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RIP Yahoo!

My heart bleeds for Yahoo. The iconic company, which was once synonymous with the web is no more the independent Internet company it once was.

Being a portal was all the rage before the dot-com bust. After the bubble burst, Yahoo suffered from an identity crisis, much like the now-forgotten portals Excite and Lycos. Yahoo weather the storm much better than its competitors, but the new era didn't belong to portals, it belonged to specialists like Google and Facebook. Yahoo watched from the sidelines as it missed one opportunity after the other.

A spate of clueless CEO's didn't help either. Marissa Mayer was an expensive and promising hire as CEO of a sinking ship. Many people saw her as the only hope. The hopes were soon to be dashed. The identity crisis perpetuated under her and Yahoo's stocks continued to tumble. Expensive acquisitions were made in the hopes of reviving Yahoo's fortunes, but the company simply didn't know how to manage its acquisitions.

All attempts to revive the behemoth were finally laid to rest when the board invited offers to be bought. Verizon finally purchased it for a meager $4.8 billion. Compare this to being worth $125 billion not too long back and a $44 billion spurned offer to be bought outright by Microsoft.


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