5 ms·

Ask PG: What's your take on the Yahoo! situation?

19 points by stevenboudreau 18y ago

Given the recent events, and that you sold Viaweb to Yahoo!, I'm curious to find out what you think of the whole Yahoo! situation. Carl Icahn has recently engaged in a proxy fight. Or is at least flirting with one. Should it have accepted Microsoft's offer?

jpeterson 18y ago
Only two things would've caused them to spurn Microsoft—excessive self-worth or hubris—both of which are bad.
- e1ven 18y ago
  I'm not sure that I agree here. Despite the public statements to the contrary, I suspect that Yang's motivations are not about the short-term financial plan, but about the long-term survival of the company and of their culture. Microsoft is a massive organization, and has had several problems integrating smaller players into it's corporate structure. My suspicion is that a number of higher-level Yahoo members are convinced that if the Microsoft were to go through, they'd lose the ability to continue to decide their own fates. Look at the AOL-TW merger for an example of the clashes that can arise when trying to combine two massive companies with dissimilar cultures. Yahoo employees may additionally be concerned, given that their potential suitor has quite a history of purchasing, or nearly purchasing companies, and not fully utilizing them. In immediate dollar terms, no, turning the deal down doesn't make sense.. But in a long-term view of "where do we want Yahoo to be in 5 years", it makes all the sense in the world. The problem for the Board is that the stockholders are more interested in the former, than the later, so Yahoo is trying to contort to justify using a framing they don't agree with.
  - ideas101 18y ago
    i totally agree with you - also if you're trying to get my baby (for whatever reason and price) then I would certainly make sure that my baby grows healthy, but the history says that chances of growing healthy with microsoft is very rare. Yang would also make sure that people (shareholders, employee and end-users) who love my baby so much today, keeps loving in the future as well - but it looked like only one person was loving the deal and other two (employees and end-users) were certainly not that happy with the deal so....
  - andrewf 18y ago
    Once the shareholders have sold the company off to Microsoft, if Yahoo falls apart, that's Microsoft's problem. It wouldn't hurt the people who had already sold Yahoo, so it's not a scenario that Yahoo's board should be considering. (One caveat: the Microsoft offer is part cash, part stock. Since part of what Yahoo shareholders will receive is stock in the combined entity, I suppose that predicting a meltdown a year down the road means you're saying the offer is worth less than the current calculated value)
sutro 18y ago
Ask PG: What should I have for lunch? PG seems to have become a gnomic magic 8 ball of sorts. I can only hope for his sake that he's built Eliza-like behavior into HN such that his responses to all "Ask PG" questions are fully automated.
- jpeterson 18y ago
  I vote for tuna sandwich.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- stevenboudreau 18y ago
  I wonder who submitted the first "Ask YC" and "Ask PG" posts?
  - keating 18y ago
    Ask.
  - chengmi 18y ago
    rms: http://ask.searchyc.com/20070225 http://ask.searchyc.com/20070225
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  It would be hilarious if all Ask PGs just got the reply "make something people want."
  - kirubakaran 18y ago
    Come on, he wouldn't just hard-code his mini-me!
- pg 18y ago
  A glass of prune juice or a nice marshmallow salad.
pg 18y ago
I think if Jerry and Filo had a chance to run the company for a while, they could probably surprise people. They're probably as smart as Larry and Sergey, but they've never had a chance to run Yahoo the way they'd like. If they had, it would have more of a hacker culture, and Google wouldn't be trampling them so badly.
- stevenboudreau 18y ago
  Do you stay in touch with them, and/or with Yahoo in general?
  - pg 18y ago
    Not really. And that was 10 years ago. Most of the people I know at Yahoo now started after I left.
byrneseyeview 18y ago
Slightly offtopic: this thread showed up as dead earlier today. Was it resurrected?
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  You must be new here. Links on the site fall off the stack eventually--but when you reload the page, new ones are made. It's a "feature" of the architecture pg used to build the site (continuations based). So, if you sit idle on any of the comment pages for more than a few minutes it becomes unavailable. You have to start over on the main page and dig your way back down. I imagine this is not a fundamental flaw of a continuations-based design, since Seaside seems to cope with it OK (I guess?)...merely something that pg, or someone else, has not added the code to handle yet.
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    No, no. I mean the title of the article ended with "[dead]".
    - SwellJoe 18y ago
      I must be new here. I've never seen that happen.
      - byrneseyeview 18y ago
        Go to your profile, and change 'showdead' to 'yes'.
        SwellJoe 18y ago
        It sounds confusing. I think I'll leave it alone.
      - aneesh 18y ago
        Speaking of being new, it's ironic that both your accounts are the same age.
sajay 18y ago
hello testing
startingup 18y ago
The long term consequence of "exit strategy" at work here. Yahoo "exited" way too soon, and the founders never really had any chance to shape the company. CEO Koogle assembled Yahoo (one of the smaller parts being ViaWeb) and Semel tried to remake it in a Hollywood direction. Contrast this to Amazon, and later Google, where the founder(s) have had very strong influence on the culture. Another company where the founder exited too soon (voluntarily) is Ebay, and Ebay has no soul whatsoever, and they are doing everything they can to lose their natural monopoly.
sajay 18y ago
This is a test comment

jpeterson 18y ago

Only two things would've caused them to spurn Microsoft—excessive self-worth or hubris—both of which are bad.

e1ven 18y ago
I'm not sure that I agree here. Despite the public statements to the contrary, I suspect that Yang's motivations are not about the short-term financial plan, but about the long-term survival of the company and of their culture. Microsoft is a massive organization, and has had several problems integrating smaller players into it's corporate structure. My suspicion is that a number of higher-level Yahoo members are convinced that if the Microsoft were to go through, they'd lose the ability to continue to decide their own fates. Look at the AOL-TW merger for an example of the clashes that can arise when trying to combine two massive companies with dissimilar cultures. Yahoo employees may additionally be concerned, given that their potential suitor has quite a history of purchasing, or nearly purchasing companies, and not fully utilizing them. In immediate dollar terms, no, turning the deal down doesn't make sense.. But in a long-term view of "where do we want Yahoo to be in 5 years", it makes all the sense in the world. The problem for the Board is that the stockholders are more interested in the former, than the later, so Yahoo is trying to contort to justify using a framing they don't agree with.
- ideas101 18y ago
  i totally agree with you - also if you're trying to get my baby (for whatever reason and price) then I would certainly make sure that my baby grows healthy, but the history says that chances of growing healthy with microsoft is very rare. Yang would also make sure that people (shareholders, employee and end-users) who love my baby so much today, keeps loving in the future as well - but it looked like only one person was loving the deal and other two (employees and end-users) were certainly not that happy with the deal so....
- andrewf 18y ago
  Once the shareholders have sold the company off to Microsoft, if Yahoo falls apart, that's Microsoft's problem. It wouldn't hurt the people who had already sold Yahoo, so it's not a scenario that Yahoo's board should be considering. (One caveat: the Microsoft offer is part cash, part stock. Since part of what Yahoo shareholders will receive is stock in the combined entity, I suppose that predicting a meltdown a year down the road means you're saying the offer is worth less than the current calculated value)

sutro 18y ago

Ask PG: What should I have for lunch? PG seems to have become a gnomic magic 8 ball of sorts. I can only hope for his sake that he's built Eliza-like behavior into HN such that his responses to all "Ask PG" questions are fully automated.

jpeterson 18y ago
I vote for tuna sandwich.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
stevenboudreau 18y ago
I wonder who submitted the first "Ask YC" and "Ask PG" posts?
- keating 18y ago
  Ask.
- chengmi 18y ago
  rms: http://ask.searchyc.com/20070225 http://ask.searchyc.com/20070225
mattmaroon 18y ago
It would be hilarious if all Ask PGs just got the reply "make something people want."
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  Come on, he wouldn't just hard-code his mini-me!
pg 18y ago
A glass of prune juice or a nice marshmallow salad.

pg 18y ago

I think if Jerry and Filo had a chance to run the company for a while, they could probably surprise people. They're probably as smart as Larry and Sergey, but they've never had a chance to run Yahoo the way they'd like. If they had, it would have more of a hacker culture, and Google wouldn't be trampling them so badly.

stevenboudreau 18y ago
Do you stay in touch with them, and/or with Yahoo in general?
- pg 18y ago
  Not really. And that was 10 years ago. Most of the people I know at Yahoo now started after I left.

byrneseyeview 18y ago

Slightly offtopic: this thread showed up as dead earlier today. Was it resurrected?

SwellJoe 18y ago
You must be new here. Links on the site fall off the stack eventually--but when you reload the page, new ones are made. It's a "feature" of the architecture pg used to build the site (continuations based). So, if you sit idle on any of the comment pages for more than a few minutes it becomes unavailable. You have to start over on the main page and dig your way back down. I imagine this is not a fundamental flaw of a continuations-based design, since Seaside seems to cope with it OK (I guess?)...merely something that pg, or someone else, has not added the code to handle yet.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  No, no. I mean the title of the article ended with "[dead]".
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    I must be new here. I've never seen that happen.
    - byrneseyeview 18y ago
      Go to your profile, and change 'showdead' to 'yes'.
      - SwellJoe 18y ago
        It sounds confusing. I think I'll leave it alone.
    - aneesh 18y ago
      Speaking of being new, it's ironic that both your accounts are the same age.

sajay 18y ago

hello testing

startingup 18y ago

The long term consequence of "exit strategy" at work here. Yahoo "exited" way too soon, and the founders never really had any chance to shape the company. CEO Koogle assembled Yahoo (one of the smaller parts being ViaWeb) and Semel tried to remake it in a Hollywood direction. Contrast this to Amazon, and later Google, where the founder(s) have had very strong influence on the culture. Another company where the founder exited too soon (voluntarily) is Ebay, and Ebay has no soul whatsoever, and they are doing everything they can to lose their natural monopoly.

sajay 18y ago

This is a test comment