$5Bn?
You mean they were worth more than $5? Who'da thunk it!
Verizon has sold its media division, including the early internet portals Yahoo! and AOL, to Apollo Global Management, a private equity fund, for $5bn, it announced on Monday. The US telco giant will pocket $4.25bn in cash with preferred interests of $750m, and keep a 10 per cent stake in Verizon Media in a deal that is …
- 2015: Buy AOL for $4.4 Billion. No-one understands why.
- 2017: Buy Yahoo! for $4.5 Billion. No-one understands why.
- 2021: Sell both for $5 Billion. Because, well, why did you buy them in the first place?
Now I understand why all those MBA's are getting paid the big bucks.
“Verizon Media has done an incredible job turning the business around over the past two and a half years and the growth potential is enormous,” Hans Vestberg said in a statement.
When Verizon bought Yahoo in 2016, it had a search market share of about 3%. Now they're around 1.5%. That's an impressive turnaround, no question. Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/worldwide/2016
With low numbers like that, there is certainly growth potential, but also death-spiral potential.
So.. wot about the ARPU AND CURN AND BURN and the run rate num's? *Checks 10-k fillings*
Oh. Lost 1/2 the market share and whatnot. Uh.
Uhm. Does this mean the sign off the HWY-101 before you go to Oakland stays or goes at this point?
RIP AMPEX SIGN... Looking sad next to where @Home use to be (Now Standford MedSomething).
*Shrug.gif*
Well, like sawing a woman in half, I haven't actually done it but I'm willing to try. Cash up front.
There are some things we humans do that are bonkers: Believe in Gods. Assume programs will work. Pretend that support required will be minimal. Discount the need for documentation. I can understand how some cryptocurrencies might work. Why is there so much free Covid testing in the UK in supermarket car parks? Because it is 50% accurate. (50% of actual +ves reported) Toss a coin.
So the world is full of bogus deals, but why do BILLIONS get thrown at a few trademarks? I haven't seen many Equity Funds investing in Hansom Cabs, stagecoaches, semaphores, fleets of narrow boats, 8-track-tapes, transistor radios and penny-farthings.
Why?
> I haven't seen many Equity Funds investing in Hansom Cabs, stagecoaches, semaphores, fleets of narrow boats, 8-track-tapes, transistor radios and penny-farthings.
I assume you mean recently. I'm sure they (or their equivalents) did in the good old days.
I knew people who hung them in windows to warn birds away. (There was a popular notion this would discourage birds from flying into the glass; I have no idea if this has been tested in any methodologically-sound fashion.)
For a while it was popular in some circles1 to hang one from the rear-view mirror of one's car, which would occasionally reflect the sun right into the driver's eyes.
And, of course, they were commonly used as coasters.
1Heh.
Ah, yes, TechCrunch, Engadget, etc, those are those sites which put up a terrifying full-page cookie slurp notice barricade in your way before you can even try to read whatever article you have unwittingly followed a link to. There's a reason why I avoid them and therefore would never even think of having them on my regular "must read" list (unlike this esteemed publication). Good riddance to them!
A bit of a shame about Yahoo itself, though. In the olden days, its directory, web search, services like eGroups/Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Finance were very useful, but while most of the world was on pay-per-minute dial-up, the rest of their web services rather less so, while you had to watch the clock. By the time broadband came around, the Yahoo websites (like Alta Vista before them) had become an overweight mess of advertising and bloated home pages, and some minimalist lightweight startup had appeared and came along and Gobbled up, sorry, Googled up, their lunch, although they too later turned into a many-tentacled monster, but by that time the damage had been done, and I don't think Yahoo ever recovered from that. They maybe could have had a chance with Flickr, but it never seemed to move much beyond a bit of a niche.