back to article Yahoo! hides! from! financial! analysts! amid! email! hacking!, privacy! storm!

Yahoo! had little to say on its looming tie-up with Verizon, as the Purple Palace turned in quarterly numbers that managed to beat analyst expectations. Speaking only briefly on the recent comments from Verizon about adjusting the $4.8bn acquisition deal in the wake of security and privacy problems, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer …

  1. J. R. Hartley

    Shitting crikey!

    Who actually uses any Yahoo service as a matter of choice?

    It beggers belief that they haven't gone under yet.

    1. Syntax Error

      Re: Shitting crikey!

      Many Americans use Yahoo like many Americans use AOL. Bit 20th Century.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Any DuckDuckGo users out there concerned about partnership with Yahoo???

    1. Can we trust Yahoo's claim that DuckDuckGo's Yahoo Server is off-limits?

    2. Yahoo rolled over and let the US Govt slurp despite public corporate protests...

    3. Yahoo covered up a billion user hack / leak, apparently that's the real figure...

    4. Search results have started to tank, far worse than when DDG used Google.

    5. Corporate animals don't change their nature, I had this bookmarked away:

    https://www.eff.org/takedowns/yahoo-tries-hide-snoop-service-price-list

    6. Time to return to Startpage or give Qwant a try: https://lite.qwant.com/....???

    7. Hope the Verizon deal crumbles and Yahoo end up being sold for $1 like Excite etc...

    1. Ole Juul

      Re: Any DuckDuckGo users out there concerned about partnership with Yahoo???

      I'd buy it for a buck, just for the lols. Anybody here get a SCO share certificate before the collector's price went up?

  3. DNTP

    Hello I'm Yahoo!

    "We beat financial expectations by not wasting money on security and privacy!"

    1. paulf
      Big Brother

      Re: Hello I'm Yahoo!

      The P0wnage Palace was reporting the quarter to 30 Sept. I'm not convinced the full effects of the 500 million user hack and Yahoo secretly handing over info to the US Government would have been reflected at all in those numbers.

      IIRC the hack appeared on the dark web sometime in July but was only confirmed by Privacy sell-out Yahoo! a week or two before the quarter end (that was good timing, eh?!). The USG spying news started to break in early October (i.e. after the quarter end) so any revenue consequences on the NSA's bed warmer from this won't be reflected in these figures.

      TL;DR big surprise it all stinks of bullshit. I'd be more interested in the figures for the current quarter (to 31 Dec) and the quarter after that (to 31 March) as they will really show the effects of people actually going elsewhere and presumably not coming back. If I was Verizon I'd be demanding access to current numbers to see any hit.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Hello I'm Yahoo!

        "any revenue consequences on the NSA's bed warmer from this won't be reflected in these figures."

        Revenue consequences won't be. Payments for services rendered might be squirrelled away in there somewhere.

  4. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Burning down the house to keep warm?

    Something isn't right here. Nobody except for a few old DSL customers (AT&T, Kimo, KDDI) has anything to do with Yahoo yet they claim a profit? Even Yahoo's spammers are all on GMail now.

    1. fidodogbreath

      Re: Burning down the house to keep warm?

      Nobody except for a few old DSL customers (AT&T, Kimo, KDDI) has anything to do with Yahoo yet they claim a profit?

      The money isn't in direct user services; it's in the ad networks.

      Verizon doesn't give a sh!t about Yahoo Mail, any more than they cared about AOL Mail when they bought AOL.

      Yahoo and AOL both have large ad networks which display targeted ads on lots non-Yahoo and non-AOL properties. Each of those ad networks individually is smaller than Google / Doubleclick or Facebook, but combined they are larger.

      VZW plans to integrate the Yahoo and AOL ad delivery networks with their own system that tracks users at the network level. The combined ADN will be a major player in the ad business and a huge cash cow that does not depend on new-subscriber acquisition.

  5. tiggity Silver badge

    Flickr, Groups

    I still use a Yahoo service directly, Flickr (as do plenty of other people) as despite them managing to make it worse over the years, none of teh alternatives are that great & (for many Flickr users) little point migrating if lots of the people / communities they interact with most are still on Flickr so that tends to keep some users

    That's a yahoo service with a "stickiness" factor.

    The yahoo groups probably still have a bit of life in them too as the mailing list functionality still seems to be used a lot.

    1. paulf
      Unhappy

      Re: Flickr, Groups

      Yahoo Groups used to be pretty good, but is now a shadow of its former self having been hacked to bits during refurbishments and upgrades over the last few years to the point it's barely usable. I know of several groups that have migrated away either to custom solutions or groups on Facebook (yes, I know). One group remains there, clinging to the wreckage, simply because they can't provide their own bespoke solution and it's not been possible to locate a suitable alternative.

      I can only conclude that Yahoo Groups is a loss maker for the P0wnage palace and they've deliberately broken it to encourage people to sod off. If it was profitable then paid for alternatives would have popped up to grab those departing the mess at Yahoo. I've looked and nothing I've found (paid for or adverts) offers anything close to the same features and functionality.

  6. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    One question

    What is "deep responsibility"?

    1. VinceH

      Re: One question

      It's one meant to sound sincere and thorough, to be used in particular when the results of not giving a flying fuck about looking after users' data have caught up with you.

  7. Nolveys

    We remain very confident, not only in the value of our business, but also in the value Yahoo products bring to our users' lives

    And that value is zero.

  8. MartinT
    WTF?

    Deep Responsibility

    Doesn't that phrase sound reassuring?

    If someone tells me out of the blue "You can trust me", I prepare to hear some lies. Similarly, Marissa Mayer's assurance that:

    "To that end, we take deep responsibility in protecting our users and the security of their information."

    means that when she was asked for a copy of all the information, she handed it over without even bothering to put up a token fight.

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      I don't know that.

      AIUI if the US Government demands that a computer service lets USG spy on its users, it is not allowed to say that this is happening.

      For this reason, some services have announced publicly that the USG is not demanding to spy on the service users. They may be allowed to say that. And if in the future they stop staying that, the conclusion to be drawn, since it is the purpose of setting the thing up, is that the USG is now spying on the users.

      Anyway - if the USG demands that a computer service allows spying, and the computer service wants to resist the order by legal argument, it seems to me to be obvious that the service and everyone else must be not allowed to reveal that in public, as well.

      So, Yahoo may have resisted vigorously and we wouldn't be allowed to know it. So I think we can't complain that they didn't resist. We do not know.

      We do know that they didn't terminate and shut down their business and delete all the data, as some others have in a similar case - protecting users by withdrawing the service, and making their own staff unemployed and shareholders served a total loss. It's a hard choice to make. And possibly an illegal one, since duty to shareholders comes first - that's the law.

      1. MartinT

        Re: I don't know that.

        According to Reuters, Yahoo did not fight it:

        http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-nsa-exclusive-idUSKCN1241YT

        1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

          Re: I don't know that.

          But still we wouldn't know if they did fight it (and Reuters isn't holy gospel). But, I admit, perhaps they didn't - although apparently they did fight the one in 2007 according to the story, with those court records still sealed.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon