“Can you Yahoo me now?”
July 24, 2016 1:29 PM   Subscribe

Verizon to Pay $4.8 Billion for Yahoo’s Core Business [The New York Times] Yahoo was the front door to the web for an early generation of internet users, and its services still attract a billion visitors a month. But the internet is an unforgiving place for yesterday’s great idea, and on Sunday, Yahoo reached the end of the line as an independent company. The board of the Silicon Valley company agreed to sell Yahoo’s core internet operations and land holdings to Verizon for $4.8 billion, according to people briefed on the matter, who were not authorized to speak about the deal before the planned announcement on Monday morning.

Related:

- Why Yahoo Sold Itself [The New York Times] Yahoo, the Internet portal giant, has been struggling for a decade to find a winning strategy against competitors in search, social media and video. Now it is poised to give up, selling itself to Verizon for a small fraction of what it was worth at its height in 2000.
1. It has lots its comeptitive edge.
2. The company is shrinking.
3. It is under pressure from shareholders.
- Why Verizon Wants to Buy an Ailing Yahoo [The Washington Post]
Verizon’s desire for Yahoo spotlights the grand scale of its ambitions: Not happy with just providing access to content, it wants to own a fat chunk of the online-content industry. Consumers are migrating from simple email and Web browsing on their smartphones to rich mobile video and online games. And these data-hog services represent a lucrative opportunity to sell ads and, in some cases, a source of subscription revenue. Analysts say the sprawling nature of Yahoo's properties led its leadership astray. "Yahoo has failed for the last 13 years to exploit as a unified whole what is actually an excellent set of parts," said Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst at Forrester Research. "Yahoo hasn't been able to clearly define what it is and what value it provides." Yahoo was a platform for content, and a failing one.
posted by Fizz (96 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I don't care that much about Yahoo!, but despite Yahoo!'s mismanagement I've grown attached to Tumblr and flickr from the time they were beta. Let's hope they survive.
posted by sukeban at 1:34 PM on July 24, 2016 [29 favorites]


.
posted by Jubal Kessler at 1:34 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


What is their core business, anyway?
posted by thelonius at 1:36 PM on July 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


thelonius: "What is their core business, anyway?"

Fantasy football.
posted by octothorpe at 1:38 PM on July 24, 2016 [26 favorites]


if yahoo answers disappears i will be heartbroken
posted by dismas at 1:39 PM on July 24, 2016 [10 favorites]


What is their core business, anyway?

Do you want to add your phone number to this comment? Add your phone number to this comment by clicking here.
posted by cashman at 1:40 PM on July 24, 2016 [15 favorites]


I wonder what they have in their patent portfolio that can be used to fuck over net neutrality.
posted by Artw at 1:42 PM on July 24, 2016 [16 favorites]


AOL last year, Yahoo this year. Looks like Verizon is trying to corner the "businesses people are surprised still exist" market.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:43 PM on July 24, 2016 [16 favorites]


Bye, Marissa!
posted by leotrotsky at 1:44 PM on July 24, 2016 [10 favorites]


if yahoo answers disappears i will be heartbroken

Don't worry, if you're still needing an answer: 'Just Jeeves It!'
posted by Fizz at 1:44 PM on July 24, 2016 [6 favorites]


Please, not Flickr.
posted by acb at 1:46 PM on July 24, 2016 [14 favorites]


I wonder what they have in their patent portfolio that can be used to fuck over net neutrality.

One of the articles I read says the deal does not include patents.
posted by cell divide at 1:47 PM on July 24, 2016


Then I'm utterly puzzled as to what use Verizon has for them.
posted by Artw at 1:49 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


I wouldn't know yahoo was still around except for a couple of people I know with yahoo mail addresses.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:49 PM on July 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


Sangermaine: "AOL last year, Yahoo this year. Looks like Verizon is trying to corner the "businesses people are surprised still exist" market."

Next year, they'll buy Lycos.
posted by octothorpe at 1:54 PM on July 24, 2016 [14 favorites]


I like Tumblr quite a bit, so I'm hoping it survives. Pretty much everything else I'd ever used with the Y! brand was very, very bad, however. Specifically their user portal, which was a confusing, convoluted mess. I signed up to play fantasy sports a few years ago, and trying to figure out how to get an old account up and running was impossible. I had to make a new account, and then figuring out how to add that to the Fantasy league I wanted was difficult. The whole thing, going through menu after menu of confusing crap, left a bad taste in my mouth. Likewise, I watched the sixth season of Community on their streaming site, and hated the cluttered interface. Similar experiences at Gmail, Hulu, and Netflix made Yahoo! seem like a company that had no idea how to design for the web, or rather, something that was constantly trying to get you to use another piece of their platform, constantly slinging ads at you, and designed in as confusing a way as possible because of the above.

So the fact that Verizon now has them (also some of the worst web UX I've ever experienced, and one of the least trustworthy telecoms after all the others) and is mashing that together with the ambulatory corpse of AOL of all things... Well, I don't see things getting much better for poor ol' Yahoo!.
posted by codacorolla at 1:54 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


I wouldn't know yahoo was still around except for a couple of people I know with yahoo mail addresses.

*waves*

Although I changed my primary address a few months ago when I heard Yahoo was probably for sale. This is pretty much the kick in the pants I need to pull the decades of messages out of there before Verizon gets their paws on it.
posted by indubitable at 1:58 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


I feel like Yahoo!'s main business in America is "having given us a sixth season of Community." Now that that's complete, there's not much left.

Yahoo is still huge in Japan. It's a remarkably tech-unsavvy country and they are so deeply entrenched that if you were to suggest using Google to a non-hobbyist computer user, they would certainly find it by searching Yahoo for it.
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:59 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


"Yahoo has failed for the last 13 years to exploit as a unified whole what is actually an excellent set of parts,"

They actually failed to exploit the parts, too.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 1:59 PM on July 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm still amazed we live in a world where you can buy a company that doesn't produce anything at the bargain price of 4.8 billion dollars because it's failing. I don't know how much physical assets that includes though. 4.5 billion in prime real estate?
posted by bongo_x at 2:00 PM on July 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


What is their core business, anyway?

Yahoo's core business is buying decent web properties and running them straight into the ground.
posted by entropicamericana at 2:03 PM on July 24, 2016 [38 favorites]


My daughter ran up an exorbitant data usage fee last month. I mean it was crazy; she was streaming gigs upon gigs of music and videos.

When I paid my bill, I wondered how Verizon would use all that extra money.
posted by 4ster at 2:05 PM on July 24, 2016 [4 favorites]


//Bye, Marissa//

Enjoy that $55 million severance package. Not a bad payday for somebody who utterly failed at her job.
posted by COD at 2:07 PM on July 24, 2016 [10 favorites]


I use Yahoo mail for everything. It will be a major nuisance if they discontinue it or make it unusable.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:08 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


There's something hilarious about Verizon owning Tumblr. It's like Hot Topic being bought by Your Dad.
posted by selfnoise at 2:11 PM on July 24, 2016 [31 favorites]


55 million allows her and her heirs to spend 2.2 million per year, into perpetuity.

So yeah, nice package.
posted by yesster at 2:12 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yahoo is still huge in Japan.

Thank you for sharing this. It's a good reminder that people use the web differently in different parts of the world. I realize how simple that sounds. It's easy to snark on Yahoo! but I imagine many people have incorporated it into their daily lives to the same extent with which many people do here in N. America with Google or Apple. There are many digital tribes.

Though I fear this particular tribe may not be around for much longer.
posted by Fizz at 2:13 PM on July 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


Maybe Verizon has seen the terrible state of "where do I put all my digital pictures once my phone fills up?" and plans to use Fickr to meet their users' need.

(As a VZW customer, I sure hope so, anyway...)
posted by wenestvedt at 2:13 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


Someone needs to ask about the continued viability of Yahoo! Answers at Yahoo! Answers.
posted by raysmj at 2:14 PM on July 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


AOL last year, Yahoo this year. Looks like Verizon is trying to corner the "businesses people are surprised still exist" market.

Don't forget the critical C-levels Execs With Big Egos Who Don't Understand Branding market.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:17 PM on July 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


Don't forget the critical C-levels Execs With Big Egos Who Don't Understand Branding market.

Oh, I didn't realize we were now switching subjects and talking about Blackberry.
posted by Fizz at 2:19 PM on July 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


Someone needs to ask about the continued viability of Yahoo! Answers at Yahoo! Answers.

A: Probably still gonna be here. I asked my mom about it and she said check in a while and I just checked and it's still here so idk lol.
posted by cashman at 2:22 PM on July 24, 2016 [35 favorites]


Next up, Verizon will offer to its customers RealPlayer
posted by Ber at 2:22 PM on July 24, 2016 [7 favorites]


The 1980s General Motors of tech companies.
posted by TrialByMedia at 2:25 PM on July 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


I hope this means our local neighborhood Yahoo group will finally die.
posted by benzenedream at 2:32 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


N'thing the hope that they don't fuck Flickr up (any more than its already been fucked, anyway)
posted by caution live frogs at 2:34 PM on July 24, 2016 [4 favorites]


I wouldn't know yahoo was still around except for a couple of people I know with yahoo mail addresses.

I'll admit that I still have the Yahoo address I set up in college, almost 15 years ago. Except for the occasional technical hiccup it's been okay (and despite having a Gmail account for a while now I've never gotten around to migrating everything over).

That being said, I'm really surprised they weren't sold off years ago.
posted by photo guy at 2:34 PM on July 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


Buyer beware: Mozilla deal demands up to $1 billion after Yahoo’s sale, Recode says:
Marissa Mayer struck a deal with Mozilla in 2014 specifying annual payments of $375 million (£290 million) to the browser creator in exchange for Yahoo's search engine appearing in the default position on Firefox. That $375 million price tag will be paid out every year until 2019 one way or another—even if Mozilla doesn’t like the company that buys Yahoo and decides to walk away.
Expect weird changes to Firefox. Also, tumblr is going to continue to inflict random code changes on its users in attempts to make money (and continue to fail, because so far the only successful user-based-content methods of making money are (1) load it up with ads and pay-to-play widgets, and FB has that cornered and tumblr users will wander away/back to Facebook rather than tolerating it, or (2) have a small number of paid users covering the costs of a larger number of free ones - and that method doesn't get enough returns to make venture capitalists happy.

I love tumblr - it's delightfully chaotic and there's really nothing else like it - but it is going to collapse, whether that's this owner or the next, when the higher-ups finally realize that no, there really isn't a way to make money off an ever-streaming collection of porn, extreme leftist rants, and random gifsets. (There's more than that to tumblr... but everything else is there because of those; there are better platforms for fanfic and linguistic history discussions.) This is especially true because tumblr users skew incredibly young - it really doesn't matter how invasive the ads get; the point is, most tumblr users haven't got any money to buy things with.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:39 PM on July 24, 2016 [14 favorites]


Yahoo is still huge in Japan.
Yahoo Japan is a separate company (though part owned by Yahoo), and isn't part of this deal.
posted by kickingtheground at 2:42 PM on July 24, 2016 [5 favorites]


Also, tumblr is going to continue to inflict random code changes on its users in attempts to make money

Unless the folks at Verizon view it as a thing that people are paying them to access and just leave it alone. One can always hope.
posted by suetanvil at 2:46 PM on July 24, 2016


Meanwhile Lycos search is still broken...
posted by guiseroom at 3:02 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


"I hope this means our local neighborhood Yahoo group will finally die."

All my local quasi-racist NIMBYs are already on Nextdoor.

Kinda hope this means that somehow Tumblr and Flickr will get to spin off onto their own again. Both seem like the actual market for them can be coming up with cool new software that can be spun off on their own. (Maybe I'm unduly swayed by spending too much time talking to a friend who's company ostensibly makes a Twitch clone for mobile gaming, but really makes its money by coming up with compression algorithms and codecs, then licensing those.)
posted by klangklangston at 3:04 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


there are better platforms for fanfic and linguistic history discussions.

I have a permanent LJ account, too /bitter
posted by sukeban at 3:04 PM on July 24, 2016 [7 favorites]


"I hope this means our local neighborhood Yahoo group will finally die."

All my local quasi-racist NIMBYs are already on Nextdoor.


That all seems to have moved to Facebook around there. Nextdoor got a little activity when it moved in but is mostly a ghost town these days.
posted by octothorpe at 3:17 PM on July 24, 2016


I feel like Yahoo!'s main business in America is "having given us a sixth season of Community." Now that that's complete, there's not much left.

Ahem.

#sixseasonsandamovie
posted by yellowbinder at 4:05 PM on July 24, 2016 [10 favorites]


1. It has lots its comeptitive edge.

I am truely sorry for your lots
posted by infinitewindow at 4:10 PM on July 24, 2016 [15 favorites]


An AskMe from February when I was having a panic attack about having several years of pictures on Flickr and where to move them too.
posted by Wordshore at 4:16 PM on July 24, 2016 [4 favorites]


I have a couple yahoo addresses that I use for spam avoidance and email I know will be unimportant. For the last two or three years every time I login they ask for my phone number and to change my password.

Their fantasy basketball stuff is good, and The Vertical coverage of the NBA is excellent. Tumblr is still interesting but I think it's declining. The novelty wore off long ago and I find myself going there less and less. Their phone weather app is well designed.

Some other things they have are nice too, but as a whole it doesn't mesh. Why is that?
posted by aerotive at 4:18 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


A couple of years ago Yahoo was my preferred portal for NFL, NBA, and MLB; especially real-time play-by-play tracking. I cannot remember exactly when it happened but one of their upgrades made me an ex-user in two or three sessions.
posted by bukvich at 4:28 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


Literally the only thing I care about anymore in regards to Yahoo is the survival of the Yahoo Answers service for the sake of MBMBAM. But honestly with Quora and Wikihow out there there's still plenty of rich goof veins ready for mining.

(Once upon a time I liked their Sports stuff because it had a nice lightweight homepage and the fantasy leagues were run well, but those got spoiled too.)
posted by kmz at 4:34 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


That all seems to have moved to Facebook around there. Nextdoor got a little activity when it moved in but is mostly a ghost town these days.

So I was unexpectedly home for a few days this past weekend. This is the impression I got. My mom and her husband were full of gossip about the neighborhood shenanigans. Which other people in the neighborhood seemed to be way into too. Gossips find new ways to spread rumor apparently. And in this newly built neighborhood it was strong. There was the guy commenting on every post whether he was involved or not. There was the young family who is mad that not every other household recognizes how great their kids are. There's the old couple who lived here a decade or so before everyone else and now don't like all them new people ruining 'their property values'. They even have a facebook group where they all argue with each other about these things. It's pretty active.

I tried to joke about how silly all of this was but they kept posting comments and stoking the fires and the comment threads would continue for days. It's pretty incredible that in these times this is what you care about. But that's their lives.
posted by downtohisturtles at 4:38 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, I didn't realize we were now switching subjects and talking about Blackberry

O Snap. But yeah terrible executives are rampant and there's no public need for most tech companies like there is for water, electricity, or the DMV. Which means instead of lingering like malcompetent lichen, they actively destroy their hosts.

Still there's enough money in the pool to support it, so we get to watch for awhile. I wonder if these 55 million dollar leaders will ever even pretend to be worth it.

That was a gutsy decision, sir!
posted by petebest at 5:05 PM on July 24, 2016


There was a period two or three years ago when I was watching a lot of excellent stuff on Yahoo Screen. But then I got distracted and haven't looked at what they are offering since then.

I also have used Yahoo! Messenger continually for, um... since it started? Although I've realized in the past month that nobody that I have in my Y!M contact list actually logs into that anymore, so I might as well just give that up. Even three years ago, it was a major method of contact between me and several of my friends. Those friends have either migrated to other platforms or have gotten lost from my life. Part okay, part sad about that.

I can remember way back when in the early days of the web, creating a website and then submitting it to Yahoo! and waiting to see if it got approved to part of their search. Back then, there was a page that was "everything that is new on the WWW that we added today", that was quite literally nearly EVERYTHING that was new that had been added to the web. Things were much more of a small community back then, and you could easily browse through every new webpage each day. That ended a LONG time ago.

I have no idea what Verizon has as a plan for this acquisition. But I've been using Yahoo! in various forms nearly since it was founded. I hope the services it offers that are still useful to myself and others continue to exist.
posted by hippybear at 5:37 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


Flickr has continued meet my own needs perfectly for years. It's nice to have a place online that I can direct my friends and family to whenever I've uploaded new photos, without the same ultra-public presence of social apps. So I'm not ready to leave yet, but what I am planning to do is at least back up everything I've got there. I think I've got all my originals...spread out over multiple drives and folders...but it would be good to have a backup of everything in one place, especially if I do decide to transfer to some other platform.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:53 PM on July 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hrmm, I'm kinda surprised that Yahoo has anything worth that much at this point.

I guess a handful of service platforms and some data centers.

Maybe Marissa can do a weekend brand redesign for Verizon before she leaves?
posted by vuron at 6:04 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm worried about Tumblr and Flickr. My guess is that they'll both get bought in the relatively near future.

Sigh. All it would take for them to basically ruin tumblr would be to pull a Facebook/Instagram and reorder the dashboard. I guess it's only a matter of time.
posted by sleeping bear at 6:52 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


So Yahoo Japan (which is profitable) is not included in this deal, and Yahoo's massive patent collection is not included in this deal.

So that leaves, yeah... fantasy sports and real estate? I know they own a lot of buildings in Santa Clara and surroundings.
posted by rokusan at 7:00 PM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


Two “under-appreciated” Yahoo assets are its 1 million square feet of buildings and real estate, which could be worth around $1 billion, and perpetual royalty payments the company receives from Yahoo Japan, in which Yahoo owns a 35.5% stake, worth nearly $1 billion.

That's 40% of the bid right there.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:15 PM on July 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


After selling out Chinese dissidents who subsequently spent a decade in jail, the dissolution couldn't happen to a nicer company.
posted by persona au gratin at 8:04 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm not sure the deal includes the real estate or Yahoo Japan. I thought those were going to remain along with the Alibaba stake as a seperate company.
posted by humanfont at 8:05 PM on July 24, 2016


Soooo... AT&T's internet service email system is operated byYahoo and AT&T UVerse's web login system is basically Yahoo's identity system. Awkward.
posted by GuyZero at 9:25 PM on July 24, 2016 [7 favorites]


It's easy to snark on Yahoo! but I imagine many people have incorporated it into their daily lives to the same extent with which many people do here in N. America with Google or Apple.

Yahoo Japan's search & search ads business is run by Google. Basically Yahoo owns part of a different company also called Yahoo whose business is actually Google.
posted by GuyZero at 9:28 PM on July 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


Enjoy that $55 million severance package. Not a bad payday for somebody who utterly failed at her job.

In fairness to Meyer, it makes little difference at which exact moment you were made Captain of The Titanic.
posted by GuyZero at 9:30 PM on July 24, 2016 [10 favorites]


Then I'm utterly puzzled as to what use Verizon has for them.

Based on Hacker News comments, guess who else has no idea what to do with Yahoo?
posted by GuyZero at 9:31 PM on July 24, 2016


Then I'm utterly puzzled as to what use Verizon has for them.

Verizon's logo could use a little sprucing up. Maybe they want a new logo done over the weekend.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:59 PM on July 24, 2016 [4 favorites]


I think I've got all my originals...spread out over multiple drives and folders...but it would be good to have a backup of everything in one place

There are some downloaders available - I think bulkr is one of the better ones. Or you can use the camera roll interface which allows you to download photos taken on the same day as zip archives. You can add multiple days, but that might be a bit fiddly depending on the number of days added.

Why Flickr didn't implement something better is beyond me.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 3:39 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yahoo's killer app was the directory. When they shut that down, it was all over for them. There's still a market for that, I'm convinced. Whether it can be monetized, well... Not all web companies *should* be valued in the ten figures. But a small, nicely curated directory would still be useful.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:50 AM on July 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


dmoz.org is still online, although I don't know how updated (I checked yesterday, I had to)
posted by sukeban at 4:57 AM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


You can have my Yahoo but don't you dare touch my Alta Vista!
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 5:04 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think the other big attraction for Verizon is the Ads business. Yahoo was one of the first and strangely still one of the biggest players in the online advertising biz. That plus a bajillion not-so-hip-but-very-loyal users of a potpourri of legacy products and it may add up to $5 Billion worth of stuff. Certainly seems like a sensible valuation compared to many over-hyped flavor of the month startups.
posted by mr.ersatz at 6:50 AM on July 25, 2016


Sigh. I guess I need to get IMAP for Yahoo Mail working, and do a full download.

And then make two copies, so I don't accidentally delete it all like I deleted the last IMAP dump I did from a disappearing provider.
posted by clawsoon at 7:02 AM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Maybe they should have taken that $47B bid from Microsoft a few years ago. Ouch.
posted by LizBoBiz at 7:24 AM on July 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


The first time I independently used a computer was in 1999, during a Library class in second grade. We learned how to turn on a computer, how to open up a web page, and how to use a site called "Yahoo" to search for information about the book we were reading.

My friends and I thought the name "Yahoo" was ENDLESSLY funny, and after 10 minutes of shouting "YAHOOOOO" at each other, we were all put in time out.

It's a bit weird to think that Yahoo is going to be gone now, because its service has been causing me grief from day one of my internet life....
posted by Deeleybopper at 7:26 AM on July 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


Yahoo, your one-stop-shop for missed opportunities. Who wouldn't want to buy them?
posted by tommasz at 7:29 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I see a lot of "Ya-who?" comments in here; is nobody else troubled by the idea of ISPs owning content hosts?
posted by splitpeasoup at 7:58 AM on July 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


Apparently oil traders use Yahoo Messenger extensively. We also use it in a tangentially related field.
posted by dabug at 8:02 AM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


What is their core business, anyway?

Yahoo simplifies an internet experience flooded with options by buying popular web apps and destroying them.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:34 AM on July 25, 2016 [9 favorites]


Soooo... AT&T's internet service email system is operatedbasically Yahoo's identity system. Awkward.--GuyZero

I thought AT&T recently moved away from Yahoo for its email.
posted by eye of newt at 8:42 AM on July 25, 2016


Their core business, like Google's, is advertising.
posted by eye of newt at 8:43 AM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


dabug: Apparently oil traders use Yahoo Messenger extensively.

In the article, Yahoo says that oil traders form a small part of their customer base, and therefore aren't worth worrying about. But if there's one group that you'd think would be worth at least trying to monetize, it'd be oil traders. Seriously, people.
posted by clawsoon at 8:44 AM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


yahoo is pretty good for fantasy sports, but otherwise I got nothin. Not sure I use anything else of theirs.
posted by Hoopo at 9:12 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'll hold on to my Yahoo email account until the day I die, no matter how much ridicule and scorn my girlfriend heaps upon me.
posted by Fister Roboto at 9:30 AM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


"Based on Hacker News comments, guess who else has no idea what to do with Yahoo?"

Hitler?
posted by klangklangston at 9:33 AM on July 25, 2016 [7 favorites]


I thought AT&T recently moved away from Yahoo for its email.

https://att.yahoo.com/ says otherwise.
posted by GuyZero at 10:01 AM on July 25, 2016


Gah, I asked about how to migrate from Yahoo TWO YEARS AGO and have yet to do it. Guess my evening plans are set.
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:37 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ok but then you also have to update your account details for everything you've ever registered for under that account, correct? And grab all your contacts (and figure out which are now defunct and need to be deleted). And trust that you won't have accidentally deleted - 17 years? (!?!) - of back and forths between uni friends (long and sentimental electronic letters, aw; group emails, aw), exes, bosses...
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:40 AM on July 25, 2016


20 years. Most of my suppliers in Southeast Asia use it as well. This is going to be tough, and sad.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:17 PM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


In 1996/97 I made $20 an hour in a side gig teaching an Internet 101 class. We taught people how to navigate the Yahoo Directory, and use Eudora.
posted by COD at 5:45 PM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I thought AT&T recently moved away from Yahoo for its email.

https://att.yahoo.com/ says otherwise.

--GuyZero

They announced it in March, but I guess they haven't implemented it yet.

It is probably difficult to get your customers to change their email address--it's even worse than changing your post office address. I can't even begin to list all the organizations and people I've given my Yahoo email address over the years. If Verizon messes this up and I have to give it up, I'm basically cutting off part of my past.
posted by eye of newt at 8:15 AM on July 26, 2016


They announced it in March, but I guess they haven't implemented it yet.

Synacor! Buffalo's finest high-tech company. I wonder when they'll cut over. I guess AT&T saw the sale coming and made plans.
posted by GuyZero at 9:47 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


We taught people how to navigate the Yahoo Directory, and use Eudora

Doo-DOO-doo!

I am skeptical about that change in control provision. "We can walk at any time post-COC, and you still have to keep paying us" is a deal no one would take, and the idea that no one could anticipate a change in control at that point is absurd. I'd have to read the contract myself to believe it.
posted by praemunire at 12:12 PM on July 26, 2016


Anybody have any idea what's happening to all of Yahoo Screen's content now that the service has folded and Yahoo's getting diced up by Verizon? It'd be nice to have both Community S06 and Other Space available on a streaming service that people actually watch.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:13 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yahoo news stories sometimes get thousands of comments, believe it or not. I just clicked on their story about Michael Jordan's take on BLM and police shootings, and the comment count is 6,921. It's a more active place than you might think.
posted by clawsoon at 2:47 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Strange Interlude: Anybody have any idea what's happening to all of Yahoo Screen's content now that the service has folded and Yahoo's getting diced up by Verizon? It'd be nice to have both Community S06 and Other Space available on a streaming service that people actually watch.

Yahoo Screen's content migrated to Yahoo TV. You can watch both Community S06 and Other Space on Yahoo TV here.
posted by cynical pinnacle at 5:00 PM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


I feel like this could be its own FPP, but given that this thread is still open:

Alibaba Could Buy Yahoo for Free

This is powerful magic, and you need to be careful with it. The rules and incantations are difficult ... and if you get it wrong the consequences can be dire. Also, good lord, I am not a tax lawyer, consult your own tax advisor. (I bet Yahoo is doing just that!)

But if this works ...

posted by RedOrGreen at 8:10 AM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, that article on Alibaba buying Yahoo is a couple years old so presumably they decided not to do it. Funny though as it was basically right on - they indeed could have had it for free.

Since they didn't do that the only logical conclusion is that Alibaba viewed acquiring Yahoo as being a net loss and more trouble than it was worth.
posted by GuyZero at 10:53 AM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


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