Yahoo may soon cease to be a private company.
The CEO of the technology company, Jim Lanzone, this week, during a conversation with media representatives, said he hoped to make the firm public, which, in his opinion, would return Yahoo to its former glory.
During the interview, the head of the company stated that from the point of view of the financial situation, the firm is fully ready to implement its intentions. He also noted that Yahoo currently has an excellent balance sheet and demonstrates profitability.
Jim Lanzone says that the period of existence in the status of a private company turned out to be beneficial for the firm because thanks to this it was possible to make the structural changes necessary for effective business.
Yahoo entered the ownership structure of the private investment company Apollo in 2021. The previous owner of the firm, which was Verizon, made a sale deal worth $ 5 billion. The change of ownership turned out to be a negative circumstance for Yahoo. In this case, the fact of the sale of the company had an impact on its reputation, which deteriorated as a result of the transaction. This negative factor has aggravated the already difficult situation in which the firm found itself, having lost market positions, and being unable to fully withstand competition from Facebook and Google.
Jim Lanzone takes a very optimistic view of the current state of Yahoo. He states that the company is still included in the list of the largest firms in the world in terms of traffic volume. This position can be interpreted as a positive perception of the state of affairs of the company.
Yahoo has a number of companies under its name, including Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Sports. The firm also owns several websites.
In April, Yahoo announced the acquisition of Wagr, a peer-to-peer sports betting app. The company sees this deal as an opportunity to expand its sports fantasy platform. Wagr, which is the first social sports betting operator licensed in the United States, has become a fully integrated part of Yahoo Sports.
John Shaw, senior vice president of Yahoo Sports, said that the appearance of an additional unit in the ownership structure allows the firm to enter new group formats and is an opportunity to improve interaction. He noted that the company’s fantasy leagues contribute to a high level of fan engagement and give people the opportunity to participate in the competitive process in an emotional sense, but the real value, according to him, is to unite groups of friends based on a common interest in a particular sport.
Jim Lanzone stated that Yahoo is currently exploring the prospects for potential mergers and acquisitions. He also says that one day the company will be able to become a full-fledged competitor to Google and Microsoft Bing in the field of Internet search. Jim Lanzone expressed an optimistic assessment of the company’s capabilities in terms of development potential. Separately, he noted that artificial intelligence opens up new horizons for each of the products, without specifying this statement in terms of plans for the use of advanced technology by the company.
Google and Microsoft, with which the head of Yahoo plans to compete, are currently actively working on introducing AI into their search engines. Experts call this process the rapid socialization of generative artificial intelligence.
Amir Wain, CEO and Chairman of the Board of i2c says that the active introduction of AI was preceded by a long period of research and experiments, as a result of which the technology became suitable for commercial use in various applications.
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