Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, December 4

• Uber Valuation Put at $62.5 Billion After a New Investment Round - Tiger Global, Investor in Uber's Rivals, Joins In: Uber’s fund-raising efforts are showing no signs of slowing down. The company, based in San Francisco, is close to completing the raising of a $2.1 billion round of venture capital, according to people briefed on the company’s plans, the company’s single largest round to date. Once completed, the investment will value the company at $62.5 billion, according to three people briefed on the plans, securing Uber’s place as the world’s most valuable private start-up. Tiger Global Management participated in the newest round, led by its partner Lee Fixel, as did T. Rowe Price, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the terms are still private. Talks of the funding plans were previously reported by The New York Times in October. On Thursday, Bloomberg News reported the $62.5 billion valuation. Competition is intensifying in the global ride-hailing market, as rivals like Lyft, Didi Kuaidi and other companies raise billions of dollars in to expand as quickly as possible. Lyft, another ride-hailing start-up, is in talks to raise a further $500 million in funding, according to four people briefed on the round, which could value the company at roughly $4 billion. Didi Kuaidi, to date, has raised more than $4 billion in private investment. The participation of Tiger Global, however, is particularly interesting. Tiger Global is an investor in Ola and GrabTaxi, two of Uber’s largest competitors in India and Southeast Asia. It is perhaps the first time a major institutional investor participated in the rounds of both Uber and its major competitors. And on Thursday, Ola and GrabTaxi announced a strategic partnership with Lyft, which is also based in San Francisco and is Uber’s major competitor in the United States.

• Why would anyone want to buy Yahoo? Now, that question may be the key to understanding the parlor game of rumor and conjecture currently swirling around the company. Depending on which speculating analyst you talk to, Verizon, Microsoft, Time Inc., Comcast, AT&T, and even IAC — the company that owns Tinder, OkCupid and Match.com — could all jump in as potential buyers.To be specific, what we're talking about is a possible sale of Yahoo's "core business," but even that term belies the dizzying range of things that Yahoo actually does. Is it a search company? A media company? An advertising company?In truth, it is all of those things, which is one reason we've seen so many names come out of the corporate woodwork. But it turns out there's one metric that makes Yahoo really attractive here: The number of eyeballs that Yahoo commands on a monthly basis.This might seem obvious in an era where clickbait and traffic seem to rule with an iron grip. But if you take Yahoo apart piece by piece, you start to understand why snapping up the company would benefit some firms more than others.Take Microsoft, for instance. It actually tried to buy Yahoo before, in 2008.Microsoft was worried about Google dominating a new market, search. Microsoft tried to build its own competitor, Bing (then known as Windows Live Search), but it didn't take off with users. So Microsoft figured it would buy the No. 2 player, Yahoo, and combine its search and search ad business with Microsoft's.Fast-forward to today, and Bing is no longer lagging behind Yahoo. In fact, what you have is a market where Bing actually covers more than 20 percent of search, compared to Yahoo's 13 percent. Both have been helped, no doubt, by a joint partnership on search.Combining the two might get Microsoft a bit closer to Google (which commands 64 percent of the market), but it still wouldn't be within striking distance. And Microsoft would also be inheriting all of Yahoo's other Internet businesses, potentially slowing the company down as it tries to execute a shift toward offering more cloud services, especially for corporate clients.But let's shift to some of the other names that have been floated. Three are providers of fixed or mobile Internet — four, if you count Softbank, the Japanese parent company of Sprint. That isn't a coincidence; Internet providers increasingly view original online content as the way to turn their networks into cash cows. Carrying data over simple pipes is no longer as lucrative as before.

• Lyft Joins With Asian Rivals to Compete With Uber: The anti-Uber global alliance of ride-hailing companies has now officially taken shape. On Thursday, Lyft, a ride-hailing start-up based in the United States, announced a coalition with GrabTaxi, Ola and Didi Kuaidi, three of the largest ride-hailing companies in Asia. Under a partnership, the companies can operate in one another’s home countries, forging new pathways for each in markets they have yet to tap into. Many of Uber’s competitors are far smaller and operate in just one or two markets. Lyft, which is currently seeking $500 million in funding at a valuation of $4 billion, operates in more than 60 cities in the United States, for instance. By banding together, the companies aim to achieve more scale and more service adoption in relatively short amounts of time. Partnerships are less expensive than having to spend to establish operations in multiple markets. The companies declined to reveal financial details of their partnership. The alliance has been forming over the last few months. In September, Lyft teamed with Didi, the Chinese ride-hailing behemoth, to provide service to Chinese Didi Kuaidi app users who enter the United States. The move also lets Lyft users find rides in China using the Lyft app; the requests are fulfilled by Didi Kuaidi drivers. Ola is a ride-hailing company in India, and GrabTaxi operates in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. Under the partnership, Lyft users traveling to India will be able to open the Lyft app there and have local rides supplied by Ola. In Southeast Asian countries, Lyft will have a similar arrangement with GrabTaxi.