> your argument is that the parts are worth more than the whole. Is that all the thesis is?
Yes. Just about everyone on the planet is aware that Yahoo is a cursed company that you should stay extremely far away from, but if you look exclusively at the two divisions it does well in (three if you include Japan, which you shouldn't as it's basically a separate company) then they're actually totally competent and profitable systems, which would justify this price tag on their own quite handily.
Given the recent Yahoo! Answers news, it seems like Apollo is thinking along the same lines, and are only interested in the good bits of this acquisition.