How / Why is Yahoo still here

[J.Apple902]

Reading today about their aspirations to buy Tumblr for $1.1B, and their stock buyback deal in order to raise free capital (0% interest debt) to do so. And then it makes me realize, holy crap; Yahoo is still for real? Any comments at all are welcome. Thanks!

[ua_guy]

AOL as a Dial-Up ISP is still alive and well, too.

[disneysteve]

My mom uses Yahoo for her email and we have a couple of Yahoo accounts at my office too.

I actually find Yahoo Finance to be a decent source for looking up business stuff.

I think the main thing that keeps these places around is the millions of people who use their email service. I wouldn't ever want to have to change email addresses. I've had the same one since 1994 and can't imagine what a mess it would be to change it.

[bigdaddybus]

It is the 3rd largest US search engine with 250,000 visitors per month. Thats a good chunk of ad revenue right there.

I agree with DS, Yahoo Finance is pretty good and thats the only thing I use Yahoo for

[JulieAlbright]

I like the Yahoo sports section. I'm not sure if Yahoo has staff that actually writes the articles themselves or if they are just sourcing other articles but I think it is good. I quit using Yahoo as a Home page years ago. It was always giving me the weather for places thousands of miles away from where I live and lead articles that I cared nothing about. Mostly celebrity gossip and that kind of stuff.

I have an old Yahoo email that I mostly keep from nostalgia. They latest round of "improvements" have pretty much put the nail in that coffin. It tells me I have new messages when I don't. When I try to open a message I frequently get error messages. The account is hacked about 7 times a year. And last month for no apparent reason my entire Inbox was deleted. About 3 or 4 days after I sent a Help message I got an automated reply which said it could have been caused by several different things, none of which seemed likely, but anyway there was no recovery.

Oh well. LOL

[J.Apple902]

It is the 3rd largest US search engine with 250,000 visitors per month. Thats a good chunk of ad revenue right there.

I agree with DS, Yahoo Finance is pretty good and thats the only thing I use Yahoo for

Wow thanks for the stat, I think it really does say something. With 313M Americans and only 250k visits per month, I guess their place in the market is exactly what I thought - nearly ignorable. I expected some people to give accolades to their finance section, and I knew @ one point the gmail of today was the yahoomail of back in the day. I just cannot believe they can afford to buy something for $1.1B. Seems like a bad call, even if it is a convoluted stock buy back arrangement. Thanks!

[JustBill]

This is somewhat old news, and that news differs a good deal from what you're recapping. Would you please share your source? Here's a link to a May USA today article regarding the Yahoo/Tumblr deal.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/05/19/yahoo/2324083/

As for daily visitors to Yahoo, here's a portion of what wiki says...

Yahoo!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about the corporation. For the search engine, see Yahoo! Search. For other uses, see Yahoo (disambiguation).
Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo! logo.svg
Type Public
Traded as NASDAQ: YHOO
NASDAQ-100 Component
S&P 500 Component
Industry Internet
Founded January 1994 (as Jerry's guide to the World Wide Web)
March 1994 (as Yahoo!)
Founder(s) Jerry Yang, David Filo
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, U.S.
Area served Worldwide
Key people Maynard Webb
(Chairman)
Marissa Mayer
(CEO)
Products See Yahoo! products
Revenue Decrease US$4.98 billion (2012)[1]
Operating income Decrease US$566 million (2012)[1]
Net income Increase US$3.94 billion (2012)[1]
Total assets Increase US$17.10 billion (2012)[1]
Total equity Increase US$14.56 billion (2012)[1]
Employees 11,500 (2013)[2]
Subsidiaries Yahoo! subsidiaries
Website www.yahoo.com
Yahoo! headquarters
Yahoo! India Bangalore office

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational Internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It is globally known for its Web portal, search engine Yahoo Search, and related services, including Yahoo Directory, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Answers, advertising, online mapping, video sharing, fantasy sports and its social media website. It is one of the most popular sites in the United States.[3] According to news sources, roughly 700 million people visit Yahoo websites every month.[4][5] Yahoo itself claims it attracts "more than half a billion consumers every month in more than 30 languages."[6]

Yahoo was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1, 1995. On July 16, 2012, former Google executive Marissa Mayer was named as Yahoo CEO and President, effective July 17, 2012.[7]

According to comScore, Yahoo during July 2013 surpassed Google on the number of United States visitors to its Web sites for the first time since May 2011, set at 196 million United States visitors, having increased by 21 percent in a year.[8]