Tag: Yahoo!

Microsoft Offered $44.6 Billion to Acquire Yahoo! in 2008

New York Times, in 2008:

In a bold move to counter Google’s online pre-eminence, Microsoft said Friday that it had made an unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo for about $44.6 billion in a mix of cash and stock.

If consummated, the deal would redraw the competitive landscape in Internet consumer services, where both Microsoft and Yahoo have both struggled to compete with Google.

Then in 2016, Verizon acquires Yahoo! for $4.83 billion.

O how time flies, and how it drains billions along with it.

Yahoo! Sold to Verizon

yahoo-verizon

I thought I’ve seen this coming. Techcrunch reports:

After a months-long bidding process and many layoffs, Yahoo has finally found a buyer. Verizon (which owns AOL, which owns TechCrunch) is officially acquiring Yahoo’s core business for $4.83 billion in cash, which includes Yahoo’s advertising, content, search and mobile activities.

I just hope the new owner, Verizon, will be able to turn Yahoo! around. At the very least, I hope they can salvage what was left of it, especially those that were once great like Tumblr and Flickr, among others.

On Yahoo! Acquiring Tumblr

Yahoo! and Tumblr

AllThingsD reports: Yahoo! Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1 Billion, All-Cash Deal to Acquire Tumblr.

I’d say no to this deal! Remember what happened to Delicious and Flickr, among others, after they were acquired by Yahoo!? Can you imagine if the next time you login to Tumblr you are greeted with a Yahoo! account authentication? I can’t!

UPDATE: Yahoo Tumblrs for Cool: Board Approves $1.1 Billion Deal as Expected

It appears that the deal indeed went through. But I have to wait for the changes before any drastic action is taken to my Tumblr blog.

The Day that Yahoo! was Doomed

The Rise and Fall of Yahoo! Infographic (click image to view the full infographic)

We have seen an interesting infographic about the rise and fall of Yahoo!, detailing the timeline at which the big media giant/search engine/web portal rise from scratch and the start of its downfall.

We knew about the demise of Geocities. Back in the day when blogging was new, Yahoo! was acquiring big services like Del.icio.us, MyBlogLog (I’ve introduced MyBlogLog back then, describing it an awesome social networking service for bloggers), and Flickr.

In the ensuing years after the acquisitions, Delicious has offered not much improvements in the service despite the start of a growing competition like StumbleUpon, etc., and its blog full of spam comments. MyBlogLog on the other had invited a lot of spammers, and they’ve done nothing to bring order in the service. Flickr, well, they’ve been into a lot of controversies.

Now, Delicious is for sale (at least contrary to earlier reports that it’ll be shut down), MyBlogLog is shutting down, and Flickr, well, we still have to wait further developments.

Paul Graham, being once an insider, offered his better insights about What Happened to Yahoo!. Continue reading

POP3 Access for Yahoo! Mail Free Accounts

A POP3 access allows you to send and receive your email messages from a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Entourage, etc. A user need not login to the web interface and face hundreds of banner ads everyday, but just wait till the program fetches the mails from the background.

POP3 access (and even IMAP) has always been free when you’re using a GMail account. However, by default, for Yahoo! Mail, you will need to upgrade to at least the Yahoo! Mail Plus account (yes, you have to pay in this case) in order to avail of the POP3 access.

Fortunately, there is a workaround for this: YPOPs! Continue reading

My Yahoo! Account was Hacked

Yahoo! Messenger Logo

Lately, some friends were complaining about how they were receiving spam messages from my Yahoo! account via Yahoo! Messenger (YM). It was not something new as I myself received some from other friends in my contact list. It then occured to my mind that maybe my account was hacked.

Then, yesterday I couldn’t login to my YM account anymore from my favorite desktop client, Pidgin. It tells me that logging in from the web with the same account may diagnose the problem. Continue reading

Geocities Will Close; Adios Geocities

Geocities, a free webhosting company owned by Yahoo! closes its doors to new account registrations, and total shutdown coming later this year:

Existing GeoCities accounts have not changed. You can continue to enjoy your web site and GeoCities services until later this year. You don’t need to change a thing right now — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time. [Yahoo!]

Continue reading

Yahoo! Mail Goes Unlimited

This is what you’ll see in the current login page of Yahoo! Mail. The news is over at Yahoo!’s blog.

The first time I encountered Yahoo! Mail, back in 2001, they were offering I think 4MB of mail storage space for free accounts then. This, I also think, is the primary reason how Yahoo! Mail took the front seat as regards free email service over MSN’s Hotmail, which was offering 2MB only.

From 4MB, I think it went to 6MB, then 100MB, 200MB, now 1GB.

Now you ask, “what do I get out of this development”? Well, at least it will prompt my favorite service, Gmail, to offer the same in order to directly compete.