The
technology industry is constantly dealing with the push and pull of two
opposing forces: ascendant stars counterbalanced by declining players.
Both of these forces are on display this week.
One of those dynamics — the fading competitor — has already played out. On Monday, Yahoo announced, finally, that its core internet business would be sold to Verizon
for $4.83 billion in cash, writes Vindu Goel. The deal, due to close
early next year, caps a long downward spiral for the onetime pioneering
web portal, which at its height in 2000 was valued at $125 billion.
Done in partly by indecision over what kind of company it truly was — a search company or a digital content company — Yahoo instead became something of a mishmash. Marissa Mayer,
who was appointed chief executive of Yahoo four years ago and whose
fate with the company now is unclear, was ultimately unable to reverse
the internet firm’s faltering growth.
Yahoo was also outgunned by two rivals, Google and Facebook:
both ascendant forces. Google soared over the years with its superior
web search and search ads, while Facebook derived strength from social
networking, stealing people’s time and attention away from web portals.
Just how strong these two companies are will be clearer in the next few days: Facebook is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Wednesday, and Google, now operating under the wing of Alphabet, its parent company, will post results on Thursday. Both companies are expected to have produced strong revenue growth, natch.
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