Insider offers look at rise, fall of Yahoo!
Jeremy Ring, of Parkland, is telling the inside story of the rapid rise and ultimate collapse of the pioneering search engine Yahoo! and how the company’s missteps contributed to today’s domination of the internet by Google and Facebook.
Ring knows the inside story. He was one of the earliest employees at Yahoo! when it was the ascendant force online. He became its director of sales in early 1996 and stayed until the middle of 2001, becoming personally wealthy along the way.
But the company, which rode high during the 1990s tech boom and started falling during the dot-com bust in 2000, made a series of well-publicized missteps over the years, and ultimately was sold to Verizon in 2016, tarnished by the news that all 3 billion of its user accounts had been hacked in 2013.
“It’s a story of incredible missteps, probably some ego involved,” Ring said. “The decisions that Yahoo made shaped the world that we live in today. We pioneered the digital information age; I think everyone agreed with that. Those decisions allowed Facebook and Google to grow and become the behemoths that they are … Those two organizations control our lives.”
“We Were Yahoo!: From Internet Pioneer to the Trillion Dollar Loss of Google and Facebook” — published by Post Hill Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster — was released Tuesday. Ring spoke by phone from New York, where a book launch party is being held at the luxury department store Barneys.
Ring started with Yahoo by opening its East Coast office out of his Hoboken, N.J., apartment and ended in California. A Florida financial disclosure form from 2016 said his net worth was $12.6 million. Ring, who moved to South Florida in the middle of 2001, represented northwest Broward in the Florida Senate from 2006 to 2016, when he left office because of term limits. He’s currently seeking the Democratic nomination to run for state chief financial officer. Publicity from the book could be helpful to his campaign, but he said the book doesn’t contain anything political. “It has zero to do with it. [The timing] is coincidental.”
He said he started writing the book in 2011 as a cathartic activity when he was recovering from two surgeries to replace a bad aortic valve. “I was dying. I was down to 138 pounds. I didn’t have much longer to go.”
He said he put it aside for several years. When Yahoo! was sold in 2016, he said he realized he had half a book already written and decided to complete the endeavor.
“It talks about how we built the company. In the heyday, we were worth $120 billion — more than Ford, Chrysler and GM combined,” he said, adding it then goes into the “missteps and decisions” that followed.
Among the blunders, which in hindsight are obviously huge: Turning down the chance to buy Google for $1 million. A deal to buy eBay that fell apart. Negotiations to buy Facebook for $1.1 billion that fell apart when Yahoo! tried to get a lower price.
In the end, Yahoo’s internet business was sold to Verizon for $4.5 billion, $120 billion less than its highest market value.
Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper, who was removed from office Friday after being snared in an FBI sting, solicited illegal campaign contributions not only for herself but for two political allies, court documents say.
Gov. Rick Scott suspended Cooper on Friday, a day after she was arrested and accused of accepting contributions funneled through Alan Koslow, a once prominent attorney who has since been disbarred after a conviction on federal charges.
In August 2012, undercover agents handed Koslow a Dunkin’ Donuts bag filled with $8,000 in cash – all in $100 bills, investigators said in court records.
Cooper, 57, has been charged with money laundering, official misconduct and exceeding the limit on campaign finance contributions — felony charges that each carry a maximum fiveyear sentence. She also has been charged with soliciting contributions in a government building, a first-degree misdemeanor with a oneyear maximum sentence.
Cooper, mayor since 2005, said Thursday in a prepared statement, “I can assure you that I will vigorously fight these allegations in court.”
She could not be reached Friday for further comment despite calls to her cellphone and to her husband.
According to a high-ranking official at City Hall, Cooper cleared out her office the night before reporting to the Main Jail in downtown Fort Lauderdale on Thursday morning. She was released Thursday night.
Developer Eric Fordin said he was shocked by Cooper’s arrest because she “has always been so aboveboard.” But court records paint a different picture of Cooper.
The mayor met with people she thought were wealthy developers from California, court documents say. They were actually undercover FBI agents pretending to seek political favor for a project in Hallandale Beach.
The agents met with Cooper and Koslow over several months in 2012 and secretly recorded their meetings. During a meeting in July 2012 between Cooper, the undercover agents and Koslow, Cooper was recorded saying she could ensure a favorable result for their project, an affidavit says.
“Alan Koslow showed Mayor Cooper a number representing a proposed contribution and asked her if it was a good number. She replied ‘No. Add a zero.’ Koslow confirmed ‘Three zeros, is that fine?’ and Mayor Cooper replied ‘Yes,’ ” according to the arrest affidavit.