18 Companies a year, Yahoo acquisition why so Crazy

Yahoo's acquisition has been endless since Yahoo welcomed its new CEO, Marissa Mayer, a year ago, and last week Yahoo shot again.

The protagonist is the United States mobile advertising start-up company Admovate and China social platform large data analysis company Zhi Tuo Tongda. At this point, after the acquisition of Bignoggins, Qwiki and Xobni, admovate and intellectual extension to become Yahoo in the fourth and fifth company acquired this month, after the Marissa to become the CEO of Yahoo, the acquisition of a total of how many pens? The author is organized as follows:

October 26, 2012, Yahoo acquisition Mobile recommended application stamped, this is Marissa Mayer as CEO since the first acquisition.

December 5, 2012, Yahoo buys video communication technology company Ontheair.

January 23, 2013, Yahoo to 10 million dollars around the price of the acquisition of content integration platform snip.it.

February 18, 2013, Yahoo bought alike, it is worth mentioning that its founder Maria Zhang graduated from Tsinghua University.

March 21, 2013, Yahoo buys personalized social recommendation start-up company Jybe, learned that Jybe's service is based on the user's track in the social circle for them to recommend new points of interest.

March 26, 2013 Yahoo 30 million dollar acquisition of 17-Year-old high School student mobile reading start-up company Summly.

May 2, 2013, Yahoo Acquisition task management application Astrid.

May 10, 2013, Yahoo acquisition flight search start-up company Milewise.

May 10, 2013, Yahoo buys online polling company Gopollgo.

May 11, 2013, Yahoo buys mobile game start-up company Loki UBM.

May 20, 2013 Yahoo 1.1 billion U.S. dollars to buy the United States Light Blog service Tumblr. Tumblr is the world's largest light blog site, its acquisition amount of 1.1 billion U.S. dollars, Yahoo is also the largest acquisition in ten years.

June 13, 2013, to improve Flickr, Yahoo buys photo application Ghostbird.

June 13, 2013, Yahoo also acquired the Conference conferencing solution provider Rondee.

July 2, 2013, Yahoo buys mobile sports game application developer Bignoggins.

July 3, 2013 Yahoo acquisition mobile video sharing application Qwiki, the acquisition price of about 50 million U.S. dollars.

July 9, 2013, Yahoo buys email address Book application Xobni.

July 18, 2013 morning, Yahoo bought mobile advertising company Admovate

On the afternoon of July 18, 2013, Yahoo acquired the Big data analysis company of social platform, which is Marissa Mayer's first acquisition in China.

In a short span of one year, Yahoo has bought 18 companies! Although I know that Yahoo has been in the acquisition, but after seeing this data is still a small shock, shocked the heart is very curious: why should Yahoo so crazy to buy? To figure this out, let's first understand what Yahoo is doing with so many acquisitions.

Yahoo Crazy to buy the company's purpose

From the public comments of Yahoo executives and the analysis of various commentators, Yahoo's many acquisitions are based on the following objectives:

Talent acquisition to curb the brain drain: a company in the future and sustainable success, the most fundamental guarantee is that talent, "people-oriented" is the enterprise can be in the increasingly fierce competition can maintain the key, this point for the former internet giant Yahoo is particularly important. From Yahoo to buy Jybe and other start-ups and then shut down their business, and let the start-up personnel back to Yahoo, is clearly a talent acquisition, which on the one hand to curb the current brain drain on Yahoo, on the other hand is to create an atmosphere, so as to attract more talented people to join Yahoo.

Boost employee morale: This is not a lot to say, a continuous acquisition, at least to prove that the company has the capital and strength, but also to prove that the company is still evolving and progress, but also to allow employees to recognize the company, at least that this is not a mediocre company.

Technology integration: Yahoo buys a lot of companies are to give existing products complementary technology or let it have media platform properties. The recent acquisition of Admovate, for example, is to strengthen and help Yahoo's advertising technology platform to improve Yahoo's targeted mobile advertising solutions. So Yahoo has some acquisitions, and in order to have some technology to integrate with themselves.

Data acquisition: This is very obvious in the Yahoo acquisition Tumblr, TUMBLR has 107.8 million blogs, 50.6 billion articles and 75 million new items per day, the data on this platform is undoubtedly a huge wealth for Yahoo, why say so? Because it helps to create a personalized yahoo. What is personalized Yahoo, is able to based on user habits, professional characteristics and other data analysis, to provide users with different Yahoo, this can be reflected in your open Yahoo Portal and others opened the different, can be based on your preferences and reorder rendering. Personalized Yahoo not only can present the user likes and wants the content, brings the user experience the great enhancement, but also can put the accurate effective advertisement for the advertisement advocate.

Strategic layout: Yahoo's acquisitions are for strategic layout, and this can also be called defensive acquisition, which is mainly reflected in Yahoo's acquisition of Qwiki. After the vine of Twitter, Facebook's photo-sharing app Instagram also launched a video-sharing feature, so that short video sharing is likely to be the next social-sharing breakout after text socializing and photo-sharing. For Yahoo, it has missed out too much, and now it is necessary to make strategic arrangements through acquisitions.

The above five points outline the purpose of Yahoo's takeover of these companies, but that still seems to explain why the Yahoo takeover is so crazy. In thinking, I suddenly found that Yahoo these acquisitions have a common point: most of the focus on the mobile and social areas, and this shows what?

Crazy takeover reason: User access to information changes, must be acquired to create a new yahoo

Imagine, if you want the user spontaneous, active access to content, that should do? In fact, to grasp the social needs of users is the best way, such as I want to chat? qq! Want to spit? Weibo! Want to secure trade with foreign users? Taobao! These are the basic needs of users, but also active behavior.

And with the popularity of mobile devices, these requirements are likely to be far away from the PC side, and more on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets (which is why Yahoo chooses to make breakthroughs in the mobile arena), and even in the future, to wearable devices such as Google Glass. However, to create a Google Glass this High-tech products, not High-tech gene for Yahoo, said the good thing is too time-consuming, Yahoo can not afford to delay, said the bad point is that it can not do such products.

Yahoo is unable to create a wearable device such as Google Glass, unable to control the export and access of user data from the platform of the device, and then, by buying these social and mobile companies, Yahoo will probably be able to attract users by making Google the content. As a result, the changes in the way users access information and channels are the reason why Yahoo has been frantically buying in the mobile and social spheres. And it's worth mentioning that this was confirmed in a recent speech by Yahoo., President of the Global Research and Development Center in Beijing, Zhang that Yahoo's vision is to become a mobile-led internet company by 2015.

The root cause of crazy acquisitions: traditional Internet portals need to be transformed

With the development of mobile Internet, the traditional Internet portal needs to be transformed, otherwise, the future may be in the position of losing traffic, users and data, why say so? This is mainly the user's habits on the internet become more social, more mobile, more dependent on "pull" not "push" mode.

What do you mean "pull" rather than "push"? What's the difference between the two? The main difference between "pull" and "push": The former is the user's spontaneous access to content, such as users have a period of time is not on the QQ space, so will be active in QQ space to understand the surrounding friends, colleagues and even leadership of the relevant dynamic, and "push" is the portal so, whether you like it, anyway present out, Content is here (not to say "push" is not important, but the future "pull" value greater). For "pull", the simpler analogy is that something does not understand how to do? Baidu! I'm a house person, but want to buy a cell phone? Authentic, guaranteed Jingdong is the first choice ... These are the embodiment of "pull".

This trend has also caused some platforms to appear very large, but the future value will be lower, and some platforms, not much profit or even loss, not listed but the reason for high valuations. For the future, Yahoo's crazy takeover seems to be the logical thing.

Here, this article basically can also end, but some people like to ask questions, such as: these may have been expected inside Yahoo, but why from Marissa Mayer start? What is it that drives her to start buying so wildly?

What drives Marissa Mayer to carry out crazy acquisitions? Do women naturally love shopping?

Yahoo, although in the 1990s to create many of the Internet miracle, but since Google became the search giant, Facebook became the King of Social, the two companies have a basic monopoly of the entire internet, and Yahoo as a traditional internet company, although portals and other services still have a flash of place, but its future, Google and Facebook are being looked down on as they continue to pull Internet users and advertising revenues.

From a historical point of view, Yahoo 19 Years a total of 9 CEOs, and in the three years before Marissa Mayer took office, Yahoo unexpectedly continuously replaced 5 CEO, the few CEOs in the shortest time even a few months, From the perspective of these CEOs, it seems to confirm that Yahoo, squeezed by Google and Facebook, has not only lost its way to the internet but also has a steady stream of internal problems.

In the case of Yahoo DNA not in this era, if simply tinkering with the focus on the traditional internet, Marissa Mayer may also be forced to walk like the previous CEOs. What about Marissa Mayer? In mobile internet homes are still in the layout today, shift attention and strategy to a thriving mobile, through a continuous acquisition and layout, outlining the future of Yahoo is a magnificent land, so that everyone can see the hope and willing to follow, even if the future is not necessarily so beautiful, even not necessarily be able to achieve, But at least for Marissa Mayer internal change to divert attention, but also for themselves to be able to play the time ...

Why did the crazy takeover start with Marissa Mayer? Trust is a factor, and another reason to ignore it is that--marissa Mayer from Google. As you know from Wikipedia, in fact, Yahoo is nothing at all, the real purchase is Google, Google's history, a total of 127 companies bought, of which in 2010, the most crazy Google acquisition, this year, Google bought a total of 27 companies, for the Google Culture ear smoked for 13 years Marissa Mayer, it may not be surprising to have such a move.

Concluding

Can the takeover, which is so crazy and "rampant", bring Yahoo a new future? The author believes that all this is still not clear, because the acquisition of these assets how to integrate and how to develop a great product to attract users, etc., these are difficult. Maybe some people will take Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer only a year in the first annual share price rose 70%, but in fact this is not Marissa Mayer credit, the share price rise is driven by the appreciation of Asian assets, rather than Marissa Mayer, This was reflected in Yahoo's second-quarter earnings, with the company's two big "cash bulls"-both showing a sharp drop in revenues from search and advertising-and indirectly casting a shadow over Yahoo's recovery prospects.

But regardless of whether the acquisition is effective, I believe: for the future, Yahoo's acquisition will continue to go on.

(editor: Heritage)