Internet people love to hate on Yahoo $YHOO. It bums me out. I like Yahoo.
They are a media company and I guess we all hate media companies. In the end, we are all media companies, so we hate ourselves?
If I want a description of a Company I go to Yahoo Finance. Here is how Yahoo is summarized on Yahoo Finance:
Yahoo! Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a digital media company that delivers personalized digital content and experiences through various devices worldwide. It offers online properties and services to users; and a range of marketing services to businesses.
I buy this summary for the most part. I sure as hell don’t know how to value this conglomerate so I look up the stock price. It has been stuck around $15 for a very long time. That seems right for a small investor like me. The price is the price. It’s a yawner and no one seems to care about a ‘digital media company’. I concur.
What else matters….
They have made a bazillion entrepreneurs and startup investors rich. If you own the stock (I own a few shares…it’s like a bad accident I need to watch unfold in my personal account) you are pretty lazy. In 2006, I was blogging about the fate of Yahoo (to quote from said blog post…’the price says it all’). I still like all the ideas I had for them.
Please remember one of your last great freedoms (at least until the 2008 crisis and $AIG, shittybank, Fannie Mae)…nobody forces you to own public common shares. I am sure Dan Loeb is a real swell guy, but he is playing grown up Monopoly with people that act younger than my son Max. It’s like ‘Days of our Lives’ for men.
Yahoo always works for me. Our office NCAA tourney was powered by Yahoo. I look up tickers and financial information on Yahoo.
I know ‘Flickr’ is important to many a photo buff, but not to me. I never cared about photos until the iPhone and Instagram.
Yahoo was at the Facebook table. Early. They could have had it. That’s cool.
I imagine they could be real cool again, but cool does not pay bills, ads do.
Yahoo needs to embrace the uncoolness of selling ads and making up their content, like every other media company.
It could be that people see Yahoo! as too much of a reflection of themselves, and loathe what they don’t want to become … or it could just be unreached potential … either way two sides of the same coin on self reflection.
i like it. possible for sure
People don’t see themselves as they are but as they wish to be.
Not convinced just yet:) Such a boring stock now.. if only they could:
-resolve the whole Alibaba fiasco
-establish some clear direction for the next few years
Oh well…