People, Chinese in particular, cares too much about the "技术含量". Do you think that Facebook has much "技术含量"? The fact is that the TV advertising revenue has been declining every year in last five years although, global wise, the advertising revenue has been rising at 5% a year. The ad money has been going to digital and mobile advertising. Yahoo! started as a new form of the media, which does not really need the 技术含量. 缺乏创新精神 is true.
杨致远 made a great decision to provide the seed capital to Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. When Yahoo! was sold, the company's business itself was not worth much but Alibaba was 3/4 of the YHOO market value and Yahoo Japan was also a significant portion of the YHOO stock. Yahoo was the 2nd largest shareholder of Alibaba. The Softbank was the largest shareholder.