Yahoo is over. The company is gone. It announced that once its deal with Verizon closes, it will rename itself to Altaba. Verizon, meanwhile, may or may not continue to keep the name of the mail Yahoo Mail or dub the instant messenger as Yahoo Messenger.
Today everything around and related to Yahoo reminds of all the mindless decisions that the company has taken in the past. Here are 5 top mistakes — in hindsight — made by Yahoo that have now led to its demise.
1. Refusing to buy Google for just $1 million: Yahoo failed to gauge its biggest competitors and turned down the $1 million deal. Yes, Yahoo could have easily turned the tables if it had said yes to Larry Page and Sergei Brin when the duo approached it, selling Google. Page and Brin wanted to focus on their studies at Stanford and therefore were looking for a company to sell their small startup called PageRank system at a small amount of $1 million. Today Google is the one of the most valuable companies worth over $500 billion.
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2. Failing to buy Facebook: As if saying no to Google was not enough, Yahoo. According to the book called The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, Yahoo initially offered $1 billion to Facebook but later lowered it to $850 million. David writes that Facebook in 10 minutes made its mind to decline the offer.
4. Called itself a media company: Though Yahoo worked as a tech company, it failed to acknowledge itself one and stubbornly addressed itself as the media company. It got swayed away by the profit which it earned initially through ads and overlooked the tech involved in it.
