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ExtraBITS for 25 July 2016

The dog days of summer tech news are upon us, so we have only two ExtraBITS for you this week: Verizon is buying Yahoo for $4.8 billion and Adam Engst makes an appearance on MacBreak Weekly.

Verizon to Buy Yahoo for $4.8 Billion — Long-suffering Yahoo will sell its core business to Verizon Communications for $4.8 billion, a far cry from the $44.6 billion that Microsoft offered in 2008 and that Yahoo’s board rebuffed. Yahoo shareholders will retain roughly $41 billion in investments in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, plus a portfolio of about 3000 patents valued at about $1 billion. Yahoo began as a Web directory in 1994, later moving into search and then content, but with some stumbles and competition from the likes of Google, Yahoo got lost in the weeds. Marissa Mayer, an early
Google employee and later high-ranking executive, was hired as CEO in 2012, but even bold initiatives like the purchase of Tumblr couldn’t stop Yahoo’s downward spiral. Verizon acquired AOL a little over a year ago, and the company has said that it will integrate Yahoo with AOL. It’s the end of an era, and we’re curious to see what Verizon will do with the Yahoo properties, notably Flickr, Tumblr, and Yahoo Finance.

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On MacBreak Weekly, Adam Discusses the App Stores, Planet of the Apps, and More — TidBITS publisher Adam Engst made one of his occasional appearances on the TWiT show MacBreak Weekly, joining hosts Leo Laporte and Andy Ihnatko, and developer Daniel Jalkut. After a wide-ranging discussion of issues with Apple’s online stores, the group talked about Apple’s Planet of the Apps reality show, Eddy Cue’s claims that Hollywood has nothing to fear from Apple, and Apple’s new music royalty rate proposal, which sounds like a flat tax designed to hurt Spotify. It’s well worth a listen! Adam
also introduced his newest book, “Take Control of Preview,” co-authored with Josh Centers.

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