
I'm genuinely surprised it's worth that much.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Whheeee!!! (floats into a board room for a cushy part-time gig).
Don't let the door hit you on your way out Mayer! She's one of the worst female CEOs ever. And remembering how she appeared in magazines giving advice on mothers with young children when she had baby care in her office. Dumb bitch thought everybody is as rich as her. She failed at Google, she failed Yahoo, let's hope she doesn't get to lead any company for the rest of her laugh. She's been a disaster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Most of the world will forget, some may even forgive, but we will not.
It is weird they decided to ditch the Yahoo brand, which is one of the last remaining asset (along with customer data).
Why not AltF4a?
The internet rejoices.
If they paid branding consultants millions to come up with "Altaba", somebody deserves to be beaten black and blue with a briefcase, including the consultants.
Table-ized A.I.
This version actually crashed a company permanently!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
So Mayer gets $55 million for running the company into the ground... Nice...
"Yahoo" is still an powerful brand name that's decades old.
Who the hell throws away a household brand name and comes up with a brand new one? That's one of the biggest assets they still had. Yahoo as a brand name, Yahoo News (which tons of women still use as their primary source), and Yahoo e-mail (eww.) That, and of course as the older poster mentioned, their existing customer data. (Which everyone has now, hint hint, wink wink.)
Altaba? I mean, what is that? People are going to confuse it with "Alibaba."
all I could hear was the laughter of a Woody Woodpecker-like Marissa Mayer escaping with bags of cash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcSujceZDmg
I think everybody's jumping the gun here. What's left of Yahoo after the sale -- which will basically just be an investment holding company -- will change its name to Altbaba. I see no reason why Verizon wouldn't continue to operate Yahoo's core web businesses under the Yahoo brand. To not do so sounds like a tremendous waste of money.
Breakfast served all day!
...is a perfect illustration of the principle: "A-level people hire other A-level people. B-level people hire C-level people."
When Apple was in deep trouble back in the late 90s, we had three CEOs who failed to turn it around: John Sculley, Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio.
Similarly with Yahoo, we have Terry Semel, Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz, Scott Thompson, Ross Levinsohn and Marissa Mayer, all of which failed to turn around the company. And of course according to many on the interwebs the main reason Ms. Mayer failed is because she has a vagina.
Yahoo (including the name), is being sold off to Verizon. Altababa is the parts that are left (ie, a big pile of Alibaba stock). The yahoo name, domain, etc are not going away, they'll just have a new corporate overlord.
Kind of like how slashdot wasn't renamed (or improved!) when bendover.net bought them, or VA Linux, or VA Research, or SourceForge, or Geek.Net or Dice.com, or BizX. Other than (fuck) beta, there have been no updates whatsoever since 1998.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
AltaVista, Altaba, and AliBaba. One of these things is not like the other one!
I only hope that quitting her job took as much time as canceling Yahoo dial-up...
A yahoo email address was my first official email. Melissa Mayer ran the company into the ground and she is gonna get a golden parachute.
> Altaba? I mean, what is that? People are going to confuse it with "Alibaba."
With Verizon buying Yahoo mail, Yahoo news, etc., the remains of the company will just be their Alibaba stock, which is already their primary asset. Buying Altaba *is* buying Alibaba, with one step of indirection. It's how you buy Alibaba stock if you want to (on paper) own a US company.
Just because your an SJW and you WANT some woman or minority to be the savior who proves that a female or minority can be just as good as any man, doesn't mean that you should automatically jump on the hype train just because they have dark skin or a vagina.
But you won't learn, will you? The next Carly Fiorina, Ellen Pao, Marissa Myer, or Elizabeth Holmes is just around the corner, and you're going to taut them as the GREATEST CEO EVAR, aren't you?
And that's a shame too, because the legitimately good female CEO's out there will ultimately suffer for all the over-hype of the shitty ones.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing, you already told the botch twice.
without coming right out and saying: We're laying you off (or worse, paying unemployment claims). What's embarrassing is that a company as large as Yahoo stooped to that level...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Was CtrlAltDel.com taken?
tone
Seems like you could just as easily replace these CEOs with a magic 8 ball and get similar results.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The stupidest move was when Yahoo refused the Microsoft offer. It was just down hill from then on.
Only thing I care about is that free email address I've had for as long as I've been on the internet. So if my 18 year old free email address is "someone@yahoo.com" does the name automatically change to "someone@altaba.com" and continue working as-is? And if so, will all the "@yahoo.com" emails get rerouted to my new "@altaba.com" address? Will my outgoing yahoo emails synched up to my local machine's mail client stop working for free? Will I loose all of my old emails? Will this FINALLY be the end to all that incessant SPAM that continues to incessantly flood into my account every day accumulated from nearly two decades worth of usage????
I miss the word more that I'll miss the company.
... since Moby Dick was a minnow.
Yahoo crapped out a long time ago when it lost its compass.
They were, at one time, the "go to" search engine and stepped away from that core competency to do every goddam thing EXCEPT search.
Let's remember this headline as we watch Apple make the same mistake.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
How do you pronounce it? "OL-tuh-BAH?" "AL-TAB-uh?"
Could anyone have saved Yahoo!? I'm not sure even any extremely successful tech CEO - Nadella, Bezos, Picheai - could have done the job. It actually may be amazing that it's lasted as long as it has. The one thing Yahoo! has that is top notch is its financial pages which I use and hope it's one of the things either saved in its present form or taken over by someone who can keep it going. The financial features Google has are just awful.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Letting the gov have access to emails was the straw that broke the camels back. People lost confidence in what was already a dying company. I'm sure they were well compensated by the NSA. And, I'm sure Verizon makes those deals too, but they diversify in a way that doesn't give people much of a choice in some areas. I had a Yahoo account, but only because the people I talked to are older. After the email incident, I took it off of everything I got and will never have anything to do with them again. I'm not having anything to do with a company or their circles they deal with that asks for forgiveness before bothering to ask for permission. People bitch about Apple not cooperating with the FBI, but they'd be in big trouble too like Yahoo if they did.
Yes, it turns out that advertising search is a profitable business. Still, the web/news, portalish business is still legit. I could see Yahoo Inc being a USA business, with the media people owned by the company, and then doing joint ventures, like Yahoo Japan, around the world. Yahoo Inc. would design the code, technology, and maybe even have standardized data centers. The local partner would then run the local media stuff. I think Yahoo tried to do to much unrelated stuff, and went with katie couric.
And this, ladies and gentlemen is what a parade of mismanagement looks like. Corporate raider CEO after corporate raider CEO trying to pump up short term valuation at the expense of long term viability.
I have said it before, I will say it again. Every executive level and board member should be required by law to receive all compensation above 10x median employee salary as stock options that start to mature in 5 years and mature 20% per year. Thus, if they get $10M per year pay, something like $9.4M is tied up for 5 years and they don't get 100% out of their first years pay until the 10th year. Force these slash and burn CEOs who are only looking to line their pockets to ensure long term corporate viability.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I admit I tend to change the ubuntu (or rather Mint) provided default of Yahoo as a search engine, but were they getting much money from them?
I can't even spell it. Dumb ass CEO executives. Everybody will forget it.
"Yahoo" is still an powerful brand name that's decades old.
Yes... and that's part of the reason why Verizon is buying it.
The remaining company (current Yahoo ex-web properties) needs a new name since Verizon is getting "Yahoo".
Isn't "Altbaba" what you shout at the airport when you are blowing up a crowd?
But seriously, what a bad name.
Sorry ... Could not resist ...
Totof
I'm so glad I changed my 'real' name to Ball Zack many months ago.
And nothing of value was lost...
The filing refers to the remaining shell company that contains those parts of yahoo that wont be folded into Verizon -- not to what is normally thought of as Yahoo.
The entire story is bad reporting based on sloppy work.
All of you getting worked up, or having a laugh? The laugh is on you.
Suckers
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I! Cannot! Help! But! Remember! The! Many! Billions! Microsoft! Was! Willing! To! Shell! Out! For! Yahoo!.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2014/01/21/should-microsoft-acquire-yahoo-for-53-billion/#651371e6a19e
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
A quick search for Altaba on Godaddy reveals a few names still available :-) https://uk.godaddy.com/domains/searchresults.aspx?checkAvail=1&tmskey=&domainToCheck=altaba
before yahoo went corporate, i used to have some chats with the webmaster in charge of the site..
This is what you get when you put women in tech.
WRONG.
This is what you get when you hire someone for no other reason than their sex. There are many women I know who do a fine job running companies and groups within companies, and what they have in common is that they spend more time doing their jobs than seeking publicity.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So CEO Marissa Mayer was wrong about telecommuting. Her ban on working via network did not help Yahoo.
Altalba - really? A horrible pick for a name. The name invokes visceral feelings of negativity. Not sure why.
Does anyone else think the name is a poor pick?
The 90s called, they want their closely-matching brand name back...
I don't know if its possible, but I find myself missing their old category approach sometimes. Especially if I'm looking for a set of websites with information generally surrounding a common topic, but not necessarily matching any specific search term or results.
Google has a kind of less than useful value searching on generic terms and doesn't seem to do a very good job of producing search results that list web sites associated with a topic.
Maybe Yahoo should have tried to re-invent their old school directory/category approach combining search and some kind of AI designed to organize information by topic in coherent ways.
Altaba -> Alt Laba -> Alta Laba - Romanians will have a field day.
They should point out than women are always better (at failing too)
Like alt-right is the hyper conservative wingnut corner of the Internet, Altaba evokes the name of alt-abba, and Abba being the name "Father" that Jesus used on the Cross to call out to Daddy.
Have religious conservatives and evangelicals taken over Yahoo from the inside?
Hopefully they find another incompetent and malfeasant female CEO to install in the new organization so she can totally destroy that one too!
IF YOU DISAGREE YOU ARE A MISOGYNIST RACIST ISLAMOPHOBE BIGOT
It should have happened over a decade ago. This company was a case study in stagnation and mismanagement. They had no real vision for ages, and it showed in everything from their product (non-offerings) to their janky back-end systems that could barely cope with basic email functionality.
Honestly, if I were in the market to buy, it would be to take the entire thing apart for scrap value to the highest bidder piecemeal.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
And to think Yahoo could have sold themselves to MS for $32+ billion a few years ago and turned MS down.
Perfect example of ineptitude.
Their biggest issue was when they stopped being a search engine and started being a media gossip site. While it kinda feels sad from the whole internet history thing, Yahoo really died at least 15 years ago.
The filing only indicates she is leaving the Board of Directors. It says nothing about her leaving the CEO position. CNN is reporting that she will remain CEO.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/09/technology/yahoo-marissa-mayer-altaba/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom
She may leave after the transition but nothing is set in stone....bad reporting by the tech industry press......
1) Contrary to some news reports on Monday, only the part of Yahoo that is not being sold to Verizon will be renamed “Altaba”. In addition, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is to step down from its board, but will continue to be CEO.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/09/yahoo-altaba-no-name-change-marissa-mayer
2) Had to go depressingly far down to find anyone posting this.
3) Yahoo consists of two parts; the parent company and the front-end company who operate the search engine and web-portal. The parent company owns lots of things in addition to Yahoo; a good stake in Yahoo Japan (another separate company), a stake in Alibaba, and they own things like Tumblr and Flickr.
The front end company who run the search engine and web-portal is the one that is being sold. The investment company part will rebrand to Altaba, since Verizon will have the Yahoo name.
4) Mayer was CEO of the front end company but also a board member of the investment company. As part of the deal going through she'll stay on a CEO, for the interim at least, but step down as a board member of the investment company.
Contrary to other comments here it has nothing to do with her owning or selling stock in either parts of the company.
If anyone's confused, it sounds like the holding company that "owned" Yahoo before Verizon bought it (also named Yahoo) is renaming itself. The Yahoo brand isnt changing.
So, more serious question: what's happening to yahoo finance? It's built-in as a data source in lots of places (e.g. pandas_datareader); what do people typically use for quotes instead today?
Will I still be able to ping yahoo?
I can't believe they wouldn't be renegotiating after the breach. Why would they pay that much for the extra liability?
Your mission is accomplished.
I can't find the Alt-aba key combination on my keyboard. How I am supposed to get to my email account?!? Do I need to buy some sort of dongle now?
Hasta la vista, baby!
I remember you when you where Alta Vista.
Anyone remember DEC and the Deja Vu message boards?
The first global Intranet pre-internet.
The reason (DEC) they call the OS for Windoz DOS.
Yahoo pretty much died with it's chat platform years ago. The only service of theirs I use is Yahoo Mail as basically my spam account, and I can find another shit service for that, like AOL!
Yahoo! did pretty well actually, and managed to last 20 years longer than it should have.
Should have been AltCtrlDel.
Have gnu, will travel.
The Yahoo Web Directory was a great tool. as Yahoo went commercial the company deviated so far from it's roots that it became just another search engine plauged with fake news and celebrity gossip crap. So.. because of that Google became my web tool.
Google is becoming annoying. I'm hoping the Verizon / Yahoo deal falls through and somehow Yahoo regroups, finds it's roots and becomes the
useful internet directory that it once was. Drop the dumb celebrity crap, drop the sponsored fake news..
If the founders of Yahoo were in charge, and they stayed with a technical focus rather than fake news and celebrity gossip I think Yahoo would still be a viable business today.
I consider myself a bit of a latecomer to Slashdot.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I frankly don't see people working from home as being effective. Many people who say they are working from home are actually doing house work. I saw a note go by where someone said that they were working from home because their kid's school was cancelled. That's not working from home - that's taking care of your child while you perhaps reply to an email or two. I have no problem with people not coming to work because of a childcare issue, but take a vacation day.
For the record, I also support shorter work weeks (35 hours), overtime for everyone, more vacation time, and more offices. But people need to show up to work, especially on teams, otherwise people run open loop for too long.
Wow, I remember being a teenager and hoping that one day I'd work for that crazy tech startup Yahoo! I eventually did, I thought I'd make a career there despite their lack of documentation of old organically grown systems. Or the fact that the IT department couldn't fix a technical issue with my roaming profile. But they finally outsourced my job. Now that they're owned by a telecom (I've worked for and with a few over the years), I'll be forced to lower my expectations further.
If I slaved to start my own company with no one's help but my own hard work and labor, I don't owe you SHIT. Do you understand that? In fact, if my vast majority share of the company becomes valuable I can cash in whenever I fucking want, and guess what? I can cash out right then and there without your social justice warrior requirements for me getting paid through my own labor. I hope that makes you extremely jealous :) Oh and If I chose to retain 5 board members for 2% of the company each I can do that as well, but guess what brad? I'm still a 90% shareholder! I still started the company ! If I started a company any hired shitty management and it failed, that's my fault!
Its not up to some asshole like you to come parading in performance bonus' for a company where your share is tinsy tiny.
Oh that's right, you'll never even start a successful business! Let alone ever implement these performance bonus requirements through your own hard labor. All YOU will do is work like a fucking slave demanding that those who took a chance and sacrificed much to "pay themselves less for being successful" .
This is the very next step.
And don't forget her unprecedented level of unpleasantness. For instance, she was allocating meeting time in 5 minutes increments and had people waiting in line next to her office for "their" 5 minutes to make sure her time was not wasted; subordinates, peers, superiors, vendors - everyone was "equal" when it came to waiting for an Audience.
She, on the other hand, frequently showed up late to meetings. Sometimes hours late like in some famous instances where people had to wait for her to show up for a dinner with important clients.
The real guilty people are those who hired her at Yahoo. Any background check would have raised all those issues.
lucm, indeed.
I also distinctly remember the years when Yahoo was still relevant as a search engine. I got really pissed off at Wells Fargo. So I typed in "Wells Fargo sucks" and I instantly received a link to a bank that I'm still with almost 18 years later. I used to do this all the time when I was unhappy with some company and I wanted to find a new one to do business with.
But eventually, something changed. The results I would get with any basic Yahoo search turned out to be worthless spammy crap. This was about the time that Google showed up. I changed my browser homepage to Google and never looked back.
Another place where Yahoo lost not only me, but many other people that I know, was when they started getting bitchy about closing email accounts, deleting everything and releasing your chosen username for someone else to use if you hadn't logged in within the past 30 days. That was really when they became the ultimate worthless fucktards as far as being a legitimate tech company.
Alabia?