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Verizon Admits Defeat With $4.6 Billion AOL-Yahoo Writedown (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Verizon is conceding defeat on its crusade to turn a patchwork of dot-com-era businesses into a thriving online operation. The wireless carrier slashed the value of its AOL and Yahoo acquisitions by $4.6 billion, an acknowledgment that tough competition for digital advertising is leading to shortfalls in revenue and profit. The move will erase almost half the value of the division it had been calling Oath, which houses AOL, Yahoo and other businesses like the Huffington Post. The revision of the Oath division's accounting leaves its goodwill balance -- a measure of the intangible value of an acquisition -- at about $200 million, Verizon said in a filing Tuesday. The unit still has about $5 billion of assets remaining. Verizon also announced yesterday that 10,400 employees are taking buyouts to leave the company. The cuts are "part of an effort to trim the telecom giant's workforce ahead of its push toward 5G," TechCrunch reported.
The real idiots were Jerry Yang and company who turned down Steve Ballmer's offer of tens of billions to buy Yahoo.
Microsoft offered Yahoo $44.6B. They later sold out to Verizon for $4.8B. Now they are worth $0.2B.
After Jerry rejected the deal and Microsoft walked away, many people wondered what Jerry's plan was. It turned out that he had no plan, no ideas, nothing. The company just continued to spiral the drain.
At least Jerry lost his job for that blunder.
Leftist version of Breitbart
Literally. Huffington Post was co-founded by Ariana Huffington and ... Andrew Breitbart.
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