back to article Sources! say! Twitter's! after! you! Yahoo!

Twitter is reported to be the latest suitor eyeing up Yahoo! for a possible sale, according to reports. Chief exec Marissa Mayer talks about a possible merger of the companies, sources told the New York Post. Mayer is in line for a $55m payout following the web company's sale. Net earnings for Yahoo's first quarter in 2016 …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Got to love those contracts

    Mayer is in line for a $55m payout following the web company's sale.....with the company recording a loss of $99m - a 568 per cent drop from the previous year.

    I wish I could get a 10th of that for fucking up so badly.

    1. BillG
      Happy

      Re: Got to love those contracts

      Yahoo has a vast number of email users and extensive online real estate. Ripe for someone who wants to branch out into new territory.

      IMO potential suitors for Yahoo from highest probability to lowest:

      Amazon

      Twitter

      Facebook

      Microsoft

      eBay

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Got to love those contracts

      She's screwed up even more royally than her predecessors, yet she gets all that gold. Shocking. Capitalism is well and truly broken.

      1. Dadmin

        Re: Got to love those contracts

        It's how the world works, you should try it out. As a CEO, and the fifth in a short span of time, she has to be responsible for every single part of the company, and with a Yahoo! they have an uphill battle to regain the prowess of it's former self. During that time the founder, Jerry, left and there was a lot of turnover, as well as being in the middle of a giant effort to reduce the number of data centers via project Rewire. I was there during that time and it was fairly successful with reducing the data center footprint, and running costs, of the company at large. Anyway, it's the CEO's job to take on all the responsibilities and, if things work out, lead the company in a turnaround. Problem is that Yahoo! doesn't make products and other consumer goods like an Apple, or a Google, it's mostly the little properties and the two big guys; search and mail. A search was a longtime partnership with Microsoft, so all searches were really routing through a Bing gateway from the Yahoo! Search front end. Other than the smart investment in Alibaba, their bulk of income is from ad view/sales.

        Anyway, the point is that CEOs get giant bucks because they must take on a company-sized load of responsibility and there's no guarantee that things will turn around and start making crazy growth like the stock market lemmings like, yet they still get paid for trying. If you want that cash here's how to be a CEO; get HIGHLY educated, lead something, anything, get networked into the C-level positions and make your way to the top office by making your own company (pretty fucking hard) or convincing an established or startup company to take you on at their leader(super fucking hard). The other way to make a big amount of cash is do a startup anyway, make yourself a player in your niche or get an open sores project funded and ride that train to see where it goes. If you get some traction then sell the lot to a Google or Microsoft and cash in that way. Either way, you're going to have to be extra sharp and put up with some massive failures before you reach that top office. Marissa was a top person at Google, so the transition to being the CEO at Yahoo! was supposed to be a great fit. It's just the market. The market likes new shiny things, not so much older things trying to shine again. It is known.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          FAIL

          Re: Got to love those contracts

          Nicly written, but clearly this CEO doesn't eat their own dog food.

          Within 10 seconds of visiting Yahoo (with your ad-block turned off), you will soon see everything that is wrong with it.

          You get reasonable news articles mixed in with a b-list celebs arses,both interspersed with ad's for miracle slimming pills and £1 laser eye treatments.

          It really is the gutter press of the internet.

  2. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Sounds good

    Twitter buys Yahoo for a nominal fee just in time for them both to go under.

    Madness.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Sounds good

      Looks like someone misunderstood that "two-negatives-make-one-positive" thing.

    2. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

      Re: Sounds good

      Bloody wonderful.

      Sorry. What I should have said was : Bloody! Wonderful!

  3. David Bird

    "568 per cent drop", even the rules of mathematics have to be suspended to report this calamity.

  4. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

    $859m for the three-month results posted in April.

    I'm reading that as saying they made $859m in a 3 month period, and that was a low point...so, that means that over the full year they pulled in at least $3,436m.

    Now, I'm no economist and I'm used to handling smaller budgets, but how they can have turnover of that magnitude and still make a loss is somewhat mind-boggling. Yes, I know they have to pay wages and buy hardware, etc. but to be running at a loss that means some monumental outgoings.

  5. roselan

    losers got to get together, and it started with tumblr.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "However, Twitter is also struggling to please investors and the stock market."

    So they think buying a rapidly depreciating asset is the answer?

    How about this alternative: Send me a million dollars a year - you'll save billions!

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