Don't blame Marissa Mayer: Nobody was going to save Yahoo

                              

If I asked you to name the most-popular websites in the world, you might mention Google, Facebook and Amazon. In another part of the world, candidates might include Tencent, China's social networking phenomenon; and Baidu, its incumbent search engine.

You might not be inclined to mention Yahoo. An icon of the 1990s dotcom boom, it is a relic to many of the internet’s users. A search engine and web portal that was superseded by Google and then smartphones, you might think that the site had followed Ask Jeeves and Netscape into the dustbin of history.

But you’d be wrong. Yahoo is the world’s fifth-most popular website, according to rankings from Alexa. It is visited more than Amazon, Wikipedia or eBay. It is also still an enormous business: its revenues were $1.2bn (£800m) in the last quarter; that’s more than Twitter, or LinkedIn.

And yet, not much is going right at Yahoo. Founded in 1994 by students Jerry Yang and David Filo as "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web" it became the internet's hottest property in the pre-dotcom boom days. When the world signed up to the web in the 1990s, Yahoo was where it went to figure out what to do with it.

                          

As it grew, it became an email provider, chat room, search engine and more. It was the internet's frontpage and most important site for millions.

But bit by bit, Yahoo fell into decline. Google came along, and became the web's go-to search engine. Facebook emerged, and is now the place we communicate. The smartphone meant we spent less time on the world wide web itself, and more within apps.

While all this was happening, Yahoo was trying to figure out what to do with itself. Under Terry Semel in the early 2000s, it failed to buy Google and then tried to become a gigantic media company. It then hired a series of chief executives tasked with turning the company around, who have to date failed, from founder Jerry Yang, who turned down a $45bn (£30bn) offer from Microsoft; to his successor Carol Bartz, whose tendency for foul-mouthed outbursts won her few friends; to Scott Thompson, who left amid claims he lied about his resumé.

In 2012, Yahoo's latest messiah became Marissa Mayer, a former Google wunderkind who arrived with the promise of returning the company to its glory days. Mayer made a series of eye-catching acquisitions, from the $1bn purchase of social blogging service Tumblr to $30m for Summly, an app developed by British teenager Nick D'Aloisio.

She hired a series of big-name journalists to beef up Yahoo's media arm,made food free at work and gave employees iPhones. She invested heavily in mobile apps, an area all-but abandoned by her predecessors.

All of it, sadly, has been pretty irrelevant. Since July 2012, when Mayer joined, Yahoo's stock has doubled, but it actually hasn't had anything to do with her. 10 years ago, the company made the incredibly prescient decision to pay $1bn for a 40pc stake in Alibaba, China's internet retail goliath. Shortly after Mayer's arrival, it sold half of it for just over $7bn, and when Alibaba floated last year, it sold another 5pc for $9.4bn.

The 15pc that remains is now worth $30bn: Yahoo itself is only valued at $31bn. With Yahoo's stake in Yahoo Japan, a separate company, worth about $8.5bn, this actually ascribes a negative market value to the core business. In reality, Yahoo's internet business is clearly worth more than nothing - it still makes billions of dollars in revenue - but to investors, it has been a rounding error.

Yahoo Inc has been little more than a holding company for Alibaba shares. Since Mayer's appointment, Yahoo's shares rose largely because it was a way to buy into Alibaba ahead of 2014's IPO. Since then, Alibaba's shares have fallen, and Yahoo's with it.

Last week, Yahoo's board announced that the company had abandoned a long-held plan to unlock the value of Alibaba by spinning off the stake, due to the prospect of a hefty tax bill. Instead, it will spin off the core business, a move that could well lead to it being sold.

Mayer has had the luxury of the Alibaba stake giving her the breathing room and the financial backing to try to turn Yahoo around. When the company is forced to fend for itself, things are going to get more difficult. And unless things start improving quickly, her tenure will be viewed as a failure: Revenue is expected to be $4bn this year, a fifth below when she joined. Anyone that buys Yahoo may want to install their own leader with a different set of ideas.

It would be easy to blame Mayer for this; in several ways she has done herself few favours - hiring and firing a chief operating officer who earned $58m in 15 months, cancelling working from home while bringing her newborn son and a full-time nanny to the office, and overseeing anexodus of top executives.

But it's not clear that anybody could have saved Yahoo: the succession of failed turnarounds that preceded Mayer's arrival show that. The reason it ever existed - to help people find their way around the web - is not a problem that needs solving in 2015, and it's difficult to see what was going to change that.

Twitter warns of government 'hacking'

                            

Twitter has sent warnings to a number of users that their accounts may have been hacked by "state-sponsored actors".

It is the first time that the social media company has issued such a warning.

Twitter emailed users to say that the hackers may have sought their email or IP addresses, or phone numbers, which it recently began collecting.

The number of accounts affected by the suspected hack is unclear.

Coldhak, a Canadian non-profit organisation, said it had received a warning from Twitter.

"We believe that these actors (possibly associated with a government) may have been trying to obtain information such as email addresses, IP addresses, and/or phone numbers," the email stated.

"At this time, we have no evidence they obtained your account information, but we're actively investigating this matter. We wish we had more we could share, but we don't have any additional information we can provide at this time."

                            

The Chinese and North Korean governments are thought to be responsible for some cyber hacking of western companies and governments.

Some IT experts say the hackers who breached Sony's computer network late last year and leaked huge amounts of confidential information were backed by the North Korean state.

Pyongyang has consistently denied involvement in the security breach.

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, said that government-backed attackers have far greater resources at their disposal than criminal hacker gangs.

They may be able to use other measures such as human agents or communications intercepts to successfully bypass any security measures, he said.

Bitcoin creator 'is 44-year-old Australian', claims Wired

                               

You may remember Newsweek creating headlines around the world when it "outed" the creator of digital currency Bitcoin as being a 64-year-old Japanese American living near Los Angeles.

The magazine said it had found the mysterious "Satoshi Nakamoto", the man whose name has been linked with the creation of the currency.

That "scoop" apparently proved false - Dorian Nakamoto (birth name Satoshi) ended up suing Newsweek after he said his life was turned completely upside down.

And so it is with that rigmarole still fresh in our minds that I tentatively offer this article from Wired which says Bitcoin creator "Satoshi Nakamoto" is a pseudonym used by a 44-year-old Australian cryptologist named Craig Steven Wright.

"Either Wright invented bitcoin," Wired's Andy Greenberg and Gwen Branwen write, "Or he's a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did."

Bitcoin is a virtual currency built around a complicated cryptographic protocol and a global network of computers that oversees and verifies which coins have been spent by whom. Its anonymous nature means it is a popular choice for criminal activity as it is extremely difficult to trace who is spending Bitcoin.

The currency's creator (or creators, perhaps) is proving just as difficult to trace.

Wired cite leaked documents it says shows communication between Dr Wright and his lawyers in which he is reported to have said: "I did my best to try and hide the fact that I've been running Bitcoin since 2009.

"By the end of this I think half the world is going to bloody know."

I've tried to reach Dr Wright, but to no avail. His blog was taken offline shortly after Wired published its report, while Dr Wright's Twitter account went from being protected to being deleted altogether.

According to the online profiles that remain online, he runs DeMorgan Ltd, a Sydney-based company that looks at "alternative currency".

For the full break down of Wired's body of research into Dr Wright, I urge you to read their full article. But it can be summed up as:

- Blog posts apparently published well before the launch of Bitcoin sharing and seeking expertise on creating cryptocurrencies.

- A request for people to email him details by using an encrypted key previously linked to someone identifying themselves as being Satoshi Nakamoto.

- A post announcing the launch of Bitcoin that was later deleted and replaced with a note saying "the best way to hide is right in the open".

Furthermore, leaked emails and transcripts back up what the magazine says - pointing to Dr Wright having huge stashes of Bitcoins, which he among other things used to invest in setting up a Bitcoin bank.

But, and it's a big but, Wired is quick to pre-emptively point out the potential holes in its theory - saying it could be a very elaborate hoax.

"The unverified leaked documents could have been faked in whole or in part," the magazine said.

But later adds: "But this much is clear: If Wright is seeking to fake his Nakamoto connection, his hoax would be practically as ambitious as bitcoin itself."

The body of evidence presented is certainly compelling, and fills in many of the holes not covered by other supposed outings of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, who is fast becoming something of a Lord Lucan for the digital world.

Yahoo reportedly won't sell $30 billion Alibaba stake!

All eyes are on Yahoo!

                     

The company, lumbering through an attempted turnaround, has been weighing its next steps. Two big items on the table: whether to spin off its lucrative stake in Alibaba and whether to put its core Internet business on the block.

CNBC reported Tuesday that Yahoo's board had decided not to sell off its Alibaba stake and would instead seek a deal for its Internet business.

An announcement is expected by Wednesday, according to CNBC. Yahoo didn't immediately respond to CNNMoney's request for comment.

Alibaba: Why Yahoo might not sell

1. Yahoo has a 15% stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba worth about $30 billion.

2. Selling that stake could generate a lot of money for Yahoo (YHOO, Tech30) and its shareholders. But, after an unfavorable IRS ruling, it could be subject to a gigantic tax bill of about $10 billion.

3. Activist Yahoo shareholder Starboard Value had once favored selling off Alibaba but now opposes it. If the board decided to sell Yahoo's Alibaba (BABA, Tech30) stake, it could be faced with a nasty battle from disgruntled shareholders.

4. It's getting to be decision time. Yahoo has previously said it would sell its Alibaba stake in January. If it were to hold to that time frame, Yahoo would need to notify its creditors 35 trading days before selling Alibaba. That works out to this week, according to Robert Peck, managing director of Internet research at SunTrust.

Yahoo's core Internet business: Keep it or sell it?

1. Yahoo's sales continue to decline after its ad business was eclipsed by Google (GOOGL, Tech30)and Facebook (FB, Tech30) over the past several years.

2. The stock market values Yahoo's Internet business as essentially worthless. Yahoo's market valuation is about $31 billion -- but its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan are worth a combined $38 billion, leaving its core business worth less than zero.

3. That's why it's unclear who might be interested in Yahoo's Internet business. But Verizon's (VZ,Tech30) Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said Monday that he would "look at it," even if a discussion is premature.

4. Yahoo's board could decide to restructure its core business, particularly in its struggling media unit, according to Re/Code's Kara Swisher. It could cut jobs and shut down some initiatives.

Marissa Mayer: Keep her on or show her the door?

1. Yahoo's CEO has been unable to turn the company around in her three-year tenure. She has focused on improving the company's mobile products.

2. The board has not publicly turned against Mayer, and she has stacked the nine-member board with allies. (Mayer herself is on the board.)

3. She'll collect $26 million in severance if she's fired ($110 million if Yahoo gets sold).

4. Mayer is due to give birth any day now.

Facebook is "uncool" but teens still use it the most

Despite teenagers thinking Facebook is lame, it remains their favourite social site says new research

                           

Teenagers use an entirely different set of social media sites than adults do - ranging from Snapchat and Vine, to Periscope, Kik and Instagram, Facebook doesn't rank very high on their "cool" list.

Yet, 78 per cent of teens online use Facebook — the same proportion as in 2014, and more than any other social site except YouTube, says a new report by technology research company Forrester.

In contrast, only about 50pc of the group surveyed used Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.

And it's not just that these 12-17 year-olds have a Facebook account that they rarely use - about 60 per cent of the teens said Facebook was the site they used the most.

More than 30pc said they were on it "all the time" which was significantly more than they said about any other site they used.

In contrast to its heavy usage, a separate survey on the "cool" factor of Facebook led to quite different results.

Ranking 10 social media tools on a scale of 1 (not cool at all) to 5 (totally cool), Facebook came in at number 7, below Whatsapp, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.

Only Tumblr, Pinterest and Google+ ranked below Facebook.

                           

Facebook ranks 7 in a list of top 10 coolest social network tools

There is no specific explanation for why teenagers continue to use Facebook despite thinking it's fusty, but one of the report's graphs may hint at why - Facebook ranked third on a list of the most important tools for keeping in touch with friends. Only Snapchat and Instagram sat above Facebook in this ranking, showing that it continues to be a primary method of social contact for teens.

This reflects Facebook's strategy to be the communication tool you can't live without, possibly even replacing the need for phone numbers.

With its Messenger app, you can text, call, videochat, and play games with your friends without ever needing to leave the app.

"We think [Messenger] has the potential to...connect hundreds of millions of new people, and to become a really important communication tool for the world,” Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg told the audience at the company’s F8 conference in March.

So while teenagers will continue to dabble in every new social media experiment, ranging from short bytes of video to self-destructing photos, Facebook stays steady as the king of social connections.

Move over Google Maps: Apple claims its app is three times as popular on iPhones

Apple says its maps app is now used 5 billion times a month on iPhones, three years after the embarrassment when it launched

                                

When Apple ditched Google's mapping service in 2012 to create its own, what emerged was an undisputed disaster. The mapping software introduced in iOS 6 contained a catalogue of errors, missing railway stations, directing drivers across airport runways and ignoring entire towns.

The episode preceded the departure of Apple's software chief Scott Forstall, and prompted an almost unheard-of apology from chief executive Tim Cook. It became the butt of many jokes, and spawned a host of memes. When Google swiftly launched its own Maps app for the iPhone in response, many assumed it would become the de facto choice.

Three years later, though, Apple Maps is resurgent. The company says its mapping service is used three times as much as "its next leading competitor", based on requests to the service, according to the Boston Globe. It handles some 5 billion requests a month.

Apple has invested heavily in maps, purchasing at least half a dozen companies since 2012 and adding new features like public transport routes, putting it in competition with other popular mapping services like Citymapper.

Most importantly, though, its database of places has simply gotten better. The listing for Dublin Airport, for example is at Dublin Airport, not a farm nine miles away.

Of course, Apple Maps is installed by default on iPhones and iPads, and the software has become more heavily integrated within iOS. For example, Siri will give directions in Apple Maps, as will a host of apps from both Apple and third parties.

This skews the battle in Apple's favour, although it is clear that the software has made great strides, and means that it only has to be good enough for users not to go looking for something else.

"We are fast learners and we are fast at fixing things,” Apple's product marketing chief Greg Joswiak told the Boston Globe.

Outside of Apple's ecosystem of course, Google's maps reign supreme. The software is believed to have around one billion users worldwide.

Yahoo Considering 'Selling Off' Core Business

Yahoo Mail could be sold off, along with its news and sports sites, as the company struggles to increase its revenue.

                          

Yahoo is reportedly considering selling its core internet business, a move that would mark the end of an era for one of the web's best-known names.

Shares in Yahoo rose 7% in extended trading after the Wall Street Journal reported the possible sale.

Yahoo's core services include Yahoo Mail, plus its news and sports sites.The company’s board is meeting amid a debate about the future of the company and its high-profile chief executive Marissa Mayer.

Ms Mayer joined Yahoo in 2012 after long spell at Google, and promised to turn the company around.But her plan to boost mobile, video and native adverts has failed to increase revenues, while desktop advertising continues to decline.