“The board of Yahoo Inc is weighing a sale of its core Internet business when it meets this week, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters,” Amrutha Penumudi reports for Reuters by way of, apropos, Yahoo News. “The board’s meeting comes amid a broader debate about the future of the company and that of high-profile Chief Executive Marissa Mayer.”
“The Wall Street Journal first reported the possible sale of the Internet business late on Tuesday. People familiar with the matter told the newspaper the board was expected to also discuss during meetings from Wednesday through Friday whether to proceed with a plan to spin off more than $30 billion in shares of Alibaba Holding Group Ltd . The company could also pursue both options, the paper said,” Penumudi reports. “The news comes as Mayer faces growing pressure over the company’s performance.”
“Her arrival kicked off heightened expectations of a quick turnaround at Yahoo… Hopes of a comeback crumbled as Yahoo’s plan to push mobile, video, native and social media ads – a strategy Mayer introduced in 2014 under the acronym Mavens – failed to increase revenues as desktop search ads continued to decline,” Penumudi reports. “During Mayer’s 13-year tenure at Google, she led the Google Earth, Gmail and Google News teams and is credited with helping create the company’s celebrated search page.”
MacDailyNews Take: Mayer’s been hamstrung with the STUPID deal her predecessor Carol Bartz inked with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer (two very confused former CEOs) to use Bing as the search component of Yahoo. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)Yahoo needed to develop and promote its own technology. If they had their own search, Yahoo would be in a position today to make a serious play to replace Google as the default search engine on the world’s most coveted platform and reap multiple billions of dollars from such a deal. Alas, they are not and, as a result, Mayer has been forced to tinker around the edges while trying to extricate Yahoo from the straightjacket into which her predecessor shackled the company.
The Bing deal has since been amended under Mayer and, reportedly, either party can now terminate the deal at any point in time as of October 1, 2016. Mayer should be given some more time to fully execute her plans in which a deal with Apple should — if she has any hope to be a long-term CEO — be the centerpiece, the engine that drives Yahoo back to major prominence.
All Yahoo should be focusing on now is displacing Google as Apple’s default Safari search engine on iOS devices.
It is now mobile, mobile, mobile, apps all the time.
Mobile devices wind up using apps to do searches about 85% of the time versus, browsers. Yahoo should have been a leader in this from day one in 2008 or so.
If you find that tantalizing pic of Marissa still boring your gonads must be dead, dead, dead as dust. Attractiveness and charisma can often have PLENTY to do with the job.
Yes I miss the old days too to be honest I am not actually sure what Yahoo does as everything I used to use seems to be in mothballs or gone. The next time I upgrade the OS Messenger will be defunct and that will be the last I have any connection with them. A search deal with Apple is the only way that I can see them as being remotely relevant now.
Yahoo needs to get back to its roots, instead of being an also-ran in the search engine business. What made Yahoo special was not just as a search engine, but also as a web directory of sorts. I used to love finding new sites using their “What’s New”, “What’s Cool” links back in the day. I miss that. Today, Yahoo doesn’t really do anything different than MSN or a hundred other pages that would like to be your “default”. There’s just no compelling reason to go there. Develop original, useful content, Marissa…. that’s the key. Maybe even try to do a throwback-style page. People are nostalgic and Yahoo was a forerunner in the search engine business, capitalize on that!
As an Apple shareholder, I’d like to see them develop their own search engine technology and quit paying billions to Google, Yahoo, Bing, or anyone else for showing ads to iOS users.
As a trader, I’m looking for an opportunity to short Google big time when Apple announces such a move.
It’s hard to believe, but if you are using an OS X version higher than OS10.8, there is NO Messenger for Mac version available. It seems like they have given up on some important features and is a major concern. You can use their much more limited webmail-based Messenger, but there is no video or picture/file sharing or other advanced features. I continue to find Yahoo useful for email, news, financial information in their excellent Finance site, etc. It would be a real shame for the Directors to give up on the company.
I miss the original Yahoo days! They were the original (and enjoyable) search engine.
It is now mobile, mobile, mobile, apps all the time.
Mobile devices wind up using apps to do searches about 85% of the time versus, browsers. Yahoo should have been a leader in this from day one in 2008 or so.
If you find that tantalizing pic of Marissa still boring your gonads must be dead, dead, dead as dust. Attractiveness and charisma can often have PLENTY to do with the job.
Yes I miss the old days too to be honest I am not actually sure what Yahoo does as everything I used to use seems to be in mothballs or gone. The next time I upgrade the OS Messenger will be defunct and that will be the last I have any connection with them. A search deal with Apple is the only way that I can see them as being remotely relevant now.
Yahoo needs to get back to its roots, instead of being an also-ran in the search engine business. What made Yahoo special was not just as a search engine, but also as a web directory of sorts. I used to love finding new sites using their “What’s New”, “What’s Cool” links back in the day. I miss that. Today, Yahoo doesn’t really do anything different than MSN or a hundred other pages that would like to be your “default”. There’s just no compelling reason to go there. Develop original, useful content, Marissa…. that’s the key. Maybe even try to do a throwback-style page. People are nostalgic and Yahoo was a forerunner in the search engine business, capitalize on that!
Yahoo’s roots were a portal, way back then when it could be argued they were useful. Who needs a portal now?
GLaDOS, for one.
As an Apple shareholder, I’d like to see them develop their own search engine technology and quit paying billions to Google, Yahoo, Bing, or anyone else for showing ads to iOS users.
As a trader, I’m looking for an opportunity to short Google big time when Apple announces such a move.
-jcr
Marissa Mayer- I would, I really would, wow!
It’s hard to believe, but if you are using an OS X version higher than OS10.8, there is NO Messenger for Mac version available. It seems like they have given up on some important features and is a major concern. You can use their much more limited webmail-based Messenger, but there is no video or picture/file sharing or other advanced features. I continue to find Yahoo useful for email, news, financial information in their excellent Finance site, etc. It would be a real shame for the Directors to give up on the company.