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05 Mar 2012 11:04

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Biz, Tech: The bloodshed begins: Yahoo will reportedly lay off thousands

  • 14,100 current Yahoo employees source
  • » Word is that a major restructuring is happening: New CEO Scott Thompson (no relation) reportedly plans to cut back heavily at the company, which analysts see as a key example of tech company excess, in an attempt to focus on the things the company does well. While the company has had some recent success (their Open Graph collaboration with Facebook has been a boon, for example), the company has not undeservedly built a reputation of acquiring other companies (for example, Delicious) and letting them languish under the corporate structure. It used to be mentioned in the same breath as Google, but now it’s more likely to be mentioned in the same breath as AOL. Would cuts bring Yahoo back to life?
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Jan 2012 20:05

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Biz: Yahoo tabs PayPal president Scott Thompson as new CEO

  • Yahoo picks the new boss: Scott Thompson, the president of eBay’s PayPal division, has been picked by Yahoo as its new CEO, replacing CFO Tim Morse who filled that role in an interim capacity. This marks the fourth CEO Yahoo has turned to in under five years; the company, once a giant in the world of search engines, has understandably suffered with the seemingly unstoppable ascendancy of Google over the past decade. Thompson faces a tall task — he’s being looked to, as chairman Roy Bostock said, “reignite innovation and drive growth” — this for a company that’s had a ton of trouble with both. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Oct 2011 17:55

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Tech: Google may swoop in to save Yahoo — for antitrust reasons

  • what Google is reportedly in talks to help with an acquisition of Yahoo, which is kind of looking like a rudderless ship these days after Carol Bartz’s departure. They have tens of billions of dollars in the bank; they can do this pretty easily.
  • why If Google were to help — it’s not a sure thing — it would effectively allow them to prop up a competitor in the market, which would help them fend off antitrust claims. Think Microsoft swooping in to help Apple back in 1997. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Sep 2011 10:51

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Biz, Tech: With CEO Carol Bartz fired, is Yahoo preparing to sell itself?

  • fired Last night, Carol Bartz got pushed out at Yahoo, a move that, while swift, wasn’t totally unsurprising — she didn’t exactly win a lot of fans for her handling of the company over the past two years. The stock price went up immediately after the announcement.
  • sold? Now, a Wall Street Journal article uses this phrase: “One of these [independent directors] said Yahoo is open to selling itself to the right bidder.” Yahoo famously dodged a sale to Microsoft in 2008, and since then, their value has declined significantly. Oops. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Jul 2011 17:25

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Tech: Google’s eyeing Hulu, or reasons they might be getting too big

  • then Back in 2006, Google purchased then-fledgling YouTube for $1.65 billion — its biggest purchase ever at the time. The service has grown massive over the years but has struggled bringing major content creators like Viacom on board — a huge bummer for fans of “The Daily Show” in particular. In fact, Viacom sued YouTube to get them to remove the clips.
  • now Hulu, a service started in part as a major studio reaction to YouTube’s viral growth, is now in talks with Google, who may buy the company out — and in the process, get the lucrative content deals that have eluded YouTube over the years. (Microsoft and Yahoo are also eyeing the service, by the way.) Will we finally see “The Daily Show” on YouTube again? source
  • » We don’t know how to feel about this: While we appreciate the fact that Google might make “The Daily Show” happen on YouTube with a buyout like this (though Viacom has pulled their shows from Hulu in the past), if it actually happens, it runs directly into a wall of regulatory scrutiny — as Google’s been feeling the heat lately. While YouTube and Hulu aren’t the only games in town (hi Netflix and Vimeo), together they’re big enough that it would deserve some regulatory scrutiny if it actually happens.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Dec 2010 11:09

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Tech: Major sites force password changes after Gawker’s security lapse

  • action A bunch of hacker thugs who we’d turn in if we knew who they were leaked over a million Gawker usernames and passwords online. We hate those guys.
  • reaction Other sites, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Yahoo, have asked large swaths of users to change their passwords, which is pretty smart, guys. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 Dec 2010 10:02

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Biz, Tech: Speaking of buyouts, AOL has some crazy plans for itself

  • first AOL, which has been working on its content lately, is thinking of splitting up its content business from its legacy (and still-profitable) dial-up Internet business.
  • then The company is considering selling off its dial-up business to a company more suited to it, like Earthlink or United Online. (No, they don’t get TMZ, guys.)
  • finallyAOL would then merge the rest of its parts with Yahoo!, creating a massive content-generating echo chamber the likes of which the world has never seen. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

06 Dec 2010 09:50

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Tech: Did Groupon make smart move by not selling to Google?

  • what Groupon, the quickly-growing deals site, reportedly declined a buyout offer from Google for a whopping $6 billion over the weekend. That’s a lot of money to turn down.
  • why The company’s CEO, Andrew Mason was concerned about the strategic direction under Google and what would happen to his loyal staff. So an IPO’s next. source
  • » A mixed record for startups: Some tech companies that have passed on the major buyout offers, like Facebook (which passed on a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo! way back in 2006), have only gotten much larger on their own. Other tech giants that missed the buyout opportunity – Yahoo! turned down an epic deal from Microsoft in 2008 and nosedived ever since. Other companies who have taken the buyout have had success stories (YouTube, which is a cornerstone of Google’s offerings) and precipitous declines (MySpace, which is trying to make a comeback; and Bebo, which sold to AOL and then lost nearly all of its value when it was sold again a couple years later). Which is to say, it’s too soon to know whether Groupon screwed up here.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Oct 2010 10:31

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Tech: Yahoo blames Google Instant for their own search problems

  • I bet even the folks at Google are mystified by this kind of accounting.
  • Yahoo! Senior VP of Search & Marketplaces Shashi Seth • Trying to explain why Google gained on them by nearly a point in the overall search rankings. Hint: He thinks it has everything to do with Google Instant skewing the results. To which we say, whatever. This sounds like an excuse by a VP in a sector that needs explanations for their mediocre performance. Note that nobody dipped anywhere near as badly as Yahoo did last month. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Oct 2010 21:49

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Biz, Tech: Rumor mill: AOL interested in buying fellow giant also-ran Yahoo

  • Good freaking god, could you imagine? Yahoo and AOL together would be like Scott Baio and Tony Danza doing a sitcom together. It’d be diminishing returns all around. It’d be a sitcom on ABC Family instead of ABC, trying its best to win a smaller audience than either star once had, and the jokes will almost certainly feel old and worn by the time they make ’em. On the other hand, we really like AOL’s current editorial-leaning direction, but Yahoo has not done anything of note since around 2000. AOL would strip Yahoo of most of the extra crap and turn it into a big advertising company. How would this work? And why is AOL acquiring so much stuff right now? And would Tim Armstrong boot out Carol Bartz? We wanna know what Alec Baldwin thinks of all this. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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