Verizon paid actual money for Yahoo. It is officially 1997 again.

[MinisterofDOOM]

What kind of mirror universe are we living in?

$4.8 Billion

BILLION.

For a brand that has existed as nothing more than a brand name attached to outdated services for many years.

Anyone have any idea what they're hoping to get out of this deal?

I can't imagine spending 48 bucks for Yahoo and feeling good about it.

[Bubba1]

I'm no expert but I imagine it's a combination of things. As hopelessly antiquated as you think they are, they still generate over a billion dollars per year in free flow cash (cash flow from ops less capital expenditures),which is attractive to investors. Their market share has been slowly shrinking, especially in the US, but they still have many millions of subscribers globally, which still translates to seriously huge web advertising revenue. Plus I'm sure the shrinking market share helped depress their stock prices, making them more vulnerable to acquisition. On the surface it doesn't seem that big of a risk for Verizon given how insanely huge Verizon already is, especially if they combine much the back office stuff. But it's difficult to say how good a deal it is unless one knows all of what's included in the deal. I have no idea. I do know Yahoo has some strong performing divisions, including Yahoo Japan & Alibaba. I'm guessing the deal will end up being good for Verizon and their shareholders, but suck for a lot of Yahoo employees who will likely lose their jobs as a result. we'll eventually find out how good or bad it is depending on what happens with Verizon's stock. but like most mergers/acquisitions, the reduction of choices in the market is not necessarily good for us consumers and reduces the overall # of good jobs out there.

[MinisterofDOOM]

My understanding is the purchase did not include Yahoo Japan OR Alibaba, which makes it even stranger.

[Bubba1]

eir My understanding is the purchase did not include Yahoo Japan OR Alibaba, which makes it even stranger.

Hmmm. That is interesting. I suppose if I owned a lot of Verizon stock (I don't) I might pause and ask a couple questions. Though I can't imagine Verizon spending billions acquiring Yahoo unless they saw an opportunity to improve their position beyond the investment. Not exactly an impulse buy. I'm concerned about the fate of the impacted Yahoo employees as I'vev worked for 2 companies that got sold/acquired. I ended up okay both times, but unless those employees know Verizon has a specific interest in them, they should probably try to get out right now... if they can. Severence packages can be nice, but it's usually not enough. Sadly, this type of situation happens a lot.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

I actually use Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance quite a bit. The finance user interface and layout seems to be much better than even my Scottrade account... that and I don't have to log in to view anything.

[Jesda]

To the contrary, Verizon paid hardly a dime (relative to previous value) for the fifth busiest site on the entire internet.

I ditched Yahoo Weather when they ruined it and took hourly forecasts and hourly humidity off the front page (it matters to convertible owners) but I still use Yahoo Sports on my phone during MLB playoffs.

Yahoo recently got a bump in traffic after becoming the default search engine for Firefox. There's a lot of untapped potential in the Yahoo universe. It just needs to find a reason to exist other than being an inferior alternative to Google.

Even AOL is carving out its place as an advertising and alternative media platform.

[elwesso]

I think some ISP's use Yahoo as their base for webmail and things like that. I'm pretty sure that my parent's ISP webmail is through yahoo, so since they have to navigate to Yahoo anyway I'm sure occasionally they might click something interesting or do a quick search.

https://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/147941303 ... g-business

First off, I didn't realize that Verizon bought AOL last year. After reading the press release, it appears that the move was two-fold... First would be to separate itself from all the Asian shenanigans they have going on, and also to increase distribution of yahoo via Verizon. I wonder if Verizon wants to piggy-back on a lot of the advertising and whatnot that Yahoo already has setup? Also, it makes sense to acquire anything internet based if they want to grow because you can only increase rates on messaging/data so much, plus they're probably still losing customers slowly for people getting rid of cable and land-line phones.

[centralcoaster33]

Yahoo has it's popular "News" articles and commenting. Yahoo also has a bunch of intellectual property. You may have heard about them selling off patents. One quote for the total value of just the patents was about 4 Billion. I have yahoo for my free email. I'm guessing Verizon's purchase of Yahoo came with some of those patent rights, but maybe that's all been severed.