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Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion For Yahoo
The news is everywhere this morning about Microsoft's $44.6B offer to buy Yahoo. The offer represents $31 a share, a 62% premium over Thursday's closing price; and Yahoo's stock price has been rising in after-hours trading. Microsoft has been making overtures to Yahoo since 2006, according to the CNet article, including a buyout offer last February that was rebuffed. Mediapost.com has some perspective on the deal from the point of view of ads and eyeballs. Such an acquisition, which would be Microsoft's largest by far — it bought Aquantive last year for $6 billion — would need approval by US and EU authorities. A European Commission spokesman declined to comment.
Seems so unlikely to ever be allowed by the regulators, yet they're willing to throw billions at it anyway. They must feel confident for some reason.
So this means people will begin avoiding Yahoo with the same impunity they avoid MSN?
Theoretically Microsoft could buy up anything good about the internet so we can all shut our computers down and settle in w/a trip to the library and a good book.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Maybe, but the possibility of there only being two main search engines out there, with the next largest competitor Ask.com at a paltry 4.1%, is fairly scary.
It was only a matter of time before Microsoft decided to try to get a final regulatory pass from the Bush administration before the inauguration of a less-sympathetic President in 2009.
This deal makes a lot of sense for Microsoft (sort of - I'm assuming Yahoo!'s ad business really is worth the cash), but I can't see how this is at all good for Yahoo! or the marketplace at large.
Is the plan to re-brand everything as Microsoft Live! (keeping the exclamation mark) - thus destroying pretty much the only thing Yahoo! has going for it - brand recognition?
I would be very sad to see Yahoo! and their odd collection of services get subsumed and destroyed in a merger with Microsoft. Yes, I'm assuming much of Yahoo!'s tech portfolio would be wiped away or left to die - this wouldn't be the sort of merger Adobe engineered with Macromedia by a long shot.
Shit, now this means the photos I have on flickr are going to be owned by Microsoft? Oy vey. Can we have a "good photo sharing site" thread now so I can find the alternatives?
gameDB
Microsoft is looking to put google out of business.
They removed a perfectly running FreeBSD from Hotmail and installed (first fake than real) Windows instead. You have seen the results.
Yahoo is generally quite a bit more prominent than Google in Asia, and there are quite a few people there. Microsoft has a lot of money to throw around, and if they can make Google insignificant over there, that limits the markets Google can grow in and may pose some serious problems. But it'll take some time before we see any significant marketshare changes I think, and anything can happen. Microsoft might have the big money, but you never want to underestimate Google.
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Brief analysis of some key points:
1) Microsoft is indicating that they are challenging Google "Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. ". However, This statement should apply to Microsoft. Microsoft is the 800lb gorilla yet they are making it sound like they are a bit player and Google is the gorilla - more management doublespeak.
2) Microsoft is indicating they would replace all non-Microsoft at Yahoo with Microsoft technology with phrases like "combination enables synergies related to scale economics". This is great market speak for lay off all that oppose the Microsoft initiatives and move to a common, Microsoft-centric platform.
3) Microsoft wants their search as, I guess, MSN has not been effective: "single search index".
4) Phrases like "eliminating redundant infrastructure and duplicative operating costs" are management speak for layoffs, firing middle management at Yahoo, moving to Microsoft's management and benefit structure, and similar. In my experience through many corporate buyouts, all are very negative to the employees at the company being purchases - Yahoo. However, Microsoft attempts to temper this with "offer significant retention packages to your engineers, key leaders and employees", which is more corporate double-speak.
5) The "exceptional display and search advertising capabilities" sounds like a tighter integration with Microsoft's technology, i.e., Windows and MSIE. Maybe they want to have tighter integration between Vista and their ad revenue stream. Could "new advertising platform capabilities" indicate ad-supported Vista (get a free ad when you log in, when you fire up Office, etc.)?
Overall, it sounds like Microsoft is saying that Yahoo should sell to them because Yahoo didn't meet their goals, the combined company can better challenge Google, and Yahoo has tech that Microsoft needs.
That was my first thought. They can have the portal, the ad business, but PLEASE! excise Flickr from the deal...I'm kinda sorta glad that I haven't based my photo collection with them, but their service has been really nice for sharing photos with other people. Guess it's time to go some other place to host my photos...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Reminds me of the Sony root kit debacle, the blogger who released the information about the root kit, his association with M$ and that M$ was fully aware of the root kit well before it's release and for some odd reason the release of the information about the root kit coincided with the launch of the PS3.
The Sony rootkit debacle began in October 2005. The PS3 was released in November 2006. How, exactly, did these two events coincide?
Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around.
The M$ moniker is perfectly legitimate and weakens nobody's position in the slightest.
Arguments are weakened by false or inaccurate premises, writing M$ gives a perfect idea of the bias of the poster
Durr. Those two statements contradict each other. Yes, writing M$ DOES give a perfect idea of the bias of the poster...that is, a blind Microsoft hater that takes any opportunity to criticize them.
because they do business in the EU and they have subsidiaries in the EU.
Years ago Microsoft said they would be the #1 search engine and set up Microsoft Network using their best and brightest tech staff and the cutting edge of Microsoft technology innovation, they released many new features bought up some services and integrated them and the best they have achieved is #3 and they seem to be stuck there.
Before MS buys something more successful than they are - I think they should do some serious introspection as to why exactly they were not able to achieve such a lofty goal on their own given how much more value they are (in their words) to the customer. If they just buy #2 there's probably a good chance they will sink back to #3 again as they integrate their #3 ideas on a business operating at #2.
I would think if they really wanted to be #2 they should pay Yahoo to 'buy MSN' and let Yahoo figure out what is wrong with their #3 problem and overlay the staff, technology and features that could make MSN #2.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
In what way is "M$" perfectly legitimate?
Look, you have a few choices:
1) You can type Microsoft like a normal non-cretin
2) You can type the stock-ticker abbreviation, MSFT
3) You can type the accepted acronym, MS
All three of those options work. M$ isn't any of them.
Comment of the year
I hope this deal will not go through. I use Google's products over Yahoo's as a matter of taste; I find Yahoo's pages too cluttered to be aesthetically pleasing. Be that as it may, the last thing I want to see is Yahoo going under; which, in my humble opinion, is exactly what this deal would amount to in the long run. Microsoft has a long history of buying out innovative companies and products and subsequently turning them into Passport/Live/insert-buzzword-here clones with vastly inferior functionality than their previous iterations. If Microsoft buys Yahoo! and slowly runs it into the ground, slowly replacing Yahoo's key engineers with Microsoft people, what major competitor will be left to offer (real) innovative competition to Google? I respect all the good that Google has done the Internet as a whole, but I am not blind to the fact that the corporation is now a publicly traded company, and thus subject to the whims of shareholders. If Google's most threatening competitor becomes stagnant, or even regressive, how will Google justify research and development costs to its shareholders? Maybe I'm wrong and Microsoft will retain Yahoo!'s management and employees more or less as they are, but I doubt it. I see this deal as injurious to innovation in OS-independent web technologies.
Why does it mean he's a blind Microsoft hater? He could very well be a knowledgeable Microsoft hater like the rest of us who have to suffer through the nightmare of Microsoft because they managed to get control of the market despite there being much better alternatives out there that the knowledgeable Microsoft haters have been using for years. The bias is likely for very good, supportable reasons.
Who is John Galt?