Was Yahoo sold for just $4.8 billion?

True: Yahoo had the chance to buy Google for $1 million in 1998, but blew it. [1]
True: Yahoo agreed to buy Facebook for $1 billion in 2006, but the deal didn't go through. [2]
True: Yahoo offered $3 billion for Google in 2002, but Google wanted $5 billion. [2]

Mostly True: Yahoo refuses to be sold to Microsoft for $40 billion in 2008.
In Fact: Microsoft made a $44.6 billion bid to acquire Yahoo in 2008. [3]

Misleading: Yahoo sold to Verizon for $4.6 billion.
In Fact: Yahoo sold its core business to Verizon for $4.8 billion. It has a 15.4% stake in Alibaba worth around $28 billion, and a 35.5% stake in Yahoo Japan, worth around $8 billion. Investors estimate Yahoo's market value to be $36.4 billion. [4][5][6] *

Opinion: While it is easy to look back and criticize Yahoo, it was not easy back then to predict the future. Had Yahoo acquired Google, Google likely would not be the $500+ billion company [7] it is today. Things would have worked out differently if different decisions were made. We cannot simply change a decision and expect all other outcomes to stay constant.

In fact, Yahoo's Jerry Yang made an incredibly brilliant decision to invest $1 billion for a 40% stake in Alibaba back in 2005 [8]. Today, that investment becomes a 15.4% stake in Alibaba worth $28 billion*. That is 2700% return on investment in 11 years. For comparison, if you bought shares of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway in 2006, your 10-year return in 2016 would be about 136% [9].



*value as of writing. Real financial numbers fluctuate.


References
1. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Yahoo-turned-down-an-offer-to-buy-Google-for-around-1-million-in-1998
2. http://www.businessinsider.com/tech-deals-decade-2009-12?op=1
3. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/microsoft-makes-446-billion-for-yahoo/
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/business/dealbook/yahoos-sale-to-verizon-leaves-shareholders-with-little-say.html
5. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2016/07/27/what-can-yahoo-do-with-its-alibaba-stake/#49249c9a5fe4
6. http://fortune.com/2016/07/26/yahoo-shareholders-alibaba/
7. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG?ltr=1
8. http://fortune.com/2015/09/25/yahoo-alibaba-investment-jack-ma/
9. http://www.gurufocus.com/financials/BRK.A
   - end of March 2006, stock price at $90,350
  - end of March 2016, stock price at $213,450 for a ROI of 136.25%