Hacker News Reader

Comment by chollida1 | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I'm really surprised that I've never heard of this before, not because I'm some sort of all knowing cyborg, but because its not like Yahoo acquisition talk just started last week.

This is a company that's essentially had multiple parts of it for sale for the better part of 4 years and this hasn't once come out.

I'm running through all the Yahoo corporate filings that Bloomberg has indexed and I can't find any link to this clause.

I mean this is a very material issue!

If you are to be a share holder in a company that's trying to broker a 3-4 Billion sale of some of its assets, then knowing that the buyer may be on the hook for an additional 1 billion bill probably means that the asset you thought you owned is probably worth 20-25% less than you originally thought.

Someone isn't going to be very happy with the yahoo leadership today:)

View on HN

Yeah, I'm not seeing it either. I see this:

> Affiliate Commitments. The Company is obligated to make payments, which represent TAC, to its Affiliates. As of December 31, 2014, these commitments totaled $2,087 million, of which $505 million will be payable in 2015, $401 million will be payable in 2016, $400 million will be payable in 2017, $375 million will be payable in 2018, and $375 million will be payable in 2019, and $31 million will be payable thereafter.

as a $375mm reference but that's to all TAC; not just Mozilla. Not in research so def could have missed it.

> Wow, I'm really surprised that I've never heard of this before

Kara Swisher doesn't seem to provide any indication of where the information she's reporting came from. Furthermore, the link she provides at the end (as a well-done "warts-and-all" account of the deal) claims that Mozilla stands to lose money if a deal goes through...

https://techpinions.com/is-firefox-search-worth-375myear-to-...

I noticed that the submitter is dblohm7.

As I read it, that analysis (about Mozilla losing money from a Yahoo sale) doesn't factor in the $1 billion payment Mozilla would be owed if they walk away, and is based on the assumption that Mozilla won't be able to make another search deal to replace its revenue with Yahoo. It's probably true that they can't replace 100% of it, but if they partially replace it, and then make up for the shortfall with that billion, that probably takes care of them for many years.

Another possible scenario: Mozilla pockets $1B, several months later Yahoo goes bust and then they're free to do whatever they want because Yahoo can't perform any more.

The question is, if there's no healthy competition in the search space, isn't Mozilla (and the web) ultimately still f----ed?

Long term quite probably yes, but if they manage that money wisely and concentrate on their core product rather than on all kinds of funky (and costly) stuff it could last for a long time.

Yahoo isn't offering healthy competition anyway, really.

"pockets $1B", I think that's it's still over several years, I suspect if they go "bust" they won't have that 1B

I had a deal with a big provider in NL to pay a fixed fee every month, when they backed out I forced them to pay the full amount over the duration of the contract in one go.

Not saying that will always work, but it did work for me (it wasn't a billion though (obviously), but a few hundred K).

Kara Swisher doesn't seem to provide any indication of where the information she's reporting came from

She claims to have seen the contract in the first line of the article.

>...deal point has been a new and unwelcome surprise to potential buyers of the company, many said. The remaining bidders only recently got details of search deals that Yahoo has struck.

Given $YHOO price hasn't moved materially this week, it seems likely that the market (including potential buyers) was aware of the Mozilla deal and priced it in.

If this information wasn't public but insiders were able to price it in, then it's time for an SEC investigation.

Perhaps the question is "Can they really walk away and get a much better deal today?"

But yes, this does look like yet another miscalculation and failure of vision.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com