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Remember When Microsoft Almost Bought Yahoo For $50 Billion?
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Showing 36 posts tagged yahoo
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Yahoo’s Big Question - What Is It?
David Carr makes the case that Yahoo is not a technology company, but a full-on media company.
Unsolicited advice for Marissa Mayer
Sriram Krishnan’s list is full of win. This is my favorite:
Make a huge sign with the phrase ‘the premier digital media company’. Then make a video of you running a bulldozer over it crushing that sign.
High-res
Amen.
Marissa Mayer To Lead Yahoo
Part of me hopes that as one final middle finger to a rival, Mayer and Google arranged to have this announced on the day that Microsoft announced their next version of Office. Because that would be awesome. Microsoft should have owned the press today, instead they were forgotten by lunch time.
I’mma let you finish, but…
With Their IPA, Twitter Makes Yahoo Look Like A Mean Old Drunk
Twitter has drafted up what they’re calling the Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA). With it, the company is promising to only use their patents as the actual inventor intended — read: defensively, not offensively.
More specifically:
The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.
Excellent news. Twitter is promising to implement the IPA later this year and says that it will apply to all their patents past and present. Yes, this means things like Loren Brichter’s pull-to-refresh (which he’s excited about).
Hopefully other startups large and small will follow Twitter’s lead here. It would be really excellent if larger companies (*cough* Yahoo *cough*) did as well, but it’s hard to see that happening given the current state of things. This is a movement that will have to start from the ground up.
Big time kudos to Twitter for this.
Yahoo Cuts 14 Percent Of Workforce; 2,000 Given Pink Slips; Will Save $375M
I wonder how much money Yahoo is wasting by trying to sue Facebook?
The strange priorities of a dying company…
AOL Selling Patent Portfolio
Yahoo should buy them to bolster their bullshit lawsuit against Facebook. There’s probably some patent in there about the use of the color blue within online systems.
Nuance On The Yahoo Patent Situation
I’ve been thinking about the situation with Yahoo suing Facebook regarding some older patents, and observing the reactions online in blogs and on Twitter. I’ve been struck by how unanimous it’s been, and the emerging narrative that Yahoo has somehow crossed a line, that Internet companies don’t…
A smart take on the Yahoo/Facebook patent situation by John Lilly. I think he’s right, there’s more fueling the outpouring of hatred directed at Yahoo than just their patent maneuvers. BUT, I also think their maneuvers are particularly bullshit in this case. Look at what it is they’re suing Facebook over. It’s things that nearly all social services use. It’s obvious things. Things that existed before Yahoo patented them.
Lilly is right that many other patent lawsuits are bullshit as well — particularly in software. But Yahoo is being unreasonably evil and stupid here. Why didn’t they sue, say, 5 years ago? Why aren’t they suing 200 other companies “infringing” their silly patents?
It’s because, like Kodak, they’re dying. And these are the actions that a dying company resorts to. With Kodak, it’s obvious — they’re bankrupt. And people feel sort of sorry for them as a result. Yahoo is not bankrupt, so it’s not-so-obvious. But they are still very much dying. And they clearly know it, hence, the lawsuit.
Maybe we should feel bad for Yahoo here too. But we don’t yet. But we will someday in the not-too-distant future. The saddest thing now is that they probably really think this lawsuit will help save them. It won’t.
Brilliant
I’m pleased to announce a $25,000 signing bonus for any Yahoo employee who joins Yammer in the next 60 days. yammer.com/jobs
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) March 15, 2012
It’s becoming more and more apparent just how jackasserific Yahoo’s Facebook patent lawsuit really is. At least now some (soon-to-be-former) employees may directly benefit from the stupidity.
(CrunchFund is happily an investor in Yammer because Sacks does awesome stuff like this.)
“I thought I was giving them a shield, but turns out I gave them a missile with my name permanently engraved on it.”
Andy Baio (aka Waxy.org), former Yahoo employee, on the Facebook lawsuit bullshit.
Read his entire post. Perfect.
The Yahoo Line
Fred Wilson:
I am not writing this in defense of Facebook. They can and will defend themselves. I am wrting this in outrage at Yahoo! I used to care about that company for some reason. No more. They are dead to me. Dead and gone. I hate them now.
I have yet to read anyone not in agreement that Yahoo’s move here is total bullshit. They’ve really, truly (and probably irreversibly) fucked their reputation in the tech community here. That will be fatal.
Just remember this when they’re chopped up and sold for parts in a few years. Or — more poetically — when Facebook buys them just to turn out the lights.
Yahoo Sticks Knife In Stomach, Will Bleed Out Over The Next Few Months
Put a fork in Yahoo, they’re now officially done.
As relayed by Michael J. De La Merced of The New York Times:
“Yahoo has a responsibility to its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders to protect its intellectual property,” a Yahoo spokesman said in an e-mailed statement. “We must insist that Facebook either enter into a licensing agreement or we will be compelled to move forward unilaterally to protect our rights.”
“We must insist”. It sounds a lot like one of those foreign leaders in the video game Civilization that is clearly losing and starts to make empty threats.
But what’s really weird here is how much Yahoo now relies on Facebook for integration points and traffic. Is new CEO Scott Thompson insane, or just a huge ass? Or both? Hard to tell right now.
As a side note, remember five and a half years ago (!) when Yahoo almost bought Facebook for $1 billion? Best move Facebook ever didn’t do.
