All that money Yahoo spent on mobile is paying off
There's no doubt about it: the future is mobile, and it looks like Yahoo's finally making the pocket-friendly needle move. The company's quarterly earnings dropped not too long ago, in which CEO Marissa Mayer pointed out that Yahoo's mobile revenue is finally "material," specifically to the tune of $200 million. Not too shabby for a company whose CEO openly admitted it missed the boat on mobile, no? As far as Mayer's concerned, Yahoo isn't really a company that makes webpages any more -- it's "a company that makes mobile apps and monetizes them through native ads."
Frankly, that's heartening. Some of Yahoo's mobile products are, well, really damned good, and that's thanks in part to the startups it's snapped up since Mayer took control of the company. Over the past ten months, Yahoo has acquired four startups meant to firm up its mobile presence: there was Snapchat clone Blink and Whatsapp analog MessageMe, along with intelligent homescreen Aviate and a super-popular mobile analytics startup called Flurry. Some of those products live on in one form or another (Yahoo's News Digest is based on Summly for instance, a startup it bought a year ago). Others were acquired for the brainpower behind them. All are meant to firm up Yahoo's future in your pocket, as a source of indispensable stuff you'll return to again and again. So what's next?
More acquisitions, naturally. Mayer has basically been buying up smaller companies since day one, and with a $5 billion windfall thanks to Alibaba's insane IPO, don't expect that spree to stop. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Yahoo's got one or two more big acquisitions in the works -- none of us would be surprised to see it pour even more dough into its mobile future.
