"Jerry, what do you think?
There needs to be a proper solution to this matter, and the rhetoric cannot be allowed to ferment further.
Games are only part of Yahoo's entire Internet service strategy, and Yahoo's mailbox and portal are the more important parts.
We cannot let the gaming community affect the reputation of Yahoo as a whole and cause users to vote against other Yahoo products. "
Abel Garcia is the senior vice president of Waddell & Reed, one of Yahoo's largest shareholders. He has been following the investment in Yahoo and has a unique understanding of Yahoo.
It is also the largest supporter of Yahoo within Waddell &.Reed.
There has been talk of selling Yahoo within the company, because Yahoo's price-to-earnings ratio at this time is 300, which far exceeds the normal valuation.
Later generations know that this was caused by the Internet bubble, but people who were involved in it all took it for granted that Internet companies had high valuations.
Just like Big A investors are accustomed to dynamic price-to-earnings ratios of more than 1,000 for so-called companies with good growth potential.
Jerry Yang smiled bitterly and said: "We currently plan to attribute the responsibility for this matter to a certain executive who made his own decision.
After the CEO is fired, I will publicly apologize.
We will ensure that similar behavior will not occur again. "
Abel agrees: “It’s a very conventional solution.
This can prevent the situation from further escalating, but it does not help to change our image in the minds of users.
It's scary when an Internet company's image stops being cool.
Yahoo is far from reaching the position of Microsoft, which can rely on its monopoly position to treat users arrogantly.
Even for portals, there are countless challengers coveting Yahoo's throne. "
In the view of Abel and Jerry Yang, Microsoft is their biggest competitor. Relying on the monopoly advantage of the operating system, Microsoft forces Internet Start as the default homepage of the IE browser.
Google is just a little-known player at this time.
Internet Start was the predecessor of Internet Start, which later split into two and became MSN and NBC.
The current segmentation of Internet services makes it difficult for users to understand the status of portal websites around the millennium. At that time, the status of portal websites was similar to the combination of Tencent and Baidu.
Because the most mainstream communication software at that time was email, the portal integrated a series of services such as email, calendar, instant messaging, blogging, and music.
"I can understand your thinking.
The reason why Microsoft cannot compete with Yahoo on the portal website is that even if their portal website is the default homepage of IE browser, users will adjust the settings immediately.
Change the default homepage to Yahoo.
Because users think that Microsoft cannot provide good Internet services, but is this really the case?
There is no essential difference between the Internet services provided to users by our portal website and the Internet services provided by MSN to users.
Users will subconsciously choose Yahoo because of the corporate image built by the Yahoo brand.
The basis for our survival is that users recognize us, just like consumers recognize clothing brands.
An apology is not enough, we need new and original products that are cool enough to reshape Yahoo's image. "
Abel agreed with Jerry Yang's point of view. When Waddell &.Reed invested in Yahoo, his point of view was: For Yahoo, its importance cannot be measured in the same way as the relationship between price and sales. We must regard it as 21 A new media company of the century.
Portal websites are indeed the new media companies of the 21st century, but it is Google and Facebook that survived in the first two decades of the 21st century, not Yahoo.
“Yes, the question is what kind of products do we need to reshape our image?
Do you have an internal solution? "
Jerry Yang took a serious look at the other party: "We can acquire Riot Games.
I have carefully analyzed that Riot Games is definitely a very high-quality company.
They currently have more than 80 games on sale, and our internal surveys show that more and more game manufacturers are willing to use Riot Games as one of their game publishing options.
Game distribution and game communities have formed a perfect closed loop.
It's the coolest company in the gaming community right now.
We could acquire it, and its founder, Newman.
Newman is a top product manager. If he joins Yahoo, Yahoo will be injected with new vitality. "
Abel said helplessly: “Of course I know the value of Riot Games.
Our current internal valuation for it is US$1 billion.
The problem is that Yahoo doesn't have that kind of money on its books.
If you want to acquire Riot Games, you will inevitably have to pay a certain premium based on US$1 billion.
If Newman was the only person behind Riot Games, we might only need a small premium to convince him.
But there is Bill Gates behind it.
Bill Gates won't let Yahoo buy Riot Games.
This idea is unattainable. "
“We don’t necessarily need to use cash to acquire it, but through share exchange.
Use Yahoo's shares to replace Newman's Riot Games shares to achieve the purpose of acquisition. "
Abel nodded and said: “This is just an alternative and cannot be the best solution.
I still don’t think the other party will agree.
In other words, the price that Yahoo can offer, Microsoft will only offer higher. "
Since Yahoo went public, it has been interested in acquiring other companies.
Last year, Yahoo acquired a company that mainly operates online chess and card games, just like the early Lianzhong online chess and card platform. ,
In other words, all early Chinese Internet products can find their corresponding prototypes in Amerikan.
After the acquisition, Yahoo changed its name on this basis and became Yahoo Games.
However, the bottleneck of online chess and card games platforms is limited. The audience for chess and card games is relatively fixed, and there is no room for development of electronic communities.
This has also led to Yahoo Games to operate both an online chess and card platform and an electronic community.
Yahoo's behavior made the original users very dissatisfied, because they believed that Yahoo had made the website no longer pure, and it was filled with too many weird comments and inexplicable users.
After the Yahoo plagiarism incident broke out, the original user even wrote a song to mock Yahoo games: "Yahoo's loser in the gaming field."
Jerry Yang sighed, "Actually, I had already talked with Newman before Bill Gates invested in Riot Games.
Expressed hope to acquire Riot Games.
It's just that Newman only accepts investments and not acquisitions.
That was the matter.
It didn’t take long before I heard about Bill Gates investing in Riot Games. If I had chosen to invest instead of acquire, Yahoo would have had a chance.
Now besides acquiring Riot Games, we have alternatives. "
