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Comment by MatthewPhillips | Hacker News Reader

Yahoo produces web software that it gives to customers for free and then sells ads against. They are profitable doing this.

They valley makes fun of them because the valley doesn't value profitable businesses, the valley values consumer craze for a product.

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I'm not sure why Yahoo gets beat up so much either. They are profitable and get lambasted while Zynga and Groupon are tech darlings while their stock price plummets and they lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Yahoo gets insulted and asked to go away for suing Facebook, while Apple repeatedly attempts to prevent Samsung from being able to sell devices because of some very flimsy patent objections and people laud them as creative geniuses.

I don't think Zynga and Groupon are tech darlings ...

Maybe Zynga and Groupon were tech darlings?

Well the ZNGA IPO wasn't all that long ago. Just prior to that was the move to the huge amusement park-style office complex in downtown SF. I have friends who work there and are constantly posting pics of the awesome food and all-expense paid trips. These are things employees should get for performing well and making boatloads of cash. If you went purely by appearances, you'd assume ZNGA was one of the most wildly profitable companies on earth as opposed to one that is losing $1.30/share. I for one wouldn't invest a dime in the company when you see how irresponsibly they spend.

It seems to me like the valley values growth, something that yahoo hasn't had much of in recent years.

That's fair, but Yahoo has vast size which arguably is the point of growth.

They've had growth the last 2 quarters.

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