They could have owned Google and Facebook for pennies. Instead, they bought a blog platform and a radio station.
In 1998, Yahoo refused to buy Google for $1 million. In 2002, they refused to buy it for $5 billion. In 2006, they almost bought Facebook for $1 billion but lowered the offer at the last minute, causing Mark Zuckerberg to walk away. Instead, they spent billions on https://www.google.com/search?q=Broadcast.com and Tumblr, assets that became worthless.
"The Purple Giant" is a tragedy of corporate strategy. It traces how the king of the early internet lost its crown not through bad luck, but through a series of historically bad decisions. It explores the identity crisis of a tech company that thought it was a media company, proving that in Silicon Valley, playing it safe is the riskiest strategy of all.
David N. Tolby
Author
business failure yahoo google acquisition