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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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It is weird they decided to ditch the Yahoo brand, which is one of the last remaining asset (along with customer data).
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!!!
"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."
Carly Fiorina, it's debatable.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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!
Angela Merkel.
She failed at Google, she failed Yahoo
yeah, but her bank balance didn't though so do you think she cares?
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.
I've seen some estimates (googling "Marissa Mayer Severance" as high as $110 million.
That's pretty good for running a company further into the ground. I would have done it for half the price.
"Time to spend more time with the family" as they say.
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.
I haven't seen any figures but regardless, she did manage to sell a worthless company for 4+ billions. That's worth a bonus.
Fiorina? How about Elizabeth Holmes? Ellen Pao? No debate there.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Bullshit. She was known as a shitty project manager but had a relationship with Larry and later a few other higher ups so most people just let it go and she rose through the ranks.
Verizon acquired AOL for 4.4B the year before...
She didn't fail at Google, she was widely respected both internally and externally. Hence why the Yahoo board chose as CEO of the company.
>
While at Google, she was demoted and left shortly after. Yahoo hired her because "she worked at Google, she must be smart".
This sort of shit happens all the time. Helwett-Packard, world's largest computer hardware maker hired a CEO from a software-only company, who had recently been fired after only 2 years as CEO. And then, after only 11 months at HP, fired him and replaced with him the the former CEO of Ebay.
Read these posts and you'll realize how tough Hillary had it from the get-go. Bigotry, nationalism, racism, sexism, tribalism of all sorts are not confined to truck drivers in the Deep South. Presumably almost all the folks posting here are college-educated with at least middle-class backgrounds.
So no, Hillary didn't do a terrible job. She just didn't a spectacular job like Obama did in 2008 and 2012, and that's what is needed to get past this unbelievable bigoted shit.
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
She failed at Google, she failed Yahoo...
She'll probably be the next head of Telstra.
The stupidest move was when Yahoo refused the Microsoft offer. It was just down hill from then on.
"She failed at Google"
Yeah. She was in charge of search, and we all know how much Google search sucks. Maybe instead of "Altaba," they should call the new company "Alta Vista."
Wrong. She was not in charge of search at all. She had a role in the design of the search page, then she was in charge of user experience and the shopping stuff. The search stuff was (is) handled by engineers not by a PM/QA person.
lucm, indeed.
Dude not only do you suck at being snippy, you're wrong and that "Israeli Engineering Open House" blog page is not a reference.
She was not in charge of search - she was actually removed from that team because the real search guy (Amit Singhal) complained and they sent her to the shopping division ("Products Search") where they eventually put someone above her because she was a pain in the ass.
lucm, indeed.
Maybe instead of "Altaba," they should call the new company "Alta Vista."
My first thought was that the name was going to be a concern. One company with major search engine roots changing its name to one that starts with the same five letters and ends on the same as another major search engine? Will HP (or whoever owns the rights to altavista these days) let that happen without unleashing the lawyers?
What's next? Google renaming to altabeta?
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
AOL turned themselves into a media business and actually owned a lot of high traffic websites like The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and Engadget. Can't really see that worth $4B either, but it's not like they bought a dial-up business.
Yahoo probably still has Alibaba shares I assume? That might be worth quite a lot, much more than Yahoo is worth.
She didn't fail at Google, she was widely respected both internally and externally. Hence why the Yahoo board chose as CEO of the company.
The reality is Yahoo has been a zombie for years, only the investors weren't ready to admit it and put it down.
Her reputation was for working at Google. Not for being some kind of super worker. No. Her rep was for being there and having been there early on and long enough to be somebody important without actually contributing a hell of a lot. It's really a lot like having a low /. user number. It gains some respect and whatever but it doesn't really mean much.
The only reason Marissa's adventures at Yahoo lasted this long is that she was fairly smart and it helped obscure that she had no clue what the hell she was doing.
Sig for hire.
Sorry ... Could not resist ...
Totof
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.
So CEO Marissa Mayer was wrong about telecommuting. Her ban on working via network did not help Yahoo.
Some time ago the new owners of Slashdot actually posted to KIA, Reddit's infamous Gamergate forum, encouraging readers there to come over here. That's why there's so much misogynist shit here at the moment.
I don't think anyone can reasonably say Mayer killed Yahoo. She just failed to save it. I doubt most Slashdotters know how to save Yahoo, but a very loud subset does like blaming women for everything.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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
"She failed at Google"
Yeah. She was in charge of search, and we all know how much Google search sucks. Maybe instead of "Altaba," they should call the new company "Alta Vista."
Altaba - [Ahl-tah-bah]
noun
1. a contraction between Alta-vista (Yahoo bought AltaVista in 2003) and Alibaba (aka "RemainCo" part of Yahoo that holds $37billion of Alibaba stock). .
2. a generic term for a used-to-be-search-company-that-still-owns-lots-of-Alibaba stock
Example: "Altaba is a stupid but totally appropriate name for that company."
verb
1. to complete the process of running a business into the ground divesting all operations and turning it into a zombie company that will never die because it owns too much stock in a company that cannot/willnot buy the stock back without suffering a huge tax bill.
Example: "Wow, that CEO totally Altaba-ed that company!"