Yahoo CEO Chose Tumblr Over Netflix Because "It Was a Transformative Acquisition." Tumblr Sold for $3 Million. Netflix Is Worth $400 Billion.

In 2013, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had a choice: buy Netflix for $4 billion, Hulu for $1.3 billion, or Tumblr for $1.1 billion. She chose the blogging platform with the purple logo and the ironic memes. By 2016, Yahoo had already written down Tumblr's value by $700 million. By 2019, Verizon (which had absorbed Yahoo's remains) sold Tumblr to Automattic for reportedly less than $3 million — that's 0.27% of what Yahoo paid. Meanwhile, Netflix is now worth over $400 billion, a 100x return on that $4 billion asking price. The kicker? Mayer admitted this all years later with the understatement of the century: 'Either of those would have been a better acquisition.' Yes, Marissa. Yes it would have. Instead, Yahoo got a platform famous for "soft grunge" aesthetic blogs and the eventual banning of adult content that killed what was left of its traffic. Truly transformative.