We Were Yahoo!, Jeremy Ring
We Were Yahoo!, Jeremy Ring
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

We Were Yahoo!
From Internet Pioneer to the Trillion Dollar Loss of Google and Facebook

Author: Jeremy Ring

Narrator: Marguerite Gavin

Unabridged: 7 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 03/13/2018

Synopsis

Twenty-one years after its incorporation and sixteen years after its stock peak, Yahoo sold for 96% less than its value on January 3, 2000, when it had closed at an all-time high of $118.75 per share, resulting in a market capitalization of $120 billion. Wall Street valued Yahoo!, at that time in business less than six years, higher than it did Disney, News Corporation, and Comcast combined.

At the end of 2016, the top seven businesses on the list of the highest-valued companies in the world by market capitalization include Apple at #1, Alphabet (Google's Parent Company) at #2, Amazon.com at #5, and Facebook at #7. Those companies combined are valued in excess of $2 trillion more than the price Verizon paid to acquire Yahoo!

Yahoo!'s story is one of missed strategies, failed opportunities, and poor execution. Early decisions to de-emphasize search features, undervalue Google, and overplay Yahoo's hand in the Facebook negotiations haunted the rest of the company's existence. In addition, factors outside of Yahoo's control—most notably how irrational expectations of Wall Street created an environment where short-term decisions were made at the expense of the long-term good.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Andrew on January 25, 2020

Having recently listened to an audio version of In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives it created a desire in me for more information on probably the key forerunner to Google. Yahoo is referenced many times in the Google book, it’s clear they had paved the way for later technolo......more

Goodreads review by Moshe on December 19, 2018

Rounded up to 4*. I am one of the only people I know that is still using Yahoo email. I got my first email address back in 1995 when I finished my army service and joined my first job. It was great! I remember Yahoo being the first page for everything - the search, the portal to different sort of si......more

Goodreads review by Rick on May 11, 2021

I don’t know what this book wants to be. Part “fuck you” to people who didn’t hire the author before he worked at Yahoo, part mediocre autopsy of Yahoo. It’s ok. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone not deeply interested in Yahoo.......more

Goodreads review by Celeste Conover on May 29, 2018

Ok but long winded. I started using yahoo when it first came out. It was great at one time, but now has too many problems and I was wondering why. I was hoping this book would explain that, but it barely touched on the technical aspect of yahoo and instead focused on advertising and shareholder price......more

Goodreads review by Tom on June 05, 2018

Add a star if you were a participant in the first dot com boom and look back on that period fondly. Ring was my first Yahoo! sales rep and for that, I will tease him relentlessly until one of us dies. The first several chapters of this book cover a period we lived through with similar perspectives, a......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List