Lots of people in the west a few years ago had never heard of Tencent or Alibaba. Those of us in Asia obviously have but I think many people don’t realize that these two companies created some of the largest investment deals ever. Naspers buying a large share of Tencent for millions that turned out to be worth billions. Then Jerry Yang and team buying a large share of Alibaba for millions that is also worth billions. What’s stunning is how a lame duck board and an even lamer CEO at the time sold a lot of the Alibaba shares for a fraction of what they were worth a few years ago. Just a stunning mistake. Of course Yahoo still made a ton of money and who the hell knows what they will do with it. Just look at how Ebay is dumping PayPal to unlock some value to see that the threat of breaking Yahoo up is very possible.

There is so much more to talk about when it comes to the downfall of Yahoo, their missed Asian oppurtunities and what they will do now – not sure I have enough time to cover it but bottom line is the Yahoo joint ventures look to be the better businesses for Yahoo than their own owned and operated businesses. It’s a shame Yahoo didn’t create a lot more of them when they were in such a dominant position to do so. I honestly don’t believe Yahoo will ever make a substantial comeback in their core businesses.

For I will always enjoy the limited time I spent working with Yang – check out this Fortune article on Yang, the Alibaba deal and what he is doing today.