Comments on: The Yahoo Rumor Mill–The Broken Clock Will Be Right at Some Time

By: erdem ela

erdem ela — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 05:48:36 +0000

It was delightful to see Bill and Steve sharing a stage and reminiscing about their stuff, but I was surprised that Bill (gadgets) and Steve (widgets) didn’t settle the debate about the original inventor of the widget. One can never have too many widgets. Somebody codes something you never even dreamed of wanting - suddenly everybody lig tv izle bedava ligtv izle garibim deyimler ?iir türleri çet chat sohbet needs a whole bunch of widgets because they don’t impinge too much on the screen/template real estate.

By: Another Day, Another Questionable Yahoo Story Rocks the Stock | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:06:15 +0000

[...] is most intriguing about the Journal story is why it would appear now, except that dubious Yahoo rumors have become too common of late, all of which have been [...]

By: Sam Harrison

Sam Harrison — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:02:30 +0000

kara, you spend waaaaaaaaaay too much time on yahoo. it’s not that big a deal whatever it does.

get a new story!

By: Jeff Stevens

Jeff Stevens — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:35:16 +0000

Over the weekend you had Levinsohn speaking for Yahoo and Microsoft in your “Total Fiction” headline. Monday you had Levinsohn speaking for Miller. I can’t wait to see what Levinsohn has to say about Tuesday’s WSJ rumor. When do you expect Levinsohn to call you?

By: Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:51:01 +0000

I don’t get this. You made it pretty clear over the weekend that in your opinion, based on your own contacts, that the Times piece was wrong, wrong, wrong. Now another lengthy article that seems to be simply trying to rub their nose in the fact that you again, in your opinion, using your contacts, want to say they’re wrong, wrong, wrong. I got that the first time.

But when you say, “Similar previous such reports have turned out to be bogus,” that doesn’t seem to be correct. I’m pretty sure we’ve had leaks of talks both ahead of the first and second rounds in 2007. Plus, we had leaks of how the particular deals were changing during some of those rounds. I even think you were reporting some of them. They weren’t bogus.

So yeah, when that blog you quoted said “What we don’t know out of all of this is what’s truth or fiction, despite the latest denials,” too right. I’m pretty sure we’ve had execs from both sides deny things that actually happened. We’ve had rumors turn out to be fact. We’ve had rumor turn out to be completely off the mark.

I think the vast majority of what you’ve reported, both from named and whispered sources, has been correct. I don’t actually have a scorecard to keep track — you certainly would know better if some exec has mislead you from time to time or not have been in the loop. But the point is, I don’t jump all over a report from The Times wondering if I should believe it because they haven’t shown a track record of being correct. You have. Mike Arrington has, as well. Your record speaks for you, and that’s what I think your readers use to judge whether they want to believe if the latest rumor might indeed be true.

As for this:

“These rumor eruptions are useless to anyone who cares about being an informed investor.”

None of this year-long saga has to do with investors being informed. If they were, they wouldn’t have pulled the rug out from under themselves by selling off Yahoo stock. Second largest search player; leading web property; huge brand recognition, and Microsoft comes along and makes people think Yahoo is the one in trouble? Microsoft which has been playing at search for over 10 years (it has been that long) and only in the past 5 years has seriously stepped up (and gotten nowhere). And it’s Yahoo that’s the weakling?

Spare me the informed investors.