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Verizon Emerged As Favorite Bidder For Yahoo
April 26, 2016 by admin
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Verizon Communications Inc is the clear favorite in the fast approaching bid for Yahoo Inc’s core Internet business, according to Wall Street analysts, in large part because the telecommunications company’s efforts to become a force in Internet content have gone relatively well under the leadership of AOL Inc Chief Executive Tim Armstrong.
Verizon acquired AOL last June for $4.4 billion – its first big foray into the advertising-supported Internet business – and it is not yet clear how well the unit is performing financially. Subsequent moves, including the takeover of much of Microsoft Corp’s advertising technology business, a deal to buy Millennial Media for about $250 million and the recent launch of the mobile video service go90, are also too recent to assess.
Yet analysts have given the big phone company high marks for allowing AOL to operate independently and folding in other recent acquisitions without much drama. And they said Armstrong seems to be driving Verizon’s recent moves in go90 and recent acquisitions.
“The management puts a lot of faith in Armstrong,” BTIG analyst Walt Piecyk said.
That faith derives in part from the belief that Armstrong did a good job at left-for-dead AOL, especially in assembling a strong set of products to deliver targeted digital ads to customers.
Combining AOL and Yahoo, an idea that has come up many times over the years, could instantly make Yahoo a major player in Internet advertising, with Armstrong – one of the world’s top ad executives – at the helm, analysts said.
Armstrong “has good M&A experience, and a pretty solid ad tech stack,” B. Riley & Co analyst Sameet Sinha said.
Verizon’s hands-off approach that has worked with AOL, though, might not be suitable if the far-bigger Yahoo were taken over. With Yahoo’s struggling business, “the luxury of autonomy is simply not there,” Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner said.
Verizon, AOL and Yahoo declined to comment.
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/verizon-emerges-as-favorite-bidder-for-yahoo.html
Yahoo Acquires Polyvore
August 12, 2015 by admin
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Yahoo Inc announced on Friday that it has agreed to acquire fashion start-up Polyvore to help drive traffic and strengthen its mobile and social offerings.
Yahoo, which did not disclose terms of the deal, said Polyvore will accelerate its ‘Mavens’ growth strategy.
The company has been focusing on four areas — mobile, video, native advertising and social — which it calls Mavens, to drive user engagement and ad sales as it battles intense competition from Google Inc and Facebook Inc .
Revenue from Mavens made up about one-third of the company’s total revenue in the quarter ended June 30.
The Mavens portfolio includes BrightRoll, mobile app network Flurry, mobile ad buying platform Yahoo Gemini and blogging site Tumblr.
Polyvore, the brainchild of 3 ex-Yahoo engineers, was started in 2007.
The Mountain View, California-based company allows users to mix-and-match articles of clothing and accessories and customize them into “sets”.
Polyvore’s co-founder and CEO Jess Lee was earlier part of Google Inc’s associate manager program, which Marissa Mayer headed before joining Yahoo as CEO.
Is Yahoo Growing?
July 9, 2015 by admin
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Yahoo’s share gains since November from a partnership with Mozilla may be a clue about whether the search company can gain new users through the just-announced contract to change Internet Explorer’s and Chrome’s default search through installations of Oracle’s Java.
Although the news of the Yahoo-Oracle partnership got the lion’s share of attention, CEO Marissa Mayer also used last week’s shareholder meeting to mention the Mozilla pact.
The five-year contract with Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has boosted Yahoo’s share of the U.S. search market, but growth has stalled for the last three months, according to measurement company comScore.
On Wednesday, Mayer asserted that the Mozilla deal — negotiated last fall — was “profitable,” but didn’t provide any numbers to back that up. Neither Yahoo nor Mozilla has disclosed how much the former paid to become Firefox’s default search engine in the U.S.
By comScore’s measurement, Yahoo accounted for 12.7% of all U.S. searches in May, the same share it controlled in both March and April. Although that was 2.5 percentage points higher than in November 2014 — before Firefox began urging users to accept Yahoo as the default — and represented a six-month increase of 25%, May’s share was down from the January peak of 13%.
From all indications, Yahoo has gotten as much out of the Firefox deal as it will likely get. The flip-side is that Yahoo has hung onto most of what it grabbed from Google — Firefox’s previous default — even as Google has tried to get users to return.
For May, comScore pegged Google’s share at 64.1%, down one-tenth of a percentage point from the month prior. Microsoft’s share rose that one-tenth of a point to end May at 20.3%. Because Bing powers Yahoo’s search results, Microsoft’s technology accounted for 31.4% of all U.S. searches, still less than half Google’s 65.2%.
Yahoo Still Playing Pac-Man
July 16, 2013 by admin
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Yahoo announced on Wednesday that it bought Qwiki for an undisclosed sum, as the firm’s spending spree continues.
Qwiki started out as a video focused search engine in 2011, before making its way into the iTunes Store as an app that turns images and videos into digital story boards.
Yahoo announced its acquisition of Qwiki on Wednesday, although it kept quiet about what it plans to do with the company and how much it spent. However, according to Allthingsd, Yahoo spent approximately $50m to further expand its digital offerings.
What’s more, while it’s unclear what Yahoo’s plans are at present, it’s likely that the firm is looking to challenge Vine and Instagram in the social video market.
Yahoo announced the news, naturally, on Tumblr. It said, “We’re excited to announce that Yahoo acquired Qwiki – a company that uses awesome technology to bring together pictures, music and video to capture the art of storytelling.
“We will continue to support the Qwiki app, and the team will join Yahoo in our New York city office to reimagine Yahoo’s storytelling experience. Stay tuned … there’s much more to come!”
Qwiki also had something to say, posting on its website, “Thank you for being a part of our story – one which is far from over. The Qwiki app will live on as a standalone entity inside Yahoo, where we will grow our thriving community and where our team will continue to work to help you share life’s best experiences.
“We are proud of the work we’ve done, and humbled by unwavering support from the NY tech community. New York is such a big part of who we are, and what we will become.”
Yahoo’s buyout of Qwiki is the latest in a series of acquisitions by the firm. Recently the firm announced that it bought Tumblr for a cool $1.1bn, with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer promising “not to screw it up”.
Is Yahoo Really Back?
Yahoo has once again made the list as one of the world’s 100 most valuable brands.
The Internet company nabbed the 92nd spot in the annual list of global companies from multiple industries including technology, retail and service, released Tuesday by BrandZ, a brand equity database. The ranking gave Yahoo a “brand value” of US$9.83 billion, which is based on the opinions of current and potential users as well as actual financial data.
Apple occupied the number-one position on the list, with a brand value of $185 billion. Google was number two, with a value of roughly $114 billion.
The BrandZ ranking, commissioned by the advertising and marketing services group WPP, incorporates interviews with more than 2 million consumers globally about thousands of brands along with financial performance analysis to compile the list. Yahoo last appeared on the list in 2009 at number 81.
Yahoo’s inclusion on the 2013 list comes as the Internet company works to reinvent itself and win back users. Previously a formidable player in Silicon Valley, the company has struggled in recent years to compete against the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Improving its product offerings on mobile has been a focus. New mobile apps for email and weather have been unveiled, along with a new version of the main Yahoo app, featuring news summaries generated with technology the company acquired when it bought Summly.
Most notably, Monday the company announced it is acquiring the blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. Big changes to its Flickr photo sharing service were also announced.
Yahoo’s rebuilding efforts have picked up steam only during the last several months, but the 2013 BrandZ study was completed by March 1.
However, last July’s appointment of Marissa Mayer as CEO likely played a significant role in the company’s inclusion in the ranking, said Altimeter analyst Charlene Li. “Consumer perception has gone up since then,” she said.
“Yahoo’s leadership has a strong sense of what they want to do with the brand,” she added.
Yahoo’s 2012 total revenue was flat at $4.99 billion. However, after subtracting advertising fees and commissions paid to partners, net revenue was up 2 percent year-on-year.
Yahoo On A Buying Spree
Yahoo has purchased a mobile gaming company, Loki Studios, taking its total acquisitions this month to four.
The company said over the weekend it welcomed Loki, Astrid, GoPollGo and MileWise to its growing mobile team. “We recently added 22 entrepreneurs to our growing mobile team,” the company said in a Twitter message in a possible reference to some of the people from the four companies who have moved to Yahoo.
Loki’s flagship application is its location-aware game, Geomon. “We are thrilled to be joining the exceptional folks at Yahoo!. We believe fully in their commitment to creating outstanding mobile products,” the Loki team said on their website.
Earlier in the week, Yahoo also acquired GoPollGo, a social polling tool. The company’s founder and team said they were moving to Yahoo, and would no longer be supporting their offerings.
It is not clear whether Yahoo has bought all these companies for their products and technology or just to get their experienced staff in the area of mobile as it tries to build up its own mobile capabilities. The way the services are being shut down suggests that their user base did not particularly interest Yahoo. The company could not be immediately reached for comment.
Yahoo Going Up
November 29, 2012 by admin
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Yahoo Inc shares climbed to their highest level in a year and a half, as investor confidence seems to be increasing that new Chief Executive Marissa Mayer can orchestrate a comeback that eluded three of her predecessors.
The Internet pioneer has yet to actually provide Wall Street with any hard evidence that its business is turning a corner – and she has warned that it will be a lengthy job – but investor faith in the ex-Google executive is running high.
Hedge funds Tiger Global Management and Greenlight Capital Management recently disclosed large stakes in Yahoo, accumulated during the third quarter.
“Money managers are staring to want to own this name again,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners.
“For the amount of traffic they have, and the assets they have, they should be able to squeeze some value out of that,” Gillis said, referring to Yahoo. With Mayer at the helm, he said, Yahoo has “finally got somebody who the market believes can do that.”
Gravity Capital Management’s Adam Seessel said that Mayer’s recruitment of various Google Inc employees, including recently hired Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Henrique de Castro, has also helped burnish Yahoo’s image.
“What the market is seeing is not (financial) numbers so much as they’re seeing people voting with their feet, people moving from Google to Yahoo,” said Seessel, whose firm owns Yahoo shares.
“All these people from Google wouldn’t be following her if they didn’t think that she didn’t have some good cards to play,” he said.
Samsung And Yahoo Ink A Deal
November 14, 2012 by admin
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Yahoo announced a deal on Tuesday with Samsung to integrate its Broadcast Interactivity service into the company’s Smart TVs.
The agreement will allow Yahoo to push real-time content alongside TV shows and advertisements on Samsung TVs, such as “subtle, on-screen prompts” that inform viewers of additional content that they can watch.
“With the touch of a remote, connected tablet or phone, Samsung Smart TV viewers can easily surface content or offers related to the TV shows and commercials they are watching,” Samsung said.
TV programmers can use the integration feature to provide Samsung TV customers with “complementary content” such as trivia, additional information about the show being watched and interactive gaming.
Showtime Networks and National Geographic Channel are two of the first TV programming partners that will take advantage of the agreement, Yahoo said.
If TV ads aren’t annoying enough, Yahoo said the partnership also creates new forms of advertising by “extending traditional 30-second commercials into immediate actions”.
In other words, with broadcast interactivity enabled commercials, advertisers can embed “calls-to-action” for downloading apps or digital media, providing coupons, ordering samples, reading reviews or viewing product information. Just in case you really want to know more about that Mr Muscle sink unblocker, or the next JML cleaning gadget that is set to transform your home life forever.
Google Buys Clever Sense
December 21, 2011 by admin
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Google has purchased Clever Sense, the developer of Alfred, a personalized restaurant and bars recommendations app, for an undisclosed amount, both companies stated.
The Internet giant has been strengthening its local offerings. It acquired in September for example a restaurant ratings publisher Zagat to boost its online maps and local business listings with trustworthy reviews and recommendations.
Alfred, which currently provides recommendations on restaurants, bars, and night life in the locality where the person is, could however down the line broaden its scope, potentially making it the Android alternative to the Siri personal assistant on Apple’s iPhone 4S.
Clever Sense’s co-founder and CEO Babak Pahlavan suggested in a notice on the company’s website that Alfred may include other information sources and services.
Discovering local information is extremely important to both users and businesses, and the acquisition of Clever Sense will benefit both, Pahlavan said. “With Google and Clever Sense working together, our entire team looks forward to building more intelligent, serendipitous and magical services!”, he added.