Greg Sterling says, “In a reversal, Yahoo announced this morning that it will abandon its planned spinoff of its remaining Alibaba shares and instead do a “reverse spinoff” of the rest of Yahoo. The reason the Alibaba spinoff was scrapped was uncertainty over tax liability. Originally, Yahoo thought the Aabaco (Alibaba + Yahoo Small Business) spinoff would have limited or zero tax implications for the company. But the Internal Revenue Service declined to provide that reassurance, creating uncertainty and resulting in today’s decision. The Alibaba shares will still be separated from... [...]

Entrepreneur team says, “Verizon Communications Inc’s finance chief, Fran Shammo, said the No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier could look at buying Yahoo Inc’s core business, which includes Mail, its news and sports sites and advertising technology. “If we see there is a strategic fit and it makes sense for our shareholders and we can return value, I mean we’ll look at it, but at this point it’s way too premature to talk about that one,” Chief Financial Officer Shammo said. Shammo was speaking at the UBS annual global media and communications conference in New... [...]

Julie Ask says, “Yahoo’s board met yesterday amidst disappointing financial results that have failed to live up to the expectations of its investors. Prevailing rumors suggest that the board under pressure from investors will vote to break apart the business and sell the pieces. While it is true that the majority of Yahoo’s revenue comes from online advertising, the future is clearly mobile. Mobile phone numbers are more important than email addresses, and consumers already use their mobile phones more than two hours a day in the U.S. Global expansion depends on mobile. Power in mobile... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “This morning a couple of articles appeared speculating about who could potentially succeed Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. The hypothetical candidates included Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Google/YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki and former interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn. Then the Wall Street Journal this afternoon reported that the Yahoo board is going to consider this week whether to sell some or all of the company: The fate of troubled Internet portal Yahoo Inc. may be decided in a marathon series of board meetings this week. Yahoo’s board plans to weigh a potential sale of... [...]

Patrick Kulp says, “Yahoo is angering the dwindling number of people who still use its email service with a test run of a feature that locks out anyone who has an ad blocker installed. Several Yahoo users complained that they encountered an error message when trying to open their mail account on Thursday in an AdBlock Plus forum thread first spotted by Digiday. The screen ordered them to first disable ad blockers in order to access their emails. A Yahoo spokesperson said in a statement provided to Mashable on Friday that the blocking is only being tested on a portion of Yahoo email users”. Yahoo... [...]

Zak Stambor says, “Yahoo Product Ads appear alongside search results and as display ads on mobile, tablet and desktop devices. Yahoo Inc. is giving retailers another way to target shoppers with ads in time for the holiday shopping season’s traditional Thanksgiving week kickoff. The new ads, called Yahoo Product Ads, can appear in search results served by Polyvore, as well as those served by Gemini, the ad-buying platform Yahoointroduced in February 2014. Gemini is a self-service ad-buying marketplace that is Yahoo’s attempt to persuade marketers to use Yahoo data to buy native and video... [...]

David Nield says, “At the Yahoo Mobile Developer Conference in New York Wednesday, the company announced the arrival of in-app sharing. The new framework aims to make it easier to share photos, videos, links and other media to Tumblr with one tap. The update, integrated into the Flurry software development kit, follows reports earlier this year that Yahoo would focus more on its Tumblr social arm, which it acquired in 2013 for $1.1 billion. With this change, users will be able to send a photo, video, link or any type of content to Tumblr from whatever app they happen to be running at the time“. Yahoo... [...]

Patrick Kulp says, “Yahoo played the unwitting host to a week’s worth of malware-laden scams in what may be the largest attack of its kind in months, security firm Malwarebytes claimed. Researchers said the attackers infiltrated the web portal’s advertising network and planted traps on its homepage — along with its sports, finance, celebrity and games sites. When visitors came by the sites, the ads discreetly downloaded malware files to the visitor’s computer, either directly from the webpage or from a harmful site to which the ads diverted visitors. The batch of parasitic... [...]

Anthony Ha says, “Yahoo unveiled a new app today called Livetext, where users can send each other video and text — but no sound. To get a sense of how it works, we spoke to Yahoo’s Arjun Sethi (formerly co-founder and CEO of MessageMe). He and I even had a short little Livetext session. Sethi also explained the opportunity he sees in taking the audio out of video messaging. “We took the sound away because we wanted you to use this product in any context,” he said. “So that means if you’re at a ballgame, if you’re at a concert, any noisy location or even if you’re commuting... [...]

Patrick Kulp says, “Yahoo is flirting with the idea of tapping Google to power its search engine. Google confirmed to Mashable on Thursday that Yahoo is displaying Google search results and ads in addition to those of its current partner, Bing, for a small number of desktop and mobile users as part of a dry run. The company is also running similar tests with other potential search backers. SEE ALSO: Microsoft’s Bing isn’t such a failure after all Google’s appearance on the site was first spotted by Aaron Wall on Wednesday in a blog post for search engine optimization... [...]