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Yahoo May Re-Consider Google Alliance, Rebuff Microsoft
anastasd writes "Reuters is reporting that Yahoo might consider a business alliance with Google as a way to top a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft. 'Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft's bid, that source said. At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said. A second source close to Yahoo said it had received a procession of preliminary contacts by media, technology, telephone and financial companies. But the source said they were unaware whether any alternative bid was in the offing.'"
Do I like Yahoo? Not really. But I don't really like Google or MS either. The less of these online service providers there are, the worse it will be for consumers. I hope Yahoo continues to exist in some form or another just so there are more players in the marketplace. That means more choice, more competition and a better experience for users.
Last I checked, $31 is greater than $12.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Crunch is coming, and Yahoo is going under one way or another. The current tack to Google is only to squeeze out a little more cash from the deal.
Google don't want 'em, what exactly would they be acquiring? Whereas, depending on the attendant levels of asshattery involved, MS/Yahoo could be better than a disaster.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Google can use the 45bn in far better ways by cutting into new markets & technologies (eg. Android).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
too bad TimeWarner or CNN or some other big media company could not bail yahoo out, i rather see something like that than for microsoft getting their dirty paws on them...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Yahoo thinks they're worth more than $44.6 billion? What exactly does yahoo do, or own, that makes money?
Yahoo is just acting like this in order to get a higher price from MS.
Google + Yahoo! wouldn't fly with the antitrust regulators.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Ballmer is gonna absolutely lose it when he reads this news , /dotters? ;-)
maybe investing in officemax,staples,etc.
(whichever is brave enough to deliver to his office!)
would be a wiser bet? at least for us poor
They are just jacking up the price. The company will be sold. Once a company is in play, it is very hard to take it off the market.
Once the directors receive an offer, it is their duty to figure out whether their shareholders are better off with Yahoo alone or not. If they figure out that it is better selling (I am sure they did already), it is their obligation under current Delaware law to auction the company. That's exactly what they are doing. There isn't a single transaction that closes at the starting price.
If the directors decide that it is better going alone, it will end up with a Proxy fight and a lot of lawsuits (those will happen anyway)
Right now, arbitrageurs are going long on Yahoo and short on MS.
From the article...
"Few natural bidders exist beside Google
that could engage in a bidding war, and
Google would be unlikely to win approval
from antitrust regulators, some Wall Street
analysts said on Friday."
So, um, it's not likely to happen.
** Yawn **
It's safe to move along.
How to Download YouTube Videos
500 million users. $3.75 billion a year in profit. Market cap of $40 billion.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Yahoo is also an ISP in Japan with a rather large penetration.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
Over the past 3 months, Yahoo's stock has been dropping like a rock -- from $33 to $19. It jumped back up to $28 after the Microsoft takeover announcement, but that just means Microsoft will have to kick in another couple billion to get the deal through.
And it also means that Google would have to pay *EVEN MORE* than that in order to make a better offer than Microsoft. Why would Google spend $46+ Billion just to buy a competitor who is sinking fast? Just doesn't make sense. Google has a lot of money, but I doubt they're willing to spend *THAT MUCH* just to piss off Microsoft.
"At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said."
Undervalued? Do they really believe that? Or is that just negotiation strategy, because Microsoft offered much more per share than what the stock was going for.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Google and yahoo are neck and neck (with google slightly ahead for the last while). That gives google 1 & 3, or 50% vs 30% if you combine youtube + google.
Now look at http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=YHOO&t=2y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=GOOG
Yahoo on the way down and Google (relatively) up.
Sure, Google could buy Yahoo for a quick rush, but in the longer term (1-2 years) yahoo will just fade by themselves unless they do something very interesting (which they have not done in a long time).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yahoo Mail has many more users than Gmail, and tends to have a more mass-market (less techie) demographic, especially if you consider Yahoo Groups sort of related. Yahoo Messenger is of course orders of magnitude more popular than Google Talk.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
i have a sneaking suspicion there is another smaller .com bubble forming. especially when yahoo start talking about being under valued at 44 billion.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I think Google's (lack of) privacy policy is obnoxious. They basically say, "You don't pay us, so you agree we can do anything with your data." I use Google Search and Google Talk, but you won't catch me using GMail or Google Docs (or Google Apps or whatever it's called). Also, Google Maps is pretty much useless for Australia - WhereIs does a far better job, so I don't use Google Maps.
Whether or not Yahoo! knows it -- they need Microsoft. They've been bleeding the last several years with missteps and delays with Panama. Let me see if the DOJ would approve a deal that would give a 90%+ search engine monopoly to Google. Doubt it. Microsoft like it or not is the best option for Yahoo!
This is interesting given the timing of the Microsoft bid and the state of the wireless auction. Could Microsoft have waited until they believed Google had committed its resources to a spectrum bid before making a move to take Yahoo?
Sorry, they are all lame. Besides, everyone knows the interns have a woodshop ...
No, can't complete joke. Still lame. Not funny. No chair jokes have ever, can ever, or will ever be funny. Stop insulting our humor glands!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I keep hearing about this Goggle search thing. Where might I find it?
Why is there this weird "above/below" moderation thingy on Slashdot now? Is this the "innovation" Microsoft keeps talking about?
You know - the thing that bugs me most about the tech crowd is when I compare what I hear the real world's opinion of the competitive framework with what users on rags like Slashdot have to say. It is an incredibly huge gulf. It makes the tech community look hopelessly naive and biased.
I am a postgrad of competition law right now so I know quite a lot about it. Firstly, the real world doesn't believe Microsoft is any more or less evil than any other monopoly - past or present. In fact the opposite is more likely to be true. All of the conduct ultimately condemned by the courts (primarily restrictive licensing practices) were instigated by people who have since left the company. Further, Microsoft is now under close scrutiny by the US and EU authorities.
Google on the other hand is not.
One thing the shapers of modern competition law understood (yes these issues were thought about long before any of us were born) was that lasting unregulated monopolies are inevitably harmful to consumers. Google might have the right spirit of innovation and openness at the moment but one day working for Google won't be sexy anymore, an innovative culture will be harder to nurture and Google shareholders will still demand that Google returns a profit. The next best thing to innovation is infrastructural lock-in like what Microsoft (and Bell, IBM etc) have achieved. Which means the company can earn ongoing monopoly rents with minimal ongoing investment.
Best way to prevent this inevitable evil? Force the infrastructure to become a shared resource of multiple companies by making it economically less efficient for all of them not to inter-operate. If competition doesn't achieve this, the regulators will and history has shown that regulation of monopolies often leads to even worse effects than the alternative.
It's between embarrassing M$ by making a useless alliance thus breaking M$ deal and making them look bad, or letting them waste more money on a hopelessly doomed and misguided venture: Yahoo! Live Web Pack Premium Paid Advantage! Yahoo! shouldn't be competing with Google anyway, they should put everything into building the ultimate casual gaming lounge in 3D.
Check out this blog post by Google's Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond on Google's Corporate Blog. Google clearly sees this deal as a direct threat to the future of the Internet. They are not going to let Microsoft walk all over them like Netscape. Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! was a declaration of war:
Yahoo! and the future of the Internet
2/03/2008 11:45:00 AM
Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development
and Chief Legal Officer
The openness of the Internet is what made Google -- and Yahoo! --possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It's what makes the Internet such an exciting place.
So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to
unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.
This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first --and should come first -- as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.
Alright, it's been a while. I might need to dust off my cobwebs.
What is there to say about this? It really doesn't make too much sense because Microsoft is a company whose main focus has been on their operating system. I can understand MS wanting to adapt to an already mature market considering what they might lose if they don't. What does any of this mean really? Yahoo has done well with their deals they have made with various ISPs to help carry their brand name presence. Yahoo does have good presence overseas as well. There are die hard Yahoo fans out there that scoff at google. There are a lot of thing that Yahoo has done which has beat out google many times in innovation. Geocities was on of the first online hard drives / personal web space companies next to Tripod and AOL. They were one of the first to provide POP3 email accounts commercially to the general public for free. They had their own customized homepages, calenders, online note taking utilities and a whole slew of other innovations which took years for google to adopt. While most of the innovations are minor and pretty much found everywhere now, Yahoo has shown to be extremely active in terms of keeping up with current trends and developments. Yahoo has held its own and shows it by staying alive in the market. Microsoft could learn a lot from this company and to keep step with Google, they need someone like this on their side.
In terms of resources however, it still isn't a good enough reason to go through something like this. I don't care how big MS is, 44 billion is a lot of money even for them. The problem isn't in terms of how much they spend up front, it's how much they will spend in order to accommodate the merger. It will be several billion dollars more after Yahoo is acquired that will make the full transition complete. With the problems the market is having with Vista, Microsoft needs some sort of cash cow on their side in order to back them up with this merger. It's a very risky move on Microsoft's part to do something so big especially when the majority of Vista machines on the market are due to deals made with computer manufacturing companies like Dell, and Gateway. If individual sales of their product was stronger than there would be little risk involved but from where they stand now, it does blur the edges.
MSN is the default on new computers so the only people that use it are the ones that don't know any better. On the other hand pretty much everyone who uses Yahoo does so because they chose to do so. Microsoft has too much hubris to keep Yahoo's technology, they're going to change it all to Windows and .NET and just like what happened with Hotmail it will suck in then end.
Where are those users going to go? I'd wager the vast majority of them will go straight to Google.
Google doesn't need to buy Yahoo, they're going to get the users anyway
The Anti-Blog
Believe it or not, Windows Live Search is used quite a bit. I think it is large enough to stave off any anti-trust complaints. I agree this is just a bluff on their part for pricing, however I do think they could honestly merge with Google if they wanted to. You aren't a monopoly if there's another big player in the market.
I think there have been a good number of misconceptions about Microsoft's $45 billion offer for Yahoo!, and there are a few points that we ought to make note of.
Firstly, Microsoft's valuation indicates their valuation of Yahoo! being part of Microsoft. Synergies account for the higher value!
Secondly, with the offer, Yahoo! is now "in play", and there is a consequent expectation that someone such as Google may come along and make an offer. Since it is in play, people expect an offer that comes at a premium (which of course gets priced in!). Now, this is implicitly priced into the 62% premium that Microsoft has offered, and they have set it high enough (in their estimate) so as to price out any potential offers from others.
If Google decides to get involved, they have plenty of antitrust concerns in terms of an overall takeover bid. Can they take a play out of Microsoft's playbook (e.g., 1.6% stake in Facebook) and offer a larger premium for a substantial stake of the company (e.g., $60/share for say 35% of Yahoo!)? I would not be surprised if we see such a strategy.
Well, I'd agree that many of those accounts are no longer active. On the other hand, I suspect that all that personal information sitting in those dead accounts is worth quite a bit to some people. Page views is not the only way to make money.
Remember Yahoo isn't just used in the US, it has international versions as well. There's six billion people in the world and probably over 2 billion have regular internet access by now (my guess, no source). 25% of internet users using Yahoo regularly is not a stretch of the imagination by any means.
Not really, remember the first dot-com bubble was caused by people trying to value companies that produced no profit and used business model's no one had ever tried out before. (My favorite was pets.com which insisted on selling most of its merchandise at below cost. Genius move guys!) It's been over 10 years since then and company's have figured out how to make money online, which makes valuing the price of their stock much easier.
You're right in thinking Yahoo's vision of themselves is inflated though. Remember their market cap was about 2/3 of what it is now before the bid, and that's right about were they belong given management's horrendous execution.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
But, i'll bite. I like feeding the idiots/trolls.
12 billion dollars in cash and off US investments.
close to 7 billion in revenue yearly.
This doesnt include their assets in the US, buildings, technology, etc. EASILY worth OVER 20-30 billion.
So, again, do you get why its undervalued?
Microsoft was willing to pay 80Bill for yahoo in 05/06. Now they feel they are getting the bargain of the century. Yahoo may not be doing as good as golden child google, but its by no mean a slouch.
I've seen how most of those "hits" happen.
A user opens their browser and says "damn, why does that page always come up?" before navigating away from it.
No sig today...
80 billion in 05/06, 40 billion in 07/08.... which way is this going?
No sig today...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I A sneaking suspicion, eh? You might not be the first person...
Again, the slashbots don't use their brains....
A Yahoo!/Google alliance wouldn't mean Google buys out Yahoo! and pays $45 billion plus. Instead, in an alliance like the one described, Yahoo! goes back to the prior arrangement of having Google run the search on all of Yahoo's sites. The combined Yahoo!/Google search traffic this would send to Google would so dwarf Microsoft's current share, that it would be all but hopeless for Microsoft to win in the search/advertising space and would eliminate one of the prime rationales behind them buying Yahoo! Yahoo! could win in such a scenario (stays independent, focuses on mail, IM, and portals where it is leading) and Google clearly wins.
I don't think you understand what Google does. Your post infers that you see it as a technology company (you used the words innovation and openness, then go on to use the term "infrastructural lock-in like..." followed by "inter-operate" in the final paragraph). But in reality, Google is, at the moment, an advertising company that just so happens to specialize in technology... From Wiki:
"Most of Google's revenue is derived from advertising programs. For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported US$10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only US$112 million in licensing and other revenues."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google
So, I congratulate you on being a postgrad of competition law, but knowledge of the law doesn't mean anything if you don't understand the subject that you are trying to apply it to (IE: an advertising monopoly, NOT a tech monopoly). But what do I know? I'm just a naive and biased "techie" after all.
Crunch is coming, and Yahoo is going under one way or another. The current tack to Google is only to squeeze out a little more cash from the deal.
Google don't want 'em, what exactly would they be acquiring?
Well considering Yahoo! was one of Google's Angel investors before the Google IPO, there ma be a good reason for Google to help Yahoo!
FalconShould there be a Law?
The exact same thing that Microsoft would be acquiring. Granted it would be more of a benefit to Microsoft than to Google at this stage in the game, but who wouldn't want the #1 Website ranked in the world?. MSN had the position for the first half of 2007, but now they're crashing hard, and they never could beat out yahoo in the five years before that. Now the question is this: Which would you rather see, MSN fall further from the #5 slot, or Microsoft acquire Yahoo and be in control of the current #1 position?
Granted, M$ takes control of Yahoo, it's probably not going to be #1 for much longer (I know I'd be dropping my Yahoo mail accounts and probably joining my wife on Gmail), but since when do investors care what's going to happen, they want immediate returns on investment. And having their company say "We just bought the #1 spot" sounds real good to stupid masses with money to burn.
But then, that's just my $0.02USD (has the Peso out-done us yet on the conversion rate?)
MS is going to the shareholders, not the management. If I was a shareholder, I'd take MS offer in a second
Why, you want to give up $7 or $8? Financial analysts have valued Yahoo! at $38 or $39 a share.
FalconShould there be a Law?
revolver.
So you're a reactivist?
FalconShould there be a Law?
I wonder if anyone outside the US actually even knows Yahoo much anymore (I understand now that inside the US it is still used - like yandex in Russia, I was told).
Around 10 years ago you knew Yahoo, if you wanted web-based e-mail, groups/mailing lists. Now I haven't been on yahoo site for more than 5 years, and neither does anybody who I knew used it back then.
Argue all you want over who has what, but what you had AND have does not compare to what you can have. The reason that I say that is that Yahoo does not make it worth a techies time to either stay there OR come to them. Yahoo treats their techies like a bunch of well, yahoos. Very little incentives to stay there. In fact, they have treated their sales ppl like Gods, and yet these are the bozos who will leave a company at the first wind.
MS USE to have something to offer by having a stock that would increase. But the company overall was worthless which is why once somebody made the money via stock, they are gone. These days, MS stock is over priced and has not really changed in price for a long time. Worse, they have also gone to treating their sales ppl like gods, while the techies get far less.
Google is still in that phase where not only does the stock continue to grow (overall), but the techies (those that come up with good ideas ) are treated decently. I suspect that the sales ppl are also treated well, but the techies can make a portion of the money on their ideas. In fact, Google will help you to spin off if good enough. The other 2 simply steal your work.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So did anyone else have problems going to pages 2 and 3 due to needing javascript to do so? If so, why the heck would someone send us to a site that does stupid crap like that?
Well, Google obviously has something to say about this offer, but what about IBM?
Will IBM let a big part of the internet bussiness shift easily to MS's hands? I find-it hard to believe, for my part I do expect an IBM movement from now on.
Let's wait and see..
What's in a sig?
I hope Google does bail them out of this. I'd hate to see Microsoft ruin a few decent services. Chief among them, Flickr.
Like I said though, Google stands to gain a ton of users flocking away if MS acquires Yahoo.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Yahoo's new marketing tag:
"We're the New AOL, Like in the Olde Days!"
Don't look at historical data (3 months to a year old), look at the trend since then. Yahoo is flatline and Google is on the up.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't know where you got those numbers, but Yahoo has 1.34B shares outstanding. At $19.18 closing on Thursday (before the spike following the announcement), that's $25.7B market cap. Yahoo's 2004, 2005, and 2006 profits were 840 M, 1.9B, and 751M respectively, according to their public filings (available at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml). That's quite a far cry from $3.75 billion.
The valuation of Internet companies is mostly speculation. If you look at Price/Earnings ratios, most brick and mortar firms like GE and IBM (and Microsoft) are around 15-18. The P/E of Internet companies hovers around 40-100 (Yahoo and Amazon are ~60, Google is ~40, eBay is ~110). My interpretation of this is that everyone is looking for the next Microsoft among Internet companies and wants to get in on it early. That is, the valuations of GE and IBM are based on how much those companies are worth. The valuations of Yahoo and Google are based on how much those companies could be worth.
So Yahoo's valuation is going to swing wildly depending on how much potential for growth the company has in the future. In contrast, the valuation of GE would mostly be based on assets and recent performance, not so much on how you expect them to grow in the future.
Yahoo is the provisioner of email to Rogers, a very large ISP (and cell phone provider, among other things) here in Canada. Rogers' competitor, Sympatico is allied with MSN. So, there will be some impact here if this goes through.
The implications of Microsoft bidding $44.6 B for Yahoo are many, and they are all bad news. Bad for customers, bad for the internet at large, bad for employees, and bad for open source.
Google acquiring Yahoo is a lesser evil, but still one less competitor to keep the others honest.
But with an offer on the table, and a possible counter offer/alliance from Google, something is going to happen, and it will have profound implications on many people.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Because it works?
FalconShould there be a Law?
I was referring to gross profits, source: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=YHOO Regardless, yahoo has a lot of value, both in terms of shares, cash on hand, investments and of course the brand and the traffic to the core sites (home page, my yahoo, finance, mail, news sports). Its worth a lot, the issue yahoo has is that growth has been flat, not that the company is unprofitable. Yahoo is not dying. Yahoo is much healthier than apple was in the late 90s, or SGI was before it went private. Yahoo has assets, has value, it just can't seem to grow. Probably poor management and poor focus in my opinion. Thats why its worth this kind of valuation. It is one of, if not the, most trafficked properties on the web, that has to be worth something.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
remember the first dot-com bubble was caused by people trying to value companies that produced no profit and used business model's no one had ever tried out before. (My favorite was pets.com which insisted on selling most of its merchandise at below cost. Genius move guys!)
if you have enough cash reserves business wise it is a good idea. That's why a lot of US businesses complained about foreign companies dumping in the US, the accusation being that these foreign companies were selling products at below cost so they could establish market positions and drive out competitors. When Amazon started it dumped some as well then with a large market share they were able make money without raising prices by reducing their own costs. The large brick and mortar stores, Barnes and Noble and Borders in books; Home Depot in construction and home improvement; and Office Depot and Office Max in office supplies did the same to small and locally owned and run businesses. Walmart has about done it to everyone.
FalconShould there be a Law?
$45 billion ought to be enough for everybody.
"In talks" probably mean that no agreement has been reached. They are hoping that the idea of a Google/Yahoo consortium will be worrying enough for Microsoft to increase the offer.
There are roughly 1.5B shares. 25% of the shares changed hands on Friday
I wonder how many different shares actually changed hands. If I buy 1000 shares in the morning then sell them in the afternoon that counts as 2000 shares changing hand. Day traders do this all day, many of whom sell all shares when the markets close. Swing Traders on the other hand may hold a stock for a few days.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Like they really have a choice. The shareholders will demand it. -Carl
MSN only ever had that position due to being the default site in IE, and people not knowing how to change the default. A lot of people never looked at it and just browse to another site immediately...
And with the increase in Firefox usage, they're no longer the default... Netscape's "home.netscape.com" used to be fairly popular too, only because it was the default in netscape at the time.
Yahoo and Google had to gain their popularity by offering good services people want to use, i don't think Yahoo has ever been the default site for any significant application (maybe the default site for some isp's) and Google only became the default for firefox recently.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
However, in the US they have signally failed to deal with Microsoft, merely chipping at the edges, and there is no reason to believe that they would be any more applied in this case.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
oanda.com check the currency vs euro/gold. That 44billion is worth $25b in the year 2000.
That goes to all you americans holding shares in usa, you would have done better in euro cash + gold.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
So Yahoo! don't like the thought of having "Ask Steve" for their search engine? Ask the wrong thing, get a flying chair animation for your search terms.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I suspect the "500 million users" refers to the number of "unique IP's" for each of their services, added together with out regard to duplicates between services.
/. reader most likely count as several "users", even if we don't actually use Yahoo! normally, since we most likely sometime has been referred to some page hosted by Yahoo!.
So each
Goohoo and Yagle are much better sounding names than Yahcrosoft or Microhoo!
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/my/general.html
I'm not that keen on Google either. I don't like the idea of my email being read, even if it is only software scanning for keywords for advertising. Several years ago on Slashdot there was an article about how Google white washed images of the Tianmamen Square Massacre out of the Chinese version of their site. I can't get the images of the real images versus the ones google used out of my head.
I guess if yahoo merges with either Microsoft or Google I will just have to go with some small third party email provider.
In the Alexa top 100, Yahoo! only has two domains, .com and .co.jp. Google has 10 domains in only the top 50, from .com to .co.in. I'm not counting sister sites like Flickr or Orkut here, just the search front pages in the various localizations.
If you total Yahoo!'s top 100 (just the two) you get 29.41% reach (3 month average), but Google's domains total to 44.42%, and that's only the top 50. So in reality, Google's search front end has 50% greater reach than Yahoo!'s search front.
So, amiright?!?
Damn, I already moderated this topic. Now I'll have to log in with my sock puppet to comment.
Your threat is empty. Yahoo's management doesn't make the decision whether to merge with Microsoft. There are two ways it can happen:
So yeah, don't waste your time barking up the wrong tree.
Are you adequate?
On a search engine?
Dear god no! javascript already infects too many webpages. It's unnecessary and a blight on what should be the simplest UI going, the search engine. One box, one button, a page of results.
Their search sounds interesting. Shame I'll not be using it now.
Microsoft offers 40% more than the stock is worth, and Yahoo MGT says that "undervalues the company."
Riiiiiiight.
A lot of people made a shitload of money on the news last week, but I guess that wasn't enough for these greedy folks.
The single for Blue Monday by New Order cost more to produce than it was sold for, it was Factory records biggest ever selling single and they lost money on ever sale. Eventually they went bust too.
Microsoft spending $44bn on Yahoo! is such a bad idea for Microsoft that I really hope the deal goes through. I feel a little sad for Yahoo!, but I think they're in trouble anyway, and they are getting plenty of money out of it. And I don't think the deal "undervalues" Yahoo!; I think it's pretty much downhill from here on for Yahoo! no matter what.
This means we will be using 'The Register'-style headlines as in:
Microsoft! Announces! Delay! To! Windows 7! Release!
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
No one said its 100% cash, thats a lot of trucks, or even excel spread sheets of cash.
But I have a better 44 billion investment for MS.
1. buy EMI
2. buy $15b worth of Exxon, those dividends alone will yield HUGE rewards.
3. buy $15b worth of gold to preserve value with the US$ falling.
I wonder where Warren Buffet is in all this, he controls/runs Bills personal foundation with another $35b. He has said himself (heard it on financialsense.com podcast) that they will
keep investing and make money, but spend enough to keep the total value static or slightly increasing.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
First, it's not Yahoo saying $44 Bil. It's MSFT, with their offer. You can read that as: MSFT is willing to pay $44bil for Yahoo, therefore, Yahoo is worth at least $44bil.
Second, people here need to understand something: the stock market is the final judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to valuing companies.
If the stock market says "Company X" is worth $Y billion dollars -- then it is. Implicitly, it is saying "someone will pay that price - right now - in the open markets", thus putting a final value on the company at that moment. You can't argue with it and you can't complain about it. It just is.
If you think that price is wrong, then you can act accordingly and make money from that knowledge. Wash, rinse, and repeat and you now start to understand the stock market. It is THE most efficient capital market in the world. It processes ALL information and takes it into account for it's pricing. That's what Wall Street does.
And, judging by the share prices of MSFT, you are not the only one to question the number of users vs active users. (I happen to agree, btw)
Note, however, that the article wasn't about Google buying Yahoo, but rather about a strategic alliance between the two companies. This kind of thing can be very beneficial. If you identify a company that caters to a similar, but distinct, market to your own then between the two of you you can offer solutions that neither of you could offer separately.
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In a way, I'd love to see M$ sink 40+ billion into Yahoo! And I do mean sink. What possible value does M$ intend to gain from this transaction? This reminds me of AMD's recent acquisition of ATI, which they are still struggling to digest. On the other hand, while I want to see M$ face a lot more competition, if only so they'll improve their products, having them make a huge mistake could have serious consequences. Or maybe they'll finally give up on Chairman Bill's megalomaniac business model, stick to what they are good at (relatively speaking), and actually produce quality software in the desktop PC and server spaces. I said I was a hater...
I laughed at an article I read in the NY Times. They said at that price, Microsoft was paying (roughly) $86 a head for Yahoo's customers. The funny part is that if the deal actually goes through that TONS of customers will leave. I know for a fact that they'll lose me and I've been a Yahoo customer since 1996. There are millions out there just like me who would drop Yahoo like a bad habit if Microsoft took over. Not to mention all of the Yahoo employees who would quit if Microsoft took over.
:/
I had a personal experience with this. I've been offered Microsoft money in the past and I've turned it down. To me principles are more important than money. But, I know tons of people who were willing to take the dirty money... and that is how Microsoft continues their reign of terror. On one hand you got issues like: integrity, value, honesty, and innovation on the other hand you got a company saying "We'll give you umpteen billion dollars". Most people sell out in a heartbeat. Who cares if it's wrong. Just take the money and run. Thus, the cycle of the Evil Empire continues.
The thing that always bothers me is this: "Which is worse: the fact that every man has his price.... or that that price is always so low?"
I can't see a Google/Yahoo alliance getting antitrust approval. Even with the out-to-lunch antitrust division at Justice under the Bush administration. If you're #1 with over half the market and want to buy #2, it's pretty clear. A merger between #2 and #3 which leaves the merged entity with less than #1 is likely to be approved, though.
Microsoft is concerned about preserving competition on the Internet, but when trying to remove Windows Vista from my recently acquired laptop, the HP website told me I should not attempt to run any other operating system or even a dual boot and if I do so, my sound, graphics, network card and many other computer components will not operate properly. Funny--I thought I bought a computer with an operating system, not an operating system with a computer.
So why do you bother asking?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't think you understand what 'infer' means. Your post implies that you think it means 'to express or state indirectly'. But in reality it means 'to reason or establish by deduction'.
:-)
So I congratulate you on your understanding of the source of Google's revenue, but knowledge of Google's business doesn't mean anything if you can't express it in proper English. But what do I know.