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Verizon Revises Its Deal With Yahoo, Reduces Price Of Acquisition By $350M (techcrunch.com)
Ingrid Lunden, writing for TechCrunch: After the disclosure of two massive data breaches last year, today Yahoo and Verizon finally confirmed new terms for the sale of Yahoo to Verizon: Verizon will pay $350 million less than originally planned, working out to a price of $4.48 billion to acquire Yahoo. The two have also agreed to share legal and regulatory liabilities after the massive data breach at Yahoo, which affected some 1.5 billion users across two hacks, one revealed in September 2016, and another in December 2016.
They want the patents, the user data, and the stake in Alibaba. The fact that Yahoo is a dumpster fire doesn't concern them.
Still vastly overpriced when you consider that the bulk of the user data is available for a hell of a lot less on the darknet (and not so darknet), so any exclusivity you might have had to it is long gone - anyone else who wants the data can have it well - and it's anyone's guess how many accounts are still truly active. There's also the general push back against tech-patents that don't involve actual tangible innovations (e.g. most - if not all - of the Yahoo! portfolio) and how much you generally need to spend on lawyers to leverage any patent assets you may have. Even you manage to successfully navigate the minefield of prior-art, amicus briefs opposing your claims, and convince a jury who quite probably has no real idea what anyone is talking about, there's still no guarantee the judge will award the massive damages you are hoping for, and the process can takes years of bad PR too - see Oracle vs. Google and (of course) SCO vs. The World.
The Alibaba stock is definitely worth something though, but in that case Verizon might actually be better off just using some third parties to buy up Alibaba shares on the open market rather than going the the pains of a trying to pick over Yahoo!'s carcass for any remaining scraps of fat and gristle that might still have a tiny bit of residual value. It's surely not going to be too long before Yahoo! would be forced to start selling off assets to keep the lights on anyway, and since the only real asset it has that it can sell is its stake in Alibaba...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!