monkeyman

Yahoo Quietly Closes GeoCities

"Is it any revelation that enormous bloat accumulated under the leadership of Jerry Yang, the world’s worst manager, and the guy who infamously turned down the $35/share bid from Microsoft?"

Bloat? I don't recall Jerry Yang doing any major hiring while he was CEO... He stepped into it. And before he had a real chance to do anything, he was distracted by the whole Microsoft takeover bid... How strong would Yahoo and Microsoft be right now if the deal went through? He saved a ton of jobs and both companies by not letting that deal go through AND you have no idea what the "real" talks were behind the scenes, unless you do, in which case we would all like to know.

On a side note, I use Yahoo as my primary search engine, because they return relevant results more so than Google does for me. I use Google only if I need to find something very abstract from my search results. This seems to be the sentiment from more and more professionals based on what I've noticed around me.


On Apr 23 04:00 PM Mad Hedge Fund Trader wrote:

> Many more divisions will go. The paint peeled off the walls while
> Yahoo (seekingalpha.com/symbo...) CEO Carol Bartz laid
> out her assessment of the firm’s many challenges at yesterday’s conference
> call in language that would make a Marine drill sergeant blush. I
> knew Carol when she was at Autodesk in Marin, and believe me, she
> is no shrinking violet. She said that the engineering focus had scattered
> to the wind, with engineers in almost every country. There was one
> product manager for every three engineers. No surprise then, that
> she announced 700 layoffs after the 2,400 that were axed last year.
> YHOO’s Q1 earnings actually came in line, with a $117.6 million net
> on $1.58 billion in revenues, thanks in large part to a $401million
> gain on a Chinese Internet company. No comment on the Microsoft negotiations.
> Is it any revelation that enormous bloat accumulated under the leadership
> of Jerry Yang, the world’s worst manager, and the guy who infamously
> turned down the $35/share bid from Microsoft? Time to put the grownups
> in charge.

Microsoft and eBay Team Up: Desperate or Brilliant?

I said "I would think PayPal and the financial sector would have been their most obvious expansion, but this has been going slow and only accelerated a bit when Google started Google Checkout." Most of the growth in Paypal and Skype only started / was scene early-mid 2007.

How fast has Google Checkout grown and how fast did the PayPal shopping cart grow? When auction sales slump on eBay, so does the stock price and revenue, ( how much of PayPal's revenue is tied into payments for ebay purchases? ). My argument is that eBay could have grown without raising auction/listing fees or PayPal fees, but that is the route they chose.

I didn't bother mentioning Skype because of its initial reason for being purchased, to integrate with eBay and provide sellers a communications infrastructure.

My point has to do more with the how eBay started out and the mantra behind the company to make it an equal market place for both the big and little guys, and this is no longer the case because the auctions are still what define eBay (as a stock), i.e. if there is data showing eBay listings are down and sales are down, the stock is significantly affected.


On Dec 03 12:20 AM Dan Buchannon wrote:

> Monkeyman - How can you say that the company lacks diversification?
> Please do your homework. PayPal is a $2+ Billion company. With revenue
> coming from merchant services business greater than what is being
> derived from eBay.com. Skype is a $500+million company. More than
> 54% of revenue comes from outside the U.S.

Microsoft and eBay Team Up: Desperate or Brilliant?

Nice article. I agree with the comment "But I think eBay would do better if it stayed true to its roots". That's how they came to be, equalizing the marketplace; however, their missteps/mistakes will open up a void for another player to come in. For a while, I thought Google was going to do that ( when the first rumors started about Google Wallet ).

eBay is in a very sticky situation. The problem is they went public. As a public company, eBay needs to constantly show growth and cater to the share holders. Based on their business model, my father and I knew the only way they could show growth is raise their fees, and that's what they have been doing since going public. The acquisition of PayPal was extremely brilliant and they integrated it very well, but what eBay has been lacking is diversification. As a private company, eBay would be fine, as a public company, there's no easy way to show growth except raise fees or promote more sales. They could issue a dividend, but they refuse to do this.

eBay should be investing in other areas or other companies. I would think PayPal and the financial sector would have been their most obvious expansion, but this has been going slow and only accelerated a bit when Google started Google Checkout. This current cashback deal is a way to increase revenue (more sales, higher listing and final value fees for the buy-it-now items [prices have also been inflated because of the offers, where sellers are pocketing some of the cashback], collect interest on the cashback [up to 60 day waiting period for cashback], more PayPal fees collected, and not all cashback is being honored [read the horror stories on forums]) and to temporarily, or possibly perpetually, cook the earnings books so to speak (because cashback rewards may take up to 60 days to be granted).

As a consumer, these rewards are great (as long as they're granted)! Just make sure that you collect the cashback and not the seller, I know of examples where people are paying a 20-30% premium on their purchases on eBay because they're going to get 20-30% cashback...

Nvidia Finally Wins Apple's Heart

Well, NVDA did announce it was buying back shares at the beginning of this quarter. At the time it was announced, I did the math, and that buy back was roughly at the least 1/3 of the common shares. Considering the price is now half of when I did my math, that's sitting around now at close to a 2/3 common share buy back.

So, if EPS is above estimates, was the stock buyback ("NVIDIA repurchased shares worth $300 million during the quarter") taken into consideration to see if the EPS is inflated? I am wary of the number of times comments are made about am improved EPS in a company without taking into consideration any buy backs of common shares (not saying it was done here, though I could just do the math).

Nvidia may have won Apple's heart, but it is going to have to re-win the hearts of the consumer (though honestly, how was Apple going to choose ATI without causing any strain on it's relationship with Intel; Intel already made public whines about Apple choosing/sticking with ARM processors over their Atom solution). When the new MacBook was announced with dual Nvidia chipsets/processors, I saw many jokes commenting that two were necessary because one of them would fail. Nvidia has isolated itself from both AMD and Intel, boasting they could enter the CPU market; that's why AMD bought ATI and that's why Intel is again working on it's own in-house solution. There's still too much hubris at Nvidia.

Yahoo: Where's Icahn as Stock Dips Below $10?

Seriously? We're discussing this? Look, if Yang made the deal w/ MSFT, shareholders MIGHT have been better off considering the current economic situation, but the company definitely would NOT have been, especially considering the current economic situation.

Compare the charts of YHOO, GOOG, and MSFT:

finance.yahoo.com/echa...;range=1y;compare=msft...

Both Yahoo and Google are moving comparatively, as well as MSFT. Yahoo is not like Ford or GM, it is making money and it isn't dying. Their search is actually better than Google, particularly for technical and specific searches, and they are gaining market share in the search market. There's too many people stuck on the quick buck they could have made ( which is only if they sold their shares once the buy-out happened, otherwise, they'd be losing if holding onto converted MSFT stock or reinvesting in the market ).

Icahn did not care about the shareholders, he did not care about Yahoo, or the employees of Yahoo. He cared about making a quick buck. He bought a few hundred million shares averaging in the mid 20's and hoped to get them sold to MSFT at $31 a share ( people keep quoting $33, but that was never on paper ). And Icahn is probably not losing as much, or any, money right now, because he most likely hedged all of his shares by buying PUTS on them ( did no-one notice the premiums on the stock options during that time? ).

Yahoo's stock price right now is where it is at mainly because of the economy, just like many, many other companies out on the market. The company I work for has seen it's stock price drop 70-80%, and is below the actual worth of the company, when we're meeting all of our guidelines and even raising them.

Yahoo Launches Ad Campaign to Lure Searchers From Google

I agree with grishick. There's a reason Google developed Android and a reason they bought YouTube and a reason they sponsor Firefox...

Has anyone done the math on the number of FIrefox 3.0 downloads versus the number of increased hits for Google?

Is AT&T to Blame for 3G's Performance in the iPhone?

Many users of 3G phones who have been switching to the iPhone 3G have reported lower performance, there previous phones were working faster on the 3G network to get the same data. The same users are also having big problems with dropped calls where there previous 3G models had no issues. These problems are consistent with reports around the world. The sources for all this information is from tech blogs , particularly gizmodo.com .

HAYWEED - "Apple would not rush out the product if it was not ready." What about the Newton? What about the current Mobile Me service that Apple has had to give back to back 60 day subscription extensions to?
What about the first gen iPod Nanos that have been melting, catching on fire, or "exploding" that Apple just recently admitted to after an investigation by the Japanese ministry (this was a battery defect, but they hid/denied it till a formal investigation...)?