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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.'"
This is very different from MS doing, say, Zune or MSN. In both the MS cases these are independent strategies that have no synergy with Windows or Office (ie. Windows and Office don't really benefit from Xbox and MSN).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yahoo is also an ISP in Japan with a rather large penetration.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Microsoft offered $31/share for a stock that was trading at $18 (not $12, my bad)/share. With the recent layoffs, declining profit, being bought looks pretty good.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Funnily enough, Alexa gives a rank by 3 month average - Google.com really overtook Yahoo.com a few weeks ago and is only going up, yahoo is only going down. Wait a few weeks and the position will surely reverse (look at the graphs if you don't believe me).
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...
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.
They link it up with private data held by other companies, and then they sell it to other ad companies, who then go on to pester you, perhaps send you target you with potentially embarrassing ads. Or they sell the info to prospective employers.
Yeah, Microsoft killed Hotmail so thoroughly that it remains nearly the biggest player in Webmail and has a market share considerably larger than Gmail.
I'd wager you are wrong. There's a lot more to Yahoo than webmail - there's groups, the financial portal, the ecommerce portal... In fact, when you look at a complete list (a lot of those single line items are actually feature rich services in their own right, don't be fooled), I see a lot of things Google simply doesn't provide. Yahoo is a portal - and a deeply and powerfully integrated one. Google isn't. Google is (largely) a collection of whatever shiny feature happened to catch their eye. Some of them are even out of beta.
Take a look at the Yahoo page I used as my browser start page... Google doesn't provide anything like it, or even close.
Obviously, what you say is entirely possible. But even with a white knight defense, the acquirer better offer more than MS or it'll be a proxy fight and a gazillion lawsuits. From the point of view of the investor, it doesn't make a difference. Higher offer wins.
Having said that, there are plenty of anti-takeover defenses. From the "Nancy Reagan defense" (just say no), to staggered boards, to poison pills (Yahoo has one). As Peoplesoft teaches, there is nothing that can stop an acquirer determined to buy at whatever price.
Now, some math to predict what's gonna happen. There are roughly 1.5B shares. 25% of the shares changed hands on Friday. You can bet that most of them, say 20%,ended up on the hands of arbitrageurs. Legg Mason, a hedge fund has 8% and 11% are in the hands of another hedge fund. That makes 40% of the shares in the hands of people in search of the highest return, and screw everybody else. Most of the institutional holders are generally sympathetic to management, but they hold roughly 50% of the company (excluding the two hedge funds I mentioned before and what they sold in these few days). MS only needs another 10%. If MS are smart, they have already accumulated at least 5% (they have 10 days to report any ownership higher than 5% to SEC). Now on Jan 29 and 30 the stock volume spiked. Just the excess volume (over average) is 10% of the shares. Any guess who may have bought those shares? Watch for MS coming out next week with a 10% ownership.
So, let's say that Yang doesn't want to sell. He's got little or no stock. Filo has 5% of the Yahoo stock. The board may be loyal to Yang, but it must be very careful because the Revlon Duties have been triggered and they impose no loyalty. Once the company is in play, the CEO counts only as much as he can control the board.
So, here is what's gonna happen: if MS doesn't raise the price enough and Yahoo sells, MS (or another acquirer) and the hedge funds stay below 15% ownership to not trigger the poison pill. At the upcoming shareholders meeting (should be in May or June), a proxy fight erupts, and MS asks the poison pill to be repealed. The arbitrageurs vote yes, and somebody buys Yahoo. Most likely MS, but if somebody else has $50-60B, why not? The hedge funds don't care who wins as long as the company is sold.
Also, Yahoo! have a much better position in China that Google have. A lot of people here have a Yahoo! email address, but I don't know anyone with a Gmail address. Does Google Mail have a Chinese option, I wonder? I know Yahoo! does, and it even allows pop3 access for free, last I heard.
Of course, that can change quickly...
Max.
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.
Have you ever read the Google and GMail Privacy Policies?
Some key facts (read: not a 100% complete copy/paste from the site) from the Google Privacy Policy (http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html):
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
I think you dont really understood the point that the guy made. The problem is not that someone is interested in you or your information now. I know lots of information is pubclicly available when you send it via mail or generally through the internet. However if at this time you are of no interest to the bad guys then they wont be logging your activities. The issue is if you save such activities in a public-third party server (such as google or microsoft or yahoo or whatever), even if you stop using them the minute your government start jailing people that does not bend over, they will be able to get all the information you saved over there (i.e., google complying with China policies, Yahoo giving away information about an account, if they bend over China, why wouldn't they bend over the USA or any other more powerful country?).
:)
I don't even want to know what kind of activity you are involved in which makes you believe that the US government keeps a file on you
You do not have to do something really nasty to be tracked by the government, just Flying through (i.e, to go somewhere else) the USA will get you into their database.
I got a first person account of that, my grandmother went to the USA in the 70s or 80s maybe, and she forgot to handle a small paper when she went out. Ten years later, a cousing went to the USA for vacation and when she was returning they stopped her and asked her where was my grandmother hiding in the USA, they were sure she had illegaly stayed (of course she had not, she lived in Mexico). How did they know she was the granmother of my cousing... we do not know.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I think you mean "WITH ex post facto laws". Ex post facto laws are laws that make something that someone has already done a crime after they have done it, even though it wasn't a crime at the time they did it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.