Re:What Went Wrong for Yahoo
by jll29 on Saturday July 26, 2025 @03:15PM
(#44696326)
You are spot on, but you are drawing a slightly wrong conclusion, IMHO:
Yes, Overture what the best Yahoo! acquisition ever made.
But Yahoo!'s greatest mistake was to settle the Google lawsuit for a few million dollars - which meant that Google could keep using Overture's (parented) invention of keyword bidding based advertising; without it, Google may never have found a way to become profitable.
So Yahoo! bought its own gravestone for $50m, when all they would have had to do is stand firm and go to trial.
If Y! exercised its government-awarded monopoly rights for keyword auction based advertising, there may still be that Y! portal that was so prominent in the early 2000s.
PS: Yahoo Inc. is not full gone - Yahoo Japan remains the last independent part of the former Y! - see https://www.yahoo.co.jp .
Yes, Overture what the best Yahoo! acquisition ever made.
But Yahoo!'s greatest mistake was to settle the Google lawsuit for a few million dollars - which meant that Google could keep using Overture's (parented) invention of keyword bidding based advertising; without it, Google may never have found a way to become profitable.
So Yahoo! bought its own gravestone for $50m, when all they would have had to do is stand firm and go to trial. If Y! exercised its government-awarded monopoly rights for keyword auction based advertising, there may still be that Y! portal that was so prominent in the early 2000s.
PS: Yahoo Inc. is not full gone - Yahoo Japan remains the last independent part of the former Y! - see https://www.yahoo.co.jp .