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Comment by rubyn00bie | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, Yahoo investing in another company with no hope of actualizing it's valuation by actual revenue (as opposed to investors bloating it until an IPO).

I'm sure it'll look great next Tumblr...

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"Revenue" isn't the only thing that companies compete for.

Many of these online services companies (Google, Facebook, Yahoo) compete for user timeshare - e.g. you're awake 16 hours a day, how many of those hours are spent under company X's umbrella?

Tumblr had doubled their number of blogs and grown their userbase by 1/3 since being acquired. The jury is still out on whether it was a good or bad investment.

I read Tumblr was a few weeks away from running out of cash at the time Yahoo bought them. While I agree the jury is still out on the Tumblr/Yahoo acquisition, I do think they could have bought a nearly insolvent company a bit cheaper than they did.

That being said, maybe they did get it on the cheap if WhatsApp went for $19B.

Exactly. How do you know the price they acquired Tumblr for wasn't its "insolvent" price? There was probably competition for the deal - passing in the hope of getting a lower price is dangerous if you know other players might snap up Tumblr.

Revenue!? Usually owners realize value by getting a dividend from earnings. Can't believe we're back at this point, again.

While revenue doesn't mean much if it doesn't exceed expenses, if you have expenses and no revenue, good luck realizing dividends from earnings...

If you have expenses and no revenue, by definition there's no earnings.

... and Alibaba.

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