Verizon to bid $3 billion for Yahoo’s internet business

“Verizon Communications Inc. on Monday planned to submit a second-round bid of about $3 billion for Yahoo Inc.’s core internet business, said a person familiar with the matter,” Ryan Knutson and Douglas Macmillan report for The Wall Street Journal.

“The telecom company, seen as the leading contender to buy Yahoo, was expected to meet Monday’s deadline for the second round of bids,” Knutson and Macmillan report. “Yahoo is expected to hold at least one more cycle of bidding, and the offers could change by the final round, people familiar with the matter have said.”

“Verizon indicated it isn’t interested in acquiring certain Yahoo assets, such as patents and real estate, as part of the deal, one of the people said. Yahoo said earlier this year it is exploring the sale of non-core assets, including real estate and patents, that could fetch more than $1 billion,” Knutson and Macmillan report. “Verizon, which acquired AOL Inc. last year for $4.4 billion, is seen as having the clearest path to turning around Yahoo. The telecom giant likely would combine Yahoo’s web properties, which together attract more than a billion users a month, with its growing business in online ads.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take:

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)
Mayer took on an impossible job and deserves credit for staying with the thing when it would have been easy to have walked away from the mess she inherited long before this point.

Marissa Mayer would be a wonderful CEO with the right company.

SEE ALSO:
Yahoo for sale as bidders line up; CEO Marissa Mayer is likely toast – April 11, 2016
CEO Marissa Mayer drops the ax, shutters about half of Yahoo’s content verticals – February 17, 2016
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer gets a chance to make one last stand – February 3, 2016
Yahoo to lay off 15% of staff, close five offices, explore non-strategic asset sales – February 2, 2016
Yahoo investors running out of patience with CEO Marissa Mayer – January 4, 2016
Hedge fund manager blasts Marissa Mayer for equipping employees with 22,000 iPhones – January 4, 2016
Yahoo board to weigh future of company, Marissa Mayer, source says – December 2, 2015
Yahoo or Microsoft can terminate search deal anytime on or after October 1st – April 21, 2015
Microsoft loses exclusivity in Yahoo search deal shake up – April 17, 2015
Yahoo gains further US search share; Google falls below 75% for first time – February 3, 2015
Microsoft, Yahoo vie to become Apple Safari’s default search option – November 26, 2014
Firefox dumps Google for default U.S. search, switches to Yahoo/Bing – November 20, 2014
Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer was right to ban working from home, right? – August 12, 2014
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wants to save Google a billion dollars – April 18, 2014
Yahoo’s strategy: Rebuild search, take share, win iOS from Google – April 17, 2014

10 Comments

    1. She’s certainly not a turnaround CEO. Yahoo has been in crisis for an extended period, but only recently has she acted like a CEO of a Company in Crisis. She took up the CEO rockstar lifestyle of a Company that needed grounding, needed paring back to it’s core values and begin the long hard job of rebuilding, retooling, recovery.

  1. What do Yahoo do? Other than a flickr account I got free with my internet package years ago I don’t think I have ever knowingly used any of their products/services.

  2. Yahoo is a study in how not to name your company. Most of their services work as well as Google’s, but for some reason Yahoo was always seen as just “not cool.” Kinda like AOL. Most people try to get rid of Yahoo once they accidentally allow malware to tie their browsers to it. The way they ruined Flickr didn’t help, forcing people to get yahoo iDs and such. The stupid yodeling commercial just annoyed people. You really only see yahoo on computers where people don’t know how to get rid of it. When you see a yahoo email address it always strikes you as a bit odd for a moment. They’re constantly getting hacked. When I see yahoo email addresses I elevate the probability that the message is spam in my firewall. They hired a CEO who is rather glamorous, but outside of bringing the politically correct genitalia to the mix, she seemed to flounder making arbitrary decisions from day one. Not sure who could have done better. Now what is Verizon going to do with it? Fill up phones with Yahoo Verizon crap that people can’t delete.

    1. Rebrand as Verizon. Verizon is a multiple worse that Yahoo. Their only success is due to playing in a regulated market that pretty much guarantees them profits. Man Verizon customer service is BAD, BAD, BAD. If wireless ever gets deregulated, it’d be nice to watch the race to bankruptcy of AT&T or Verizon. It’d be quite the race to see who got there first.

  3. I dumped my AOL account. And I am a bit closer to dumping my yahoo account. I have abandoned most of their services, like groups. This is pretty sad. There isn’t much left out there, that I feel are trustworthy.

    1. Interestingly, Yahoo sites get more traffic than Apple’s sites.

      $3 billion for Yahoo properties and technology could be a far better investment than Beats music was.

  4. Mayer was the embodiment of the Peter Principle.

    She was not a turnaround executive, and she was working with a company past its prominence.

    If she deserves anything, it was making a deal so good she never has to work a day in her life. Most people never get that opportunity.

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