Yahoo To Spin Off Everything That Makes It Yahoo (nytimes.com) 210
An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo has confirmed reports from last week by saying it plans to spin off all of its assets aside from its $31 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. "In the reverse spin off, Yahoo's assets and liabilities other than the Alibaba stake would be transferred to a newly formed company, the stock of which would be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders resulting in two separate publicly-traded companies." Their decision was spurred by how stock market traders were weighing the tax risk of spinning off the most valuable part of the company.
The article notes that this probably means trouble for CEO Marissa Mayer: "Ms. Mayer, who was hired in 2012 to turn around Yahoo, had planned to spin off the company's 15 percent stake in Alibaba, bundled with a small-business services unit, into a new company called Aabaco. She then planned to focus on improving the company's core business, the sale of advertising that is shown to the roughly one billion users of Yahoo's apps and websites. Ms. Mayer is now effectively back to square one. Yahoo's core Internet operations are struggling, even though the chief executive has made dozens of acquisitions, added original video and magazine-style content, and released new apps."
The article notes that this probably means trouble for CEO Marissa Mayer: "Ms. Mayer, who was hired in 2012 to turn around Yahoo, had planned to spin off the company's 15 percent stake in Alibaba, bundled with a small-business services unit, into a new company called Aabaco. She then planned to focus on improving the company's core business, the sale of advertising that is shown to the roughly one billion users of Yahoo's apps and websites. Ms. Mayer is now effectively back to square one. Yahoo's core Internet operations are struggling, even though the chief executive has made dozens of acquisitions, added original video and magazine-style content, and released new apps."
Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, new CEO from Google comes in, sucks up a huge salary, drives Yahoo further into the ground, and is still there after almost four years. Does anyone else think that "Ms. Mayer" may have been planted at Yahoo to keep the old Internet giant from 1) threatening Google in any meaningful way 2) keep Yahoo out of the hands of Microsoft (remember that?) and 3) keep Yahoo large enough to keep Google out of antitrust trouble (here in the states anyway)? [/conspiracy]
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No. Only an unthinking paranoid moron would think that. The rest of us will just see this is as normal business SNAFU.
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I look at it the way that Microsoft threw Apple a $150M bone (http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-to-invest-150-million-in-apple/) to stave off antitrust action.
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Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Insightful)
In fairness she is probably on the right track.
Their balance sheet isn't all that bad. Probably the thing to do was and still is turn it into an investment house. By that I don't mean the lets buy and re-brand start-ups kind of investment, I mean the Berkshire Hathaway type of operation.
A lot of people suggested Microsoft should go in that direction around 1999-2001 or so. Frankly in terms of maximizing shareholder value they were probably correct. MS had really lost its way there for awhile. Shortly after they got some focus back and started producing 'quality' well marketable software again. Here we are in 2015 and I kinda think they are headed back off the deep end trying to change the revenue model for Windows and Office and continuing to muck around in the mobile space where they are simply to late to the party. MS has remembered where their bread is buttered before and probably will again.
Yahoo I am way less optimistic. In terms of technology, they have produced a gem or two along the way like 'web pipes' I think called it? Most of those never really took off though. In terms of their technology being relevant in the market place they have been floundering since before Google showed up. With the resources they have handy they could probably print money if they had a plan and drove some cool products, but they don't seem to have a technology plan. So this move probably is the best option.
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:4, Insightful)
MS had really lost its way there for awhile. Shortly after they got some focus back and started producing 'quality' well marketable software again. Here we are in 2015 and I kinda think they are headed back off the deep end trying to change the revenue model for Windows and Office and continuing to muck around in the mobile space where they are simply to late to the party. MS has remembered where their bread is buttered before and probably will again.
Microsoft is selling more tablets than Apple, making more money than Amazon in the cloud business, and based on market cap is the 3rd biggest company in America (after Apple and Exxon). Microsoft is bigger than Berkshire-Hathaway, bigger than Wells Fargo, than JP Morgan. Twice the size of Coca-Cola, Chevron or Verizon. I don't think they need the advice of some dude in the peanuts gallery as to how they should manage their business.
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So how's that:
- $8 billion purchase on Skype
- $7.2 billion on Nokia
- $2.5 billion on Minecraft
- $2 billion investment into Xbox
working out for them?
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Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Informative)
No. A single report had them outselling Apple in tablets online. The report didn't bother to list sources but they definitely didn't include online sales figures from either Apple or Amazon. Apple and Amazon are easily the two largest online iPad retailers so without their figures that report is absolutely meaningless. It also doesn't count the thousands of brick and motar locations selling iPads.
This is not a very meaningful statement. Microsoft offers a lot of managed Windows Server services on Azure and charges a pretty penny for them. Azure is where businesses go to outsource their Active Directory needs. Money is just shifting from Windows Server CALs to Azure.
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> MS had really lost its way there for awhile.
And they've found it now ??
LOL
The UI clusterfuck of Windows 8 proves that they still don't have a clue.
As I mentioned [slashdot.org]
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About a year ago, I sold a bunch of Yahoo! shares and made a mint. I believe it was a year ago last November, mid-month. You can probably find the valuation at one of the many stock ticker sites. I'm not sure of the exact dates but I believe I'd held the shares for about a year and a half. It was pretty lucrative and those should let you figure out some of the numbers involved.
I'm kind of thinking that you're not really up-to-date with that whole investor thing. I'd suggest hiring a professional if you opt
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course you can. Just read things like your post. A fine example would be that I bought a buttload of shares in Tesla when they were $24 each. Why? Well, I read a *lot* of comments and pay attention. Timing the market doesn't appear to be too difficult at all, if you're not greedy. I am not a professional but if I include the first year and a half of rather miserable investment performance, I'm averaging a 17 or 18% growth as of six months ago when I crunched the numbers. They're higher now but that's without excluding my first year and a half where I lost about 43%.
It does not appear difficult. ;-) So, you might know more than I (and I'd not contest that) and that's likely a good thing but, frankly, it's been pretty damned lucrative. I don't do the short-term investing thing. I invest for at least a year. Then, I'm just patient. My next one will be to watch VW to see how low they go this spring (maybe summer) and then I'll jump on that and probably buy at least 1000 shares while they're dirt cheap as it finally reaches the court systems and they're being dragged through the mud. Then I'll hold it, perhaps for years.
So far so good. But, certainly, I've not had much trouble timing the market. I just read comments like yours and know enough to know that I don't know everything so I learn from 'em and use the comments and use them to aid my decision making. I tend to buy and just wait. I've got patience. Then when it reaches a reasonable value, I bail. I'm not that greedy and there's no reason to stay all in if I can make a healthy profit. Hell, I don't even check stock prices daily, sometimes not for weeks.
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo was already dying. Nobody needed to do anything to drive it into the ground. For years people have been saying the best thing about Yahoo is that it owns a chunk of another company. I think Marissa Meyer was probably looking at no possibility of taking the helm at Google, through no fault of her own, so looked elsewhere. She got a chance to try to turn it around and a pile of money if it didn't work. I don't think we need a conspiracy to explain it.
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But she got rid of all those unproductive work-at-home employees! Surely that would have turned them around!
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But she got rid of all those unproductive work-at-home employees! Surely that would have turned them around!
As from the many internal communications that came out of many Yahoo employees' mouths, she did the right call with this one.
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Can you imagine any situation where Yahoo would come back, no matter who was running it? With the full support of the behemoth Microsoft, Bing is a very minor second compared to Google.
I can absolutely imagine a situation where Yahoo became a profitable tech giant. But that most likely would require Yahoo management to focus on becoming profitable instead of just becoming bigger. They have been acting like a startup who only cares about gaining market share at any cost, instead of a responsible established company looking out for their shareholder's interests.
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the world of CEOs, where competence and results have nothing at all to do with how much damned money you get paid.
I don't think she's a plant, I think Yahoo was a company which was far too screwed to readily turn itself around, and they've utterly failed to do it.
Inability of a CEO to turn around a company which has been floundering and lurching around for years doesn't necessitate a conspiracy. I think it points to the fact that people act like CEOs have any actual idea of what they're doing.
I mean, I can incompetently manage Yahoo for half the money.
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> I think Yahoo was a company which was far too screwed to readily turn itself around
Agreed. /oblg. Yahoo vs Google homepage history [imgur.com]
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I think in most cases they're glorified administrators occasionally attempting to promote something like the management trend du jour. If they're at the right place at the right time they're lauded. If they're not they move on. To be fair, CEOs of large companies have quite a lot to administer, though they're most certainly overcompensated for what they do.
what should the name of the new company be? (Score:3)
YooHoo (to acknowledge the google plant Marisa mayer's undermining strategy"
suggest your own below
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The Company Formerly Known as Yahoo
YaHole or maybe YaHolio
Yarbles (as in a kick in the Yarbles during a little ultraviolence).
YaFoo
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It would just be a holding company of some sort. Obviously the new company will have the yahoo.com domain and all the other assets associated with their online business. Seeing as how name recognition is probably the only thing they still have going for them, it would be stupid beyond belief to change their domain.
"Yahoo.com is now xyz.com. Please visit our new site at xyz.com!" - can you imagine?
I predict the original company (which will consist of just Alibaba shares) will rename itself to YahooBaba Inc,
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YahooBaba cries out for 'YeahBaby' or YaBaby
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I don't think so. Yahoo never was any good at what it does. I once had a domain there and even the tenth Customer Services Person did not understand what I meant by wanting to run my own DNS and I finally had to move it somewhere else. My guess is that level of understanding is common there. Hence the only thing needed to kill Yahoo is to wait. Mayer cannot really do anything, she just has the usual big ego and lack of understanding so common and usual in large company CEO's these days.
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What exactly would another CEO have done differently? Attacking Mayer doesn't really deal with the fact that Yahoo has been in decline for a decade, and what she inherited was a listing ship with no obvious solution. Everything that is wrong with Yahoo is Jerry Chang's fault, including the stunningly stupid move of not just selling the whole fucking thing to Microsoft.
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>> What exactly would another CEO have done differently? Attacking [Specific_CEO] doesn't really deal with the fact that [Company] has been in decline for [Period], and what [Pronoun] inherited was a listing ship with no obvious solution.
Replace all those variables with "Steve Jobs", "Apple", "Seven Years" and "He" and see if you are still convinced that what CEO's do doesn't matter.
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>> except jobs was still starting with a rabid fanbase still in place, very strong in academia
I was in academia at that time and we were ripping half the remaining Macs out to replace them with PCs, and the other half out to replace them with off-brand Macs (Umax, etc.) Meanwhile, we were experimenting with running Photoshop and Illustrator on PCs, and wondering how long the one remaining campus Mac store would be open (so we could reclaim the space). Long story short, I wouldn't have called us "rab
Yahoo's (lost) opportunities were/are legion (Score:2)
From the perspective of a long-time and fairly active flickr user, one thing they could have done was given the users the features they have constantly been asking for, instead of constant "UX" changes that (a) no one wanted and (b) removed useful features.
From the perspective of a groups user, bringing the groups up to, oh, say, the 2005 level of message display and convenience might have done something for them. It would have been nice not to have to
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Analysts in many areas have been calling for a different approach for a long time: Concentrate on the areas in which you are successful - cull the rest. Yahoo is strong in email, fantasy sports, news aggregation, and a number of other things. Concentrating on these key areas would have made for a smaller, more focused enterprise.
Instead, Yahoo did the exact opposite - go out and buy a bunch of other companies and increase scope to include a bunch of new areas - further diluting itself.
Yahoo wanted to be s
at least they admitted there is nothing to sell (Score:2)
Yahoo has recently been valued in the negative by a Wall Street weasel. probably accurately. I haven't been to the site for a decade. Oh, wait, I take that back, I was looking for instructions online on replacing the suspension air shocks on my car, and looked like an interesting link. well, it went to a crap page with thousands of unanswered questions... and the ones that were answered, on the order of "how do I apply nail polish?" had lame joke answers.
Yahoo can die now.
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More like it was a combination of Yahoo!'s tanking business, then they saw this superstar engineer at Google, then they hired her and put her in charge to try to make another Google.
Except Google came about as a unique confluence of people, talent, and technologies, and won't be duplicated. Especially not with one "superstar" employee trying to force the transformation.
Re: Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Informative)
He is right. Marissa was Larry's girlfriend at Google. You didn't know that I guess. Did you think she rose to the top at Google because she was brilliant?
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not put the female part into it. What I see is a typical worker who goes through the motions of the right university degrees, the right employer, the right talk, but also a person who has never run a company before, let alone start one, or display any great vision. It was a completely random appointment of an unproven person. They risked their multi-billion company on that. Idiots.
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Let's not put the female part into it. What I see is a typical worker who goes through the motions of the right university degrees, the right employer, the right talk, but also a person who has never run a company before, let alone start one, or display any great vision. It was a completely random appointment of an unproven person. They risked their multi-billion company on that. Idiots.
While my instincts tell me to agree w/ you, so far, I find it hard to see a successful female CEO. Mayer seems to be continuing in the tradition of Jill Barad, Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, et al. I'd be more than happy to accept what seems to be your contention that there are good female CEOs around. I'd like to see evidence of one (aside from Martha Stewart).
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That's a function of all straight males, not just SJWs, and of course they're entirely correct.
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Yawn
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Thanks for digressing and telling us about these other people who focus on inconsequential and unrelated details.
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you know who uses the term SJW?
Assholes, losers, and whiny little fucking punks with little tiny penises who have nothing to do but piss and moan about such things.
Given that the above is what your side of the argument means by "having a conversation" the reason for the skepticism (or even outright hatred) thrown your way becomes clear. When having a conversation consists of screaming "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" at someone whom you disagree with, you've proven that you're not worth listening to.
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nothing to do but piss and moan about such things.
OK, now tell us what you really think.
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I've started to prefer the term "crybully". It emphasizes the infantile nature of these people more than "SJW" does.
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It's only her second job. Give her a chance.
Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it took Ellen Pao at least 4 or 5 jobs to show how incompetent she really was.
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Would you rather sleep with Ellen Pao or systemd?
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Re:Anyone else think she could be a plant? (Score:5, Funny)
Is paranoia and misogyny all that Slashdot has to offer these days?
Nope. We got spelling errors. Grammar issues. Non sequitors and logical fallacies up the wazoo.
Not to mention ad hominen attacks.
We're quite well rounded, actually.
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>> she was Larry's girlfriend. That is the dirty secret that no one ever mentions.
Well..back to my question about being a plant. She was hired by Yahoo's board to f*** Google and steal market share. What if she's really still just f***ing Google's founder instead?
Am I being naive (Score:5, Interesting)
You have two companies, Alibaba (Chinese) and Yahoo (US). Yahoo takes over Alibaba to make one company (US). Yahoo disinvests everything into a different company, call it exactly-what-yahoo-was-before.com (US) and is now a new US company, called Yahoo but being exactly what Alibaba was before.
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That sounds about right. There might be some really exiting fraud happening too.
Those shares in Alibaba at that are not exactly unencumbered in terms of legal questions surrounding their value. It depends on Alibaba doing what they promise to do with the subsidiary the shares are actually in.
What legal recourse the share holders have if Alibaba ultimately decides to alter the terms is an open question. It also supposes the Chinese government won't for whatever reason decide to interfere with something that
Re:Am I being naive (Score:5, Informative)
Am I being naive, or just is this just a way of moving Alibaba into American ownership?
Yahoo only owns 15% of Alibaba, so it certainly is not a US company.
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If you really have your tinfoil hats ready:
According to the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, 15% ownership by an American company is enough to stop Alibaba from dealing with Cuba.
Re:Am I being naive (Score:4, Insightful)
>> is this just a way of moving Alibaba into American ownership?
I saw it as a defensive move by Yahoo bigwigs. Alibaba is the only thing in the Yahoo portfolio that's worth anything. If Yahoo's CEO/board sells Alibaba, the rest of Yahoo gets liquidated and they're quickly out of their cushy jobs. By hanging onto Alibaba, Yahoo's CEO/board forces Yahoo stockholders have to get even more creative (e.g., invest in bigger golden parachutes) to get them out of the way. And by hanging onto the assorted businesses, Yahoo's CEO/board look busy "managing" them or spin them off (like chaff) to distract any pesky press continuing to ask why Yahoo continues to fail.
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Am I being naive, or just is this just a way of moving Alibaba into American ownership?
You have two companies, Alibaba (Chinese) and Yahoo (US). Yahoo takes over Alibaba to make one company (US). Yahoo disinvests everything into a different company, call it exactly-what-yahoo-was-before.com (US) and is now a new US company, called Yahoo but being exactly what Alibaba was before.
How can you take a massive foreign company with just a 15% stake? Certainly 15% is much greater (in relative numbers) than Elliot Management 7% activist stake in Citrix (for example.) But I have a hard time believing a 15% stake on a Chinese company the size of Alibaba will somehow translate into American ownership.
What? (Score:2, Informative)
What would Yahoo be exactly? (Score:2)
If Yahoo is just an entity that owns 15% of Alibaba, is it just a holding company? Would they just need to be staffed by a dozen people who file quarterly reports? Does anyone know if Yahoo's stake in Alibaba includes actual management and/or engineering responsibilities?
tax avoidance (Score:5, Informative)
The reason this is being done is that Yahoo couldn't get a promise from the IRS that selling off Alibaba shares wouldn't be tax free. So they are doing this game of making the current company a holding company for the Alibaba shares, then putting the rest of the company in a "new" company. This is just tax avoidance, nothing more.
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Yeah. Taxes are so low that all these companies are merging or otherwise completely changing their structure to avoid paying them. All of these executives must not be able to add and subtract, because they are making strategic decisions based on taxes -- which some Slashdot commenters insist are low -- instead of anything about the actual business that they do.
Why aren't these executives happy to pay taxes for the extremely valuable benefits they get from extra government? These executives must be doubly
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Taxes ARE low
Other than the part where they are actually among the highest in the world. Other than that part.
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"If taxes are very low and extra government is very valuable, then why are these people avoiding paying them? Do they hate themselves and so they're going out of their way to increase their own suffering? Are they just extremely stupid?"
Because greed.
If it's greed, then shouldn't they be greedy for more of the extremely valuable value they get from extra government? You aren't trying to say that the value they get from the extra government is worth less than the cost in taxes, are you?
And shortsightedness. Taxes ARE low. But if they can save 5% that can be billions that they can pocket themselves TODAY. They aren't worried about five years from now. They will pocket that money now.
I see. So all these executives are just very low IQ, stupid individuals.
Or they're super smart and somehow know they'll personally be dead in 5 years so they won't need the extremely valuable value they'd get 5 years from now for the extra government spending.
You are the one that is extremely stupid, or naive. Companies will do many stupid short term things to make a few dollars now to enrich the people at the top.
Yeah, maybe
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No, I'm not trying to say that. They are probably getting more value than what they are paying in. Fortunately they have us little people paying those taxes for them. So they get the value out, without having to pay in as much. Because little people like you are helping to pay their share.
When they pay less, other people pay more? What's the mechanism for that? I didn't see that line on my tax forms last year. Is this a new thing?
Um, no. They aren't stupid. They want to get rich, fast, now. Why wait 5 years? Get rich now. In 5 years move on and get rich again at another company. Being shortsighted or greedy doesn't mean you are stupid.
But they're potentially losing out on the extremely valuable value of extra government. Slashdot commenters insist that value is worth a lot more than the tax amount.
I already did. Greed. Why would companies pay more than they have to?
Because, as Slashdot commenters insist, extra government is super valuable to them.
Don't you want the corporations to make more money so they can pay people like Marissa $50 million a year?
Do you get paid less because she makes that much? Does anyone? I don't. If no one gets paid less, why not just b
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This isn't like math or physics, where there's an immutable grand order and self-consistency which allows perfect pred
How bad has she fucked up? (Score:4, Funny)
Did she actually fuck up big-time, or did she just sort of muddle through without actually achieving much?
Because if it's the former, she could run in 2020.
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Yes, everything she touched at Yahoo turned to complete shit:
Acquisitions: Stamped, OnTheAir, Snip.it, Summly, xobni, Astrid. Basically everything but Tumblr or ad companies.
"Improvements" to: message boards, Flickr, sports, the logo, mail
Other shenanigans: NSA webcam pics, Java ad exploit
It was not a good 3.5 years. The only smart things she did was 1) approve repurchasing of some more Alibaba shares that they had sold back right before she took over, and 2) purchasing Tumblr (at least until they Yahoo
1 billion users? (Score:2)
The estimate of the number of users of Yahoo stuff is 1 billion. That's not all that far off the estimated 1.5bn for Facebook. It's also got an annual income a bit north of 7 billion dollars.
It seems remarkable that the value of that is considered so low in Yahoo compared to other companies. I guess people don't like seeing the future of those rather overvalued companies...
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Good point. How any business can have 1/7 of the entire population of the planet as users and be considered "struggling" is a bit strange. Unless they are bleeding money giving it all away for free in order to have that many users.
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How any business can have 1/7 of the entire population of the planet as users and be considered "struggling" is a bit strange. Unless they are bleeding money giving it all away for free in order to have that many users.
Answers own question.
Trouble for Marissa Mayer? How about employees? (Score:5, Insightful)
2014: $42 million
2013: $25 million
2012: $36 million
And I'm sure she'll be getting a nice parachute as well. That's pretty steep compensation for a company that has performed so poorly.
Meanwhile employees had their remote-work privileges revoked, allowing them to watch this slow-motion trainwreck of a CEO up close. And employees were recently asked by Mayer to reup for a long-term commitment to the company. Where does this leave all of them?
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>> I'm sure she'll be getting a nice parachute as well
CNN calculated her current parachute could be $110M if Yahoo sells itself (which they are positioning themselves to do by shedding crap like Yahoo) or "just" $25.8 million if the board makes her redundant.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/0... [cnn.com]
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Meanwhile employees had their remote-work privileges revoked, allowing them to watch this slow-motion trainwreck of a CEO up close. And employees were recently asked by Mayer to reup for a long-term commitment to the company. Where does this leave all of them?
At least she's easy to look at [forbesimg.com]. I'd hate to go through all of this while looking at Michael Dell or someone like that.
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Marissa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Patty and Selma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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That voice though - she sounds like Marge's sisters from the Simpsons.
I could deal with that. If she had one of those Kardashian voices though, that would be impossible.
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I think she is quite attractive.
I'm curious about the psychology of how that works.
I would bet more than a few men she's worked with have spent at least some time thinking "I wonder what she looks like naked" or "I wonder what she's like to have sex with".
Does she think about that? Does it undermine her confidence -- "these guys aren't taking me seriously, they're thinking about what I'm like bent over a couch".
Or increase it somehow, knowing that maybe its something she can use against them -- "these moro
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Strangely, none of these questions come to mind when I think about Meg Whitman.
That's not strange, that's perfectly normal.
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Long gone (Score:2)
Yahoo hasn't been yahoo for many years.
They need a name for the new company (Score:3)
Right here (Score:3)
Spin off this.
Sound investment (Score:2)
Oh, and remember that their stock market reporting and analysis services are completely non-biased. What could go wrong?
There goes my e-mail! (Score:2)
Ok, so it is called ATT mail. Still yahoo app.
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What's in a name? (Score:2)
When I first read this, gotta admit, I kinda thought "Whaaaa?"
But it hit me. This will be an EXCELLENT opportunity for Yahoo! (YAHOO!? Yahoo!? Yahoo?) to finally move past an 800lb elephant standing in the corner...right over there...IN THE CORNER!
THAT NAME.
C'mon. "Yahoo!" was fun back in the '90s. That was the internet then. But it doesn't carry the same reverence now. And this move provides a chance. If Yahoo was named something...BETTER...maybe some of its issues would be different. Sure, getting a DOMAI
Aabaco? That's genius! (Score:2)
Hold the phone! (Score:5, Funny)
Ya-who ?
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Touche! Mod +1 Funny
Spin-off as in "Circling the drain"? (Score:2)
Core Yahoo is nothing. It will just circle the drain until someone snaps it up for cheap.
Nothing to see here, just tax minimization at work (Score:3)
my concern: Other Space (Score:3)
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I hate that Yahoo's employees are basically screwed. However, I have to say, I love that Yahoo is failing as a company because every time a manager thinks "Maybe we should stop all this telecommuting stuff and go with communal desks" I can point at Yahoo as an example of how well that will work out.
Thanks for being an example to the world of how not to do things, Marissa Mayer!
I love telecommuting when it works, but we now for a fact that Yahoo was laden with thousands of people who never set foot on company premises for years just milking their bi-weekly check by logging here and there from home. I've been in such companies, and I've seen the financial havoc that such practices break on the company.
When telecommuting works, use it. When it doesn't, cut it. Yahoo's case was the later. She did the right call on this.
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And by what magic would non-productive employees actually get productive when they have to be on-site? Do you put a watcher behind each one of them that makes sure they actually work?
The only thing that move accomplished is make the non-productive ones more expensive and to drive away productive ones that liked the freedom. Stupid.
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And by what magic would non-productive employees actually get productive when they have to be on-site? Do you put a watcher behind each one of them that makes sure they actually work?
When Yahoo removed telecommuting, it was because of problems with management not with the individual workers. Management at Yahoo was too incompetent to manage telecommuting employees. Fixing this level of gross incompetence would have been too difficult and take too long, so Yahoo ended the telecommuting option.
The only thing that move accomplished is make the non-productive ones more expensive and to drive away productive ones that liked the freedom. Stupid.
If management was not capable of managing their employees, what makes you think they could properly identify non-productive employees? Marissa Mayer simply did not trust her managers enough to make
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unique selling proposition (point)
BTW I do welcome any and all references to pulp fiction.