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Verizon To Submit Bid For Yahoo (thestack.com) 68

Posted by msmash from the interest-in-Yahoo dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Sources close to the company have confirmed that Verizon will submit a first-round bid to purchase Yahoo's web business early next week, and that they may offer to take on Yahoo Japan as well. Time Inc. and Google are said to still be considering whether or not to make an offer, while AT&T, Comcast, and Microsoft have decided against entering a bid. Verizon's willingness to take on Yahoo Japan in the bid may give it a strategic advantage over other bidders. The combined value of Yahoo web and Yahoo Japan Corp. could put the value of the bid out of range for all but the largest investors, potentially putting interested private equity firms such as Bain or TPG out of the running.
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Verizon To Submit Bid For Yahoo More

Verizon To Submit Bid For Yahoo

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  • Can't make it any worse... (Score:4, Informative)

    by wardrich86 ( 4092007 ) on Friday April 08, 2016 @01:54PM (#51869887)
    They can't make it any worse than it already is... why bid for a sinking ship?
    • That's a bet I wouldn't touch. I wouldn't trust Yahoo to strategize out of a paper bag; but sheer incompetence helps make any attempts at overt malice somewhat self limiting. Verizon, unfortunately, is amply evil and not bumbling enough to stop themselves.
      br> Plus, if anyone can outdo Yahoo's garish .com bubble era UI designs, it'd be the terrible human beings behind Verizon's flay-and-reskin phone UI work.

      • Verizon, unfortunately, is amply evil and not bumbling enough to stop themselves.

        It's only too clear that you've never dealt with Verizon... If the CEO caught fire, it would take weeks for anybody to grab an extinguisher. There are isolated islands of competence inside the beast, to be sure, but the company is so far beyond dysfunctional that I'm surprised it hasn't utterly imploded. Their rent-seeking ability, to demand insanely high prices, is the only reason they're even slightly profitable.

        • I've dealt with Verizon; it's just that I've also dealt with Sprint; which is to Verizon roughly what Yahoo is to Google. That re-calibrates your standards for what a competent-evil telco looks like.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by H3lldr0p ( 40304 )

      Because marketing.

      For their internet offerings, this makes some sense. Here is a company that has some (however you may feel about that) experience being a hub for the internet. Now it's your hub. It has a web advertisement arm, it has a lot of emails and tracking data to be mined and spit back up into your larger marketing apparatus, and you can use it to capture an audience through momentum (I don't want to move my email account. it's too much trouble!) as well as exclusive offerings (join now and get the

    • Re:Can't make it any worse... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by epiphani ( 254981 ) <epiphani @ d a l .net> on Friday April 08, 2016 @02:32PM (#51870229)

      The Yahoo Japan comment is interesting. Yahoo Japan is completely separate from Yahoo Inc -- Yahoo Inc owns 34% of Yahoo Japan, Softbank (A Japanese conglomerate and major telco in Japan) owns 41%. It's a completely independent, publicly traded entity, of which Verizon wouldn't even be getting a controlling or even largest shareholder position in.

      It's an odd thing, sort of like saying "we'll buy your web, oh and also a really good investment position - we'd like that too".

      Yahoo Japan is valued at ~25B USD... and Yahoo Inc is valued at ~34B USD. That would suggest that without Yahoo's 31% stake of $8.5B in YJ, Yahoo Inc would be worth less than Yahoo Japan.

      It could very well be that Verizon is buying their Yahoo Japan position and taking their web business as part of the deal, rather than the other way around.

      • Verizon is going after ad networks. They recently bought AOL, now they are looking at Yahoo. They can't really buy Google or Facebook, so they got the next best thing.

        Now they can identify you (and your personal data) almost anywhere you go on the web, and are preparing to take a huge chunk of the video content market, where the real money is.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rsborg ( 111459 )

      They can't make it any worse than it already is... why bid for a sinking ship?

      Are you serious? Several calls to Verizon support have disabused me of that notion. Verizon is arrogant and is a money making machine. If acquired, Yahoo will change dramatically, possibly for the better, but probably for the worse.

      • They can't make it any worse than it already is... why bid for a sinking ship?

        Are you serious? Several calls to Verizon support have disabused me of that notion. Verizon is arrogant and is a money making machine. If acquired, Yahoo will change dramatically, possibly for the better, but probably for the worse.

        I find it hard to believe that even Verizon could make Yahoo any worse than it already is. Although, in all fairness, "worse" is probably not the correct word to use. I think it would be more correct to say "How could Verizon make Yahoo even more pointless than it already is".

        • They can't make it any worse than it already is... why bid for a sinking ship?

          Are you serious? Several calls to Verizon support have disabused me of that notion. Verizon is arrogant and is a money making machine. If acquired, Yahoo will change dramatically, possibly for the better, but probably for the worse.

          I find it hard to believe that even Verizon could make Yahoo any worse than it already is. Although, in all fairness, "worse" is probably not the correct word to use. I think it would be more correct to say "How could Verizon make Yahoo even more pointless than it already is".

          They will force Yahoo co-branding on your next smartphone/phablet thingummy from Verizon. That is when you will cease ignoring Yahoo and start hating it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jetkust ( 596906 )
      Believe it or not, Yahoo is still ruining their website to this day.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by edibobb ( 113989 )
        That's true! I just looked at yahoo.com for the first time in several years, and it's hopeless. Unbelievably bad. There is absolutely zero value in that declining portal with its huge overhead. Maybe Flickr is worth something -- it used to be -- if they haven't screwed it up beyond recognition.

        • Yahoo was shit when AltaVista was good. That's how long it's been shit.

          • There was a time when AltaVista was good?

            I just remember it being impossible to find anything on.

            • Back in the dial-up days, yes. Their search was flexible & accurate. Then they did a redesign, tried to become a portal (still not sure what that is) and it went to crap.

              And into the gap stepped a little upstart called Google.

    • How exactly is Yahoo! sinking? They're still making shedloads of money and have a massive userbase, even though they aren't exactly 'cool' by the standards of the digerati.

    • Because Verizon has delusions of grandeur.

      Yahoo over the last ten (?) years has gone through multiple restructuring, re-organizations, re-prioritization, etc., and failed all of them. Verizon though thinks through their managerial prowess, they'll be able to turn Yahoo into something profitable. It's narcissism in the extreme. Yahoo may not have been managed well, but Verizon? What's Verizon? A company that has succeeded due to the anti-competitive landscape of the US wireless market, and not much else.

  • I'll never touch Yahoo! or it's affiliated web properties again. Shame that, Flickr and Tumblr have been a boon to my photography.

    • No kidding. You can kiss Yahoo goodbye if verizon gets their hands on them.

      • The Yahoo directors couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag with a chainsaw in each hand, so it's hard to see how it could get any worse.

        Wait, you say Verizon is going to buy it? Holy shit, prepare to hit bottom and plunge to the center of the Earth.

  • The 44.6 billion dollar question. (Score:3)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday April 08, 2016 @01:55PM (#51869911) Journal
    Will the offer be more or less than 44.6 billion dollars.

    • Re:The 44.6 billion dollar question. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rahvin112 ( 446269 ) on Friday April 08, 2016 @02:12PM (#51870055)

      Even if they get 5 billion they'll have gotten more money in the long run than the microsoft purchase. At the time Microsoft offered to purchase Yahoo, they still had all the shares of Alibaba, something that ended up being sold for right around 40 Billion and distributed to shareholders. By that measure alone the Microsoft deal was severely undervalued.

  • I was commenting on the Devops Is Dead article when it disappeared. Was this article so embarrassingly bad that the Slashdot editors felt embarrassed enough to pull the article?

  • I'm curious.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Friday April 08, 2016 @02:11PM (#51870047) Journal

    I'm curious....what kind of head injuries do the people at Verizon have, anyway?

    It's like they all got together and said, "We have a shitload of money...how can we flush it down a toilet to best effect?"

    • a priority. It's how many people can you harvest data from. Remember, Verizon is home of the Super Cookie. Now, most Yahoo users are using it because they're probably used to it (i.e. elderly) and/or they don't know how to change their default Firefox search.

      It's a whole new world of spying and tying that across the phone they might already have bugged means some more Google style multi-angle fuckery. It means they can set Yahoo as the default search on their phones and get ad revenue for the spying they'r

      • It makes sense if you assume people are stupid (most are)

        Thank god for people like you. How can I elect you my leader?

    • Verizon wants to own web services they can zero-rate the data on.

    • flushing money down the toilet can be a good strategy for tax purposes if nothing else

      • flushing money down the toilet can be a good strategy for tax purposes if nothing else

        My philosophy on getting rid of unwanted money boils down to "hookers and blow". It's been pretty damn effective so far.

  • I can't see much benefit owning Yahoo! would be to Google. Many of Yahoo!'s features would likely be shut down such as mail and the home page. Google has mail, probably the most used web mail app on the planet and would transfer Yahoo! mail users to Gmail. Yahoo!'s home page consisting of horrible click bait links is pretty bad and there's already Google News. (Google should bring back Google Reader.) One thing I find much more useful is Yahoo!'s financial sites particularly it's portfolio management. Googl
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • And they have been for a long time...

  • Verizon has been shrinking in recent years because they can't manage everything they own. Sold off Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and most of New England was sold off and they turn over more and more of the former Bell Atlantic / NYNEX region to FairPoint Communications. They've stalled FIOS rolled out and New England areas are exploring more municipal broadband to shake off Verizon's slow speeds since FiOS expansion is done. WHY would Verizon waste more time on content when they're soo badd at it? They eve

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