Given that there are better (or at least more popular) options for many types of questions (StackExchange seems to have figured it out for tech questions, and they aren't saddled with an insane valuation and so have a lot of freedom to exist without even having to grow...though they are growing), I just don't see how Yahoo buying Quora could possibly serve to improve Yahoo; Yahoo's already pretty good at being second or third best in the market.
I feel like Yahoo would be much better served by building a world-class internal VC arm than by aggressively chasing acquihires. Most acquihires aren't going to stick around after their terms vest, and even while they're around, their hearts and minds won't be dedicated to Yahoo. They're a stopgap solution at best. They can be used to good effect (i.e., to bring innovative projects into the company and to attract young talent to those projects). But they aren't the solution at the scale Yahoo needs.
What Yahoo needs is to win the war (or at least be competitive in the war) for the top talent graduating from university every year. Offering a really innovative, supportive, deep-pocketed, world-class incubator is one way to do this. Possibly a better long term solution than paying superstars for the privilege of their company for a few years at a time.
Cisco, which has one of the best acquisition strategies of all times, isn't a VC -- you go outside to get VC, even if your staff and product is all stuff people from within Cisco mostly thought up (which some investors have complained about)... if it goes well, Cisco is a natural acquirer.
The problem with taking a strategic in your first round is that there's an implied option preventing any other strategics from investing later or buying you out or in some cases even using your product (especially if adopting your product has a large investment/risk).
Totally agree that they really need to shake things up, and whilst they sit on their laurels, the valley keeps moving and every day we see salesforce, google and facebook churning through the acquisitions that either bring in good tech or good people removing them from the pool completely.
I'd make an acquisition contingent upon allowing the product to live on (either with the acquirer or an independent entity or a non profit); this doesn't impair our enterprise value much, since the product doesn't compete with any potential acquirer. I'm looking at putting this into contracts with customers. (a product could still eventually get sunset, but I think a year or two is a reasonable period post-EOL announcement, not a month...)
Yahoo better start doing SOMETHING to be relevant.
The people saying they do good playing 2nd/3rd place, I think, are naive. 2nd or 3rd place simply means your biding your time until [upstart] comes and eats your lunch.
In the case of acquihires - the fact is that google and facebook are in a talent war. They gobble up the talent, and guess what? that [upstart] eating yahoos lunch will not be [upstart] but google and facebook themselves.
Another user mentioned that they think that Yahoo should create a great VC arm. I FULLY agree with this, as evidenced by the many times on HN I have said exactly that.
So, its a multi front battle yahoo is in: need talent, need innovation strategy {VC/Acquisitions/dropping driftwood/etc}, need acquisitions that facebook/google are strategically vying for and need to create a relevant service.
Quora, while I have my issues with them, IS relevant. In many ways, but the most important way is they DO have a sizeable % of SV braintrust participating.
Yahoo should bring that braintrust's awareness around their brand!
Why not buy Quora, and "extend and embrace" that userbase and seek advice from some of the people on Quora?
There could be a huge PR win here.
"New mom and CEO Marissa Meyer buys Quora, the silicon valley strong Q&A site, meets with users and holds a town hall on what Yahoo users can truly benefit from, accompanied by an all star panel, many of whom are top users on Yahoo's new site Quora... blah blah blah synergy etc"
I think too many people are scared and lazy at Yahoo, lets hope the new mom and CEO has bigger balls than any of her predecessors.
when was the last time you ever saw anything from yahoo
answers that was not a joke (accidental or otherwise)?
Yahoo Answers isn't just top for "1.3 meters in inches" - they're also top for "1.2 meters in inches", "1.4 meters in inches", one-from-top in "1.5 meters in inches" and "1.6 meters in inches" and top for "1.7 meters in inches" - not to mention "1 meter in centimeters". Evidently, Yahoo Answers is a market leader in this sort of query.
Sort like what Craiglist had in the 90's. You lose them, and Quora is dead. Not sure Yahoo can own Quora w/o killing it just because of who they are.
All the brain trust is being gobbled up by google and (even moreso, recently) facebook.
I personally think that Acquihires are a bad thing (TM) for the state of our industry... but if Yahoo has any hope in hell, they need to inject some innovative blood into themselves in a damn hurry.
What's the logic behind aggressive investing/acquiring, other than talent?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325445
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4272331
Most specifically this comment I made:
I've said many times on HN that Yahoo needs to start getting REALLY aggressive in the valley to stay alive; they need to be investing in every startup that comes along and acquiring many more.
All the brain trust is being gobbled up by google and (even moreso, recently) facebook.
I personally think that Acquihires are a bad thing (TM) for the state of our industry... but if Yahoo has any hope in hell, they need to inject some innovative blood into themselves in a damn hurry.
(with that said, I am not sure that Quora is really all that innovative - their UX model was only good when they were tiny - but now they have far too large a signal to noise ratio that is exacerbated by their UX implementation (hijacking typed text, @s etc etc etc)