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Yahoo Sued for Spurning Microsoft
tuxgeek writes "In the continuing saga of Yahoo resisting a Microsoft buy out, Yahoo is now being sued by its shareholders. 'Two Detroit pension funds have sued Yahoo Inc. and its board of directors, saying they breached their duties to shareholders in trying to thwart a takeover by Microsoft Corp. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware Chancery Court on Thursday by lawyers representing Detroit's police and fire retirement system and general retirement system, as well as 'all other similarly situated public shareholders.'"
Lovely, some short term investors would liek to crack open the golden goose and get allt he eggs now. Which may not be a bad idea (I can't imagine Yahoo!'s share price going up very significantly unless they have something very surprising in the works. If I was a shareholder I'd probably want to sue them too, but I'd feel dirty about it (but rolling around in money would probably cure that).
IANAL.
My take is that shareholder lawsuits are never a given in this country. There is a good possiblity that Yahoo will just show in court that their managerial view of the long view showed greater long term shareholder value in avoiding the merger. there is a good possibility that the suit might be dismissed on face. However, this doesn't always happen. If these investors are large enough, or find other plaintiffs who are, the mere public pressure of the suit could pressure the Yahoo board to do a few possible things:
1. Make a deal with microsoft to put it up to a vote of shareholders.
2. Just go ahead with the deal anyways.
I can't remember the last time a lawsuit like this went through off the top of my head. But I know that the record on them is not completely one-sided. I'll do some digging and be back
Greed. Always astounds me. You'd think eventually I'd just expect everybody to be greedy and the world to implode because of it.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
More likely we are saying that shareholder lawsuits are a stupid idea. I don't know if I agree with that sentiment, but it is a pretty blunt tool of shareholder control.
If I were a Yahoo shareholder, I'd be excited to be able to convert that into Microsoft stock. To have someone deny me that chance based on a childish rivalry would really upset me.
Stocks are a gamble. Period. You agree to contracts that explicitly state this when you start playing the market. You have no guarenteed return on your investment. You could very well lose it all and anyone with stocks Should Know This.
If you want a sure thing, get a Treasury Bond and STFU.
What Yahoo management can do is thwart Microsoft by making it too expensive to buy up all the shares. Such a tactic is called a poison pill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pill
The bottom line seems to be that, if Microsoft is determined, Yahoo's management probably can't prevent a takeover unless some other buyer is more determined and has deeper pockets.
Yahoo is being sued by its shareholders.
True. Stocks are a gamble. However, as these Funds likely have Class B common stock, which provides them with ownership and voting rights, they are demonstrably justified in wanting to file a suit primarily due to the fact that the decision to "spurn Microsoft" is a decision for the OWNERS, not the MANAGERS left in control.
(here's why economists should only be allowed one arm...) But on the other hand, thus the problem with Agency.
erm.. Class A common stock, rather.
"I have an offer you can't refuse"
about as far from a fucking gamble as you can get dumbass.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
And this is why Business ethics will never ever work. A public company tries to do some thing other than the most profitable option in front of them, like behave civilly*, and next thing you know their share holders sue them until they give in and act like profit mongering dicks.
*I'm not say Yahoo is acting with the public's best interest at heart, just that this case illustrates why a company can't operate that way.
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble.
The end result will be that lawyers will make some money, and noone else.
That's the way it has been; that's the way it always will be....
I am probably a minority here, but as a yahoo shareholder, I for one support the merger. From a stock holder's perspective -- this is the only way. The stock, prior to the merger announcement was trading at a paltry 20 dollars a share, and had a jump of 50% to 30 a share after the merger was announced. Yahoo's loosing its traditional bread and butter: being a search engine. And with that onslaught all the other yahoo online properties are slowly loosing market share...
Just to avoid the costs of the suit they can get a nice settlement for themselves (aka nuisance value) - and when the deal is as big as this that will be a lot of cash.
Beyond that, they might even be able to win it. Then the lawyers are looking at tens of millions AT LEAST. In the end, the shareholders won't really get anything, but YHOO will pay the fees.
How is a treasury bond a sure thing? governments default on their debt. How about this. Bonds offer a contracted return that might not happen due to default risk and might be lowered due to inflation and changes in interest rates. Stocks offer no such guaranteed return save the fact that as an owner you are entitled to a share of profits. You are also (in some cases) given some fractional say in how the company is run.
It isn't a gamble. Some investments are riskier than others. No investment is risk free. Some investments are VIRTUALLY risk free, but you pay in terms of your return. Jesus. What do they teach kids these days?
"I am a lousy speller"
Yew herd I.T. hear forth.
The cynic in me says that the CEOs only get paid when the company gets fucked (see HP (re Carly Fiorina), Citigroup, Enron, WorldCom).
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Since when have pension funds been considered short term investors?
Lets start with the fact that the market is under valuing yahoo. Compounded with Greedy pension funds that are not financially sound do to miss management, They see prey and pounce.
This is one of the things wrong with wall street.. Build a product get people to invest.. Good they invested... quick pull it all out....
Here in Michigan, we have a term for things like this.
Yahoo just got "Detroited."
I think from the point of view of Yahoo stockholders, turning down the offer really was a bad choice; I don't see Yahoo making such big gains on their own any time soon.
The myth of shareholder primacy
Granted, this is about Australian law, but American law isn't substantially different. Microsoft want to swallow up Yahoo. The company would no longer exist. It's relevant.
To have someone deny me that chance based on a childish rivalry would really upset me.
There's *so* much more going on here than that.
The most important thing is that Microsoft would destroy the company as it's known now. They'll mess with the back-end technology, swapping in their own, they'll merge some stuff with Windows Live and vice versa, they'll kill anything that's a threat to their desktop hold or they'll limit its prime interoperability to Microsoft products. Features will become dependent on IE and Silverlight.
In short, its goals will go from being a premiere portal and online services company to being anything that can maintain and enhance Microsoft's dominance. Lots of people who work there would rather work for the former than the later (and it *will* hemorrhage key employees if they're bought for that reason). And some of them even have a damn good argument that the company is worth more long term if it serves the former goal. It's not unlikely they'll achieve it, and especially as the desktop becomes less and less relevant, I think they have the potential to outdo Microsoft in terms of their worth.
Short term, of course, you can get quite a good cash-out on the offer MS made... especially compared to anything else available while the markets in general are struggling. And lots of suits and shareholders don't know how to think any other way than short-term gains.
Tweet, tweet.
I would say they most resemble sports betting. As a small investor, when you invest in a stock, you are trying to a find a company that you feel the street has valued wrongly, and you are betting that eventually, the Big Boys (mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds) will realize this as well and bid up the price of the stock to the point where it is fully valued. This is no different really than betting the spread on a sporting event. You are betting that the current line is wrong, and you win money if your guess is correct.
Now where investing differs in my opinion from sports betting is that there is more research and information you can gather on a given company than there is on Team A or Team B. You also have the added advantage of knowing that Big Boys essentially all play the game the same way (read a couple books on investing and you'll realize that there are only a handful of strategies out there that are all widely followed). Thus, there are less variables you have to look out for, and more importantly, fewer unforeseen ones that you cannot factor in. Then again, that's also why successful investment returns around 20%-50%, while a successful wager will return almost 100%. Higher risk, higher reward.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
I hear they are doing horribly.
How are those "no risk" treasury bonds doing for you with 0.8% return in an environment of 8% inflation??
Everything has risk. You have to know how to deal with it. I have never heard of anyone getting wealthy through treasury bonds.
That is certainly possible, but I suppose about equally likely of happening as that same government seizing the assets of a private bank where you are storing your money.
The US has not defaulted on its debt even once.
An risk you face, no matter how you store your money, having nothing to do with bonds.
You could say the same things about gambling.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No, I couldn't say the same thing about gambling. for one, In gambling, the house always wins. the games are set up such that your eventual return is always less than 1.00.
Look, the whole problem people have is with volatility. Volatility scares people. People respond more to volatility than they do to actual risk. Ask someone how to determine if a company is a risky investment and they will more than likely point to the 52 wk hi/lo for the stock rather than some more fundamental assessment.
Are stocks riskier than bonds? Of course. Can you see a rate of return on ANY investment that beats the market perpetually? No. All of these specacular crashes we see are coming from people who promised greater than market return and took risks to get it. Those risks will, statistically, bite people in the ass. Some people got rich. Some people lost a bunch of money. On average, wealth grew and will continue to grow at a reasonable rate over time. One of the bid reasons it will grow is through equity finance.
Making the statement that one investment is riskier than another is fine. Making an unsubstantiated claim linking on investment to what is basically a means to throw your money away is ignorant and silly.
Gambling does not require a "house". It's difficult for non-existent parties to "always win".
How unfortunate for you that you can't invest in the "average" stock, at the "average" time.
Gambling is not throwing money away. Gambling is taking risks (beyond your control) with your money. That is exactly what you face in the stock market.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is war.
If Yahoo were in serious trouble of, not just ceasing to grow, not just losing some market share in a market that is close to saturated, but of suddenly imploding, it might be important to look at the value the buyer can bring to the table.
But even when we look at the value Microsoft is bringing to the deal, it's in "unspecified" changes to Yahoo's business plan, operating structure, etc. In fact, given Microsoft's history and Yahoo's history and Microsoft's current attitude, this deal cannot be seen as doing anything other than violence to Yahoo.
And that leaves the question of whether a company still under court scrutiny (and theoretical punishment) for monopoly practices should even be looking at expanding in a new market.
Gates, Ballmer, and that bunch have gone powerblind.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
No wonder the world is going to hell in a handbasket in freefall.
There is, at the very least, informed self-interest vs. unbridled greed.
Unbridled greed is not how any kind of retirement fund should be run.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Detroit's general retirement fund?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
FFS.
Gambling doesn't require a house but most of the games we think of do. The reason people aren't usually out there making money on the craps circuit isn't because of the ups and downs. It is because the odds in craps are DESIGNED so that you will never win, on average. The expected value of one dollar played on a craps table over the long run is about 92 cents. In the end, you are losing money. On the contrary, there are games of chance that people do make a living on. Very famously, people have made a living on poker. In this case, the house takes a cut, but it doesn't impact the odds of winning or make it so that the expected value of a dollar in over the long run is less than a dollar out.
I will continue to say that it is ignorant of you to compare gambling to equity finance. Do you understand what portfolio diversification is? It is almost PRECISELY investing in the average stock in order to limit damage to the portfolio due to volatility. You find two investments (or more, really) that will respond differently to a single market change, and you invest a little in both. the ma expected return is lowered, but the variance is lowered even more. It's a fundamental tenet of smart finance and it is nothing like gambling at all.
Are there nonzero risks in the stock market? Sure. If you want to define gambling as taking risks beyond your control with your money than treasury bills are gambling. You said before that the US has never defaulted on its explicit debt and you are correct, but the risk is still there. If you want a risk free investment strategy, take your money and put it in a checking account. It is protected by the FDIC, some even offer a small rate of return, and there is no risk. Of course, you will barely beat inflation and you will forgo 100,000's of dollars worth in lost compounded interest, but it's your money.
whenever the stockholders insist?
We are not talking about a company known for intending to improve the value of companies they buy.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
not dereliction of duty?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
disregard, sorry.
I don't want my retirement fund ruining the future market for some short-term gain.
Seriously, I'm wondering if the whole financial world has fallen into the hands of a bunch of maniacs who are so high on _something_ that they don't think they are going to be around next year, not to mention ten or twenty years from now.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Correct. Selling high to a buyer, who has no monopoly in your space, and is not breaking any laws by making you this offer, is the responsibility of those placed in charge. It is not their responsibility to push FOSS ideals for the good of mankind.
The rational defense here is for Yahoo to claim that this was not a high offer compared to either a) what they can make on their own, or b) what they can make Microsoft pay. If they want to lose a lawsuit, then can complain that they just really don't like the buyer and don't think their shareholders should either.
There is no market so strong that it can't slump. There is no business so economic that it can't become unprofitable. In some cases, the risks are very very small, but they are risks. Nothing is guaranteed. Indeed, if it was possible to guarantee profit, you would guarantee inflation that matched or exceeded that profit, which means you end up with more money but no richer. The more secure the investment, the lower the "guaranteed" profit, the more likely you are to lose after inflation has been taken into consideration. The conservative notion that as investment approaches infinity, profits also approach infinity, is foolishness. One of the causes of the Great Depression was the very high level at which individuals were invested in stocks and shares. This was the worst possible direction for the economy to go in, and claiming that the stock market isn't a gamble is to encourage the very worst in destabilizing behaviours.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If you gamble with just your buddies, your expected return for a dollar might be as high as 1. If you gamble at a casino, you have 1. If you invest in the stock market, you have an expected return of > 1 (statistically determined).
If you don't put your money into shares, or something else, then you are "gambling" on the currency market. After all, the value of your currency is beyond your control. Some level of inflation is nearly a given in first world countries, so that's a bet with far 1 odds.
Somehow people have gotten the opinion that only deviation from the "default" setting (in this case, cash in the bank or under the mattress as compared to invested) can be judged. It's the same problem that leads people to say they will save 300 lives guaranteed instead of taking a 30% chance of saving 1000 lives; yet given 1000 people with a 30% chance of them all dying, they will not say that they would sacrifice 700 lives to guarantee the safety of the remaining 300. But there's nothing magical about the default setting.
See, the Micro-Hoo merger is already making money for some people.
Modded troll? Are you kidding me mods? He has a damn good point!
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Here is a MicroHoo related stories box at MSNBC @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23237868/
Microsoft: Yahoo would stay in Silicon Valley
Microsoft bid 'unnerving' to Google co-founder
Analysis: Microsoft will win proxy battle
Microsoft to authorize Yahoo proxy battle
Gates: Microsoft's offer to Yahoo is fair
Yahoo's big investors may back Microsoft
Yahoo's CEO explains Microsoft rebuttal
Newsweek: Why this deal won't happen
Why Google will remain king of search
Vote: Can Microsoft-Yahoo beat Google?
Guess which link doesn't work?
Newsweek: Why this deal won't happen
Page not found Our web servers cannot find the page or file you asked for. The link you followed may be broken or expired.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/110796 Nope not expired, guess it was just misplaced.
Oddly enough this link works fine Why Google will remain king of search I guess it was left to show that there are no antitrust issues.
On the story itself
The company also adopted new severance packages that would protect employees in the event of a Microsoft takeover, a move the lawsuit labels as a blatant effort to drive up the cost of an acquisition.
It couldn't be an attempt to protect their employees, nah what does that have to do with profits?
The company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday that workers who lose their jobs without "cause" or quit "for good reason," as Yahoo defines it, would continue to receive their salary and medical benefits for four to 24 months, plus reimbursement for "outplacement services" for two years. A Yahoo spokeswoman would not say what might constitute good reason.
I dunno, how about: I was purchased by a soul crushing monopolist.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Bungie refused to be fucked. They're a relatively small, tightly knit team with strong leadership. They were never assimilated. They had their own building, used an open plan (instead of separate offices traditional at Microsoft), they were as un-Microsoft as it gets. That's one of the reasons why they could leave so easily.
Yahoo would cease to be, everything would be rebranded Microsoft and much of the Yahoo staff would be laid off. Is it any wonder Yahoo would resist this? not to mention losing competitive edge by having to do everything the Microsoft way and avoiding open source.
WTF? You can sue somebody for NOT selling out, these days? Karma police, take these fuckers out!
These are part of Yahoo's business operation model. Can Microsoft offer functional equivalents with their technology, protocols, whatever, that are anything more than vague promises?
Does Microsoft technology have a real record of keeping operation costs down without opening security holes right and left?
Remember what they rushed MSW95 onto the net with.
And remember how much their irresponsibility has cost us, no, is costing us right now in terms of bandwidth being used in unsolicited advertisements and trojan bait deliveries, in terms of authentication tokens stolen, in terms of server and workstation horsepower being diverted from the nominal owner's work to the work of intruders, in terms of actual money being lost to ordinary end users and their banks by way of falsely authorized transactions, etc., etc., etc.
Will Microsoft allow Yahoo to maintain and honor the commitments it has made? Can they, even?
No. Microsoft has to have a business case. Microsoft, in particular, being the spoiled 200 pound bully on the playground, has to have a very solid business case with legally binding guarantees that they will allow Yahoo to maintain and fulfill current business commitments.
And their public arguments at this time indicate anything but such a business plan, and guarantees to _alter_ Yahoo's business.
Microsoft has nothing of value to offer that won't be burned up in less than a year of bad planning and bad execution. We know their record. This move, whether Microsoft consciously intends it or not, can only result in the death of Yahoo.
What proof do you have that it won't? Remember, you have almost thirty years of history against you here.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yeah, I know.
But I'm not going to buy a Mac with an iNTEL processor. (Senseless prejudice against an excessively predatory company, I know.) And there are no notebook or desktop Macs that I am aware of with ARM cpus.
So, yeah, but, no, not really.
I do wonder how hard a 3 GHz ARM would be to build, and how it would compare. Would they have to hack seriously out-of-order execution and deep pipes onto the things? Or is the ARM's architecture efficient enough to dispense with those band-aids?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Everyone here doing what they are supposed to. This lawsuit (and its kind) were expected as soon as yahoo rejected the offer. But the pension plan is doing what they are supposed to as well. When someone offers them $10 for a $6 property, they are supposed to take it. Otherwise, they wouldn't be fulfilling their obligationgs to the pensioneers. The lawsuit will fail if the judge understands that the fact that Yahoo traded at a certain price, doesn't mean that it can be purchased in large amounts at that price. But so far, this is hardly newsworthy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
1. Yahoo stockholders sue yahoo.
2. Microsoft buys yahoo stocks.
3. Yahoo stock goes up.
4. Desperate stockholders sell
5. Yahoo stock plummets.
6. Microsoft loses millions in stocks.
7. ????
8. Profit!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
no one is stopping you from selling your shares now into cash, and using that cash to buy MSoft.
Though a better investment is to use the cash to buy 40% gold, 20% silver, and 40% Exxon/Shell stocks. OIL is #1, good dividends, and low ratio.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
No. Not really.
I can get an AMD notebook next time I can afford a notebook, put Fedora Core on it.
There are two reasons I still use Mac OS. Claris/AppleWorks and Kotoeri. Anthy is close. I'm about two years away on figuring out a Java solution to the stuff I do in Claris/AppleWorks. (And, no, MSOffice/VB does not do the job.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I think the FTC should block this merger simply on the grounds that we already have a tight oligopoly in the search engine market. Unless the market is inherently structured that it does not have space for three search engines, this merger should not be allowed to proceed regardless of that Yahoo! directors think.
His profanity let him down really, as he made a good point.
Stocks are only a gamble in so much as when it involves things the company can't control or is unable to react to. When you buy stocks in something it is with the expectation that the board of directors will act in the best interests of the shareholders.
Although IANAL I can definitely see merit in this lawsuit and people writing it off as frivolous or simply borne out of carpet bagging are wrong. As already stated above $31 is a higher share price than any shareholder can ever expect Yahoo to reach under its own steam given its track record and its perceived value in the modern day Internet as compared to the likes of Google and indeed Microsoft themselves. Dismissing this offer out of hand does seem to strike of bullishness to me.
Either way I think Microsoft will be looking at this and smiling - if their original offer wasn't genuine to begin with (poison pill strategy) or even if it was, they'll most likely eventually be able to acquire Yahoo without having to concede much at all.
dear real shareholders: the minute you sell to MS I'm canceling my subscription to yahoo
It's certainly going to be the END of my love affair with Flickr.
you had me at #!
It's more than a case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Gatesists made clear that they would not take "no" for an answer and would continue their plans against Yahoo one way or another. These so-called pension funds are likely part of that approach and just softening up Yahoo, while setting the media against the board in prep for its ousting. One point which is unlikely to ever make many mainstream news sites or forums, even open source ones like Slashdot, is that Microsoftologians are likely to try to replace Yahoo's board. Poisoning the press against the board is a first step.
Later, preventing the Yahoo employees from jumping off with golden parachutes might be a repeat of what MS did to Borland, except against key open source projects. Yahoo contributes in a big way to many open source projects, PHP and BSD being two Very Important (tm) ones. Getting Yahoo would crush a competitor to the spectacularly failed MSN. So without the 'chutes many would have to stay and MS could simply have them sweeping floors or making coffee.
There is also the question of Zimbra, which was recently purchased by Yahoo. MS Exchange is about the only thing that ties Windows into either/both the desktop and the server room. Zimbra is one of the few competitors to MS Exchange, besides Kolab and Citadel, none of which get much press. Quite a few shops would stop or drastically decrease use of MS products without MS Exchange. Zimbra is currently not GPL. Buying Yahoo would allow Zimbra to be put on ice as MS did with FoxPro
Advertising, aka tracking users, is another problem. MS execs want into advertising. Controlling the adservers allows a chance, finally, at income. It also allows access to be tweaked. Ads get served up first before content and delay, especially at the beginning, drastically reduces viewing time and thus mindshare. The first moments are crucial and studies show that the cap is set at 20s. A delay, on purpose or by accident, of even a fifth of a second x one million page views is hundreds of lost viewing hours. So the potential for severe abuse is there in addition to the technical problems MS services and servers are known for.
At the bottom is also a question of money. Many articles somehow neglect that much of the initial offer was funny-money, aka MSFT stock, which MS prints on demand. The noise and smoke about the attempted take over does well at drawing attention away from what must be some rather 'creative' book keeping there in Redmond.
There are plenty more possible reasons to go after Yahoo's board. Having sockpuppets poison the press makes sense for many of them.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Soooo.... instead of simply making your very valid points, you had to be a jackass about it? Does this make you feel more like a man?
Conflict of interest is the first possible reason which comes to mind.
Scratch the surface, and it might be found that those making or at least influencing the decision turn out to have very strong ties to MS.
It's common for MSFTers to try to dismissing criticism by calling the critics conspiracy theorists and other names. That's a form of flawed logic, called an ad hominem fallacy. Name calling works in the forum of public opinion, but it does not change the underlying facts. In this case, there is a strong possibility of a conflict of interest, regardless of the names the messengers get called.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
i feel sorry for yahoo! investors are looking at the short term bottom line. when microsoft succeeds in the yahoo! takeover, i will stop using yahoo! completely. microsoft is not capable of running yahoo! successfully and just doesn't understand what innovation mean. yahoo! on the other hand has sort of lost its way but would certainly do better on its own as long as real leadership could step into the trenches at yahoo!
Just a feeling, an opinion, a guess, but doesn't it feel like Microsoft's hand might be behind this? Like the indirect way Microsoft's hand was behind SCO's long-running attack on Linux? Like the way Microsoft's hand was behind the attempted destruction of a single Open Document Format that they didn't already own completely? Like Microsoft would never attempt something so underhanded as this? Like Microsoft and Union Pension funds would never mix?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
--I actually have found that this can be observed by region. Certain big cities seem to be coalescing points for childish behavior. Conversely, those towns with smoothly-running municipal systems, low crime and stress levels and generally happy people also tend to be populated with a higher number of, what appear to me, as more mature souls who treat each other with patience and respect. For some reason, the various groups don't intermingle very well, or put another way, 'water rises to its own level'. No surprise there, I suppose.
I wonder what town this ridiculous law suit originated in. . .
-FL
Yep. With Zimbra, Kolab, and Citadel that makes six. However, the magazines and newspapers don't dare write a word about them, even if they would. In addition to being one of the last remaining advertisers, MS has fifth-columnists working against competition in many places. It's not a conspiracy, just greed and/or politics.
The main reasons people use Exchange is because it is tied into Active Directory exclusively which is tied into their Windows Desktops exclusively. It also tied exclusively into Outlook (which most businesses have due to the Office monopoly), the functionality in Exchange mirrors that for Outlook; they are a perfect lock-in by design. It always comes back to illegally leveragingthe Windows/Office monopoly and vendor lock in.There fixed that for you. It's one aspect near the heart of the 10+ year anti-trust trial MS lost in 2004 and lost in appeal for in 2007.
If Windows or any of the products worked with standards, then it would be possible to swap out components. One reason for the extreme suckitude is that the lock-in guarantees no competition. Old habits die hard and going way back, MS DOS 4 sucked rocks a market for DR-DOS which in turn caused MS-DOS 5 which unlike 4 was usable. Same for the Windows-Outlook-Exchange, except now there is lock-in to such an extent that businesses have to be quite serious about dropping MS and getting into functional products.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I admit I may be mistaken here but I was always convinced that the purpose of shares existing in the first place was to have a possibility of shared ownership for many indihviduals.
It's understandable but you're wrong. The original purpose of issuing shares in a corporation, and the purpose of the corporation itself, was to limit liability. Corporate Charters were first issued to limit the liability of investors to just what they invested in the corporation. The first two corporate charters were granted to the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the Honourable East India Company in 1604. Both were trading companies involved in shipping products between India and Europe and shipping was an expensive operation. If a ship sank or was attacked by pirates not only did the owners lose the ship but they also had to pay for the loss of the cargo and the loss of the lives. If a small investor had invested money in a ship they could lose everything they owned, even their own home. The Dutch then the British granted charters to corporations to limit the liability of small investors. If a ship was lost the most an investor could lose is the amount of money they invested. However what has been overlooked in all of this was that corporate charters were originally granted if and only if the corporation served the Common good or Public good and when a corporation no longer served these it's charter could be revoked.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You completely looked like an idiot declaring the parent is commiting two felonies by posting. Random slashdot post asserting that the author considers stock in lieu of money for part of an exchange to be 'funny money' is nothing more than an opinion and certainly is not talking up or down stock.
Secondly, speculating that it is 'likely' that the pension fund shareholders are somehow part of the MS plan isn't slander, it's just speculation. I concur whether directly or indirectly, this plays into the plan well. Maybe MS didn't approach anyone specific, but it doesn't take much foresight to know such a superficially outrageous deal will either be accepted or outrage to the point of lawsuit some set of shareholders. I would wager MS did not approach a single shareholder, but I wouldn't be surprised if they fully expected a refusal to meet with litiguous action from enough of the shareholders.
As to burying work on BSD/PHP/Zimbra, It's an obvious conclusion. The difference with FrontPage and Visio was there were no MS products being threatened by it. FrontPage ties in with the IE strategy and Visio a logical complement for the Office offering. BSD work *obviously* is not in MS's remote interest to help out, as with PHP. BSD is a Windows competitor and PHP is too OS/http server indepedent for their tastes to bother when they have a host of things already. Similarly, Zimbra has nothing over Exchange MS wants. Zimbra allows independence from Windows on the server side and client side for any who implement it, but otherwise it doesn't offer that much different from Exchange. I would wager they would offer some special 'upgrade' deal to Zimbra commercial users to Exchange and then be done with it. BSD/PHP wouldn't die, but would suffer development issues. Zimbra given its nature would be killed outright.
I'm not saying MS was explicitly targeting BSD/PHP/Zimbra in its bid to fend off OS/language/Exchange competitors, it's clear the bid is a desperate move against Google. By the way, it comes off like an unhealthy obsession with Google on the part of MS leadership, more than a sound business decision. BSD/PHP/Zimbra are incidentals that demonstrate the sale should be blocked by regulatory agencies, but from MS's perspective, they are either not even on the business people's radar or are mere bonus afterthoughts. From a certain perspective, it may have been a wise thing to decline the initial outrageous bid, knowing it was high risk with respect to regulatory agencies, and then exploit the exposure to get a more likely, but less lucrative situation elswhere..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Banks aren't any more risk-free than government bonds. Banks can go under and then you are dependant on the government to eventually pay you back. Errors in paperwork can occur, identity fraud happens, etc. And more than that, if you aren't willing to trust a certain government with your money they don't need to default on your bonds. They could just as easily seize banks under their jurisdiction at any time.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
it took so long. Yahoo has been on the ropes for the last few years and then to deny a golden parachute to the shareholders is just pure pig headed stupidity.
What's pig headed is accepting the first offer when usually later offers offer a higher price.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There is no retirement fund in the world that should be invested in Yahoo.
Actually all investing people do should be for retirement. When young investments should be for growth then when nearing and at retirement it should be for income.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I don't read replies by ACs.
No, not every has geed, has an "excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves" or is greedy, is "ardently or excessively desirous".
the managers may feel that they want to take Yahoo in a certain direction not dictated by microsoft, and that is all well and good, but it sounds less noble when you realize that the money they are using to do that is not theirs. It is the money of the tens of thousands of investors in their company that has allowed them to do this.
However those managers are also investors, ie they also own Yahoo! stock.
FalconShould there be a Law?
iNTEL processor.
I did, once Apple released G5 Macs I waited for years and years Apple to release a G5 laptop. I was glad when they finally switched to Intel's but I would of liked it if AMDs were also compatible.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There are two reasons I switched from Windows and an additional reason I went to OS X. I was sick and tired of my Windows PCs crashing, yes even XP. The very first tyme I booted up an XP PC it froze while booting up, and it was a brand new Dell. And since XP Microsoft has required Activation and all the spyware such as WGA. There were two usable choices when switching, Linux and OX S. As I wanted a laptop with the biggest LCD I could afford and I wanted the ability to run Photoshop CS3 I chose a MacBook Pro.
FalconShould there be a Law?
if the shareholders can make a valid argument that the company is not acting in the best long-term interest of the shareholders, which incidentally seems a quite valid argument in this case, then they have completely valid grounds to sue.
Actually it was fiducially responsible for the board to turn down MS's offer. Usually the first offer to buy something is low and by turning it down the potential buyer, if it's serious, will make a higher offer.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Similar to Microsoft tampering with the ISO vote, now they are trying to replace the Yahoo board members with others sympathetic to Microsoft's desires for a search technology acquisition.
I guess if M$ succeeds, I may have to dump my Yahoo mail account and go to Google mail when I work away from my office. Until now Yahoo has been fairly dependable, but under M$ control it would surely turn to shit just as Hotmail has.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Build a product get people to invest.. Good they invested... quick pull it all out....
Except in this case it's those who founded the company that want to keep it independent and not pull out.
FalconShould there be a Law?
stockholders, turning down the offer really was a bad choice; I don't see Yahoo making such big gains on their own any time soon.
Form the point of view of the stockholders I think rejecting the offer was a good choice. If MS really wants to buy Yahoo! they will offer a higher price, why go with a low price if you can get a higher one? Or looking at it the other way, why offer a high price if a lower one might be accepted? Go to a bazaar and buyers and sellers will haggle over the price of something.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The New York Times is also calling the combined company of Microsoft and Yahoo "Micro-Hoo": Microsoft President on Micro-Hoo: We Can Do It.
"We are so sorry that you are suing us because we are trying to keep this company from being completely destroyed in value by being purchased by an incompetent predator. "
expandfairuse.org
... according to the plaintiffs, who allege that Yahoo board members have placed "personal distaste for Microsoft" ahead of shareholder welfare. Anything that goes against shareholder value - say environmental or ethical responsibility - is seen as wrong, according to shareholder bottom-line.Red Hood is being sued for not being eaten by the wolf..
"I could charge you with a felony!"
/. Now go back and talk to that other guy and debate it like a man instead of, well, a guy who reads comic books in his mum's basement.
I could charge you with lunacy!
Unless you're a DA or a federal investigator, the only thing you'll be charging is some comic books to read in your mum's basement. Please try to stay on topic and debate and stop pretending to be the authorities here on
Be a good lad now. Off with you.
As would I. Go to a bazaar and buyers and sellers will haggle over the price, it's called negotiation. Buyer offers a low price and the seller rejects it. Then if they are willing to talk about selling they ask for a higher price. In this case the board wasn't willing to talk about being bought.
started enacting poison pill measures
Which you do if you don't want to sell.
Now it might very well be that the board, management, and shareholders' interests can be all aligned, but the board has not made the case for this being so. And given Microsoft's offer and Yahoo's recent performance, it is in the boards bests interests to give such an explanation, because from the shareholder's perspective its much easier to see this stock going to $10 or $15 before it reaches the $31 of Microsoft's tender offer.
Agreed, but if the board has accepted the offer I bet other shareholders would have filed a lawsuit, I think if I was a big shareholder I would have myself.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Sure I could sue, if I was a Yahoo! stockholder. If I would get vary far is a totally different matter but I could sue. Just listen to a bunch of businesses and industries screaming for tort reform.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Using Google isn't resourceful? Then what's this all this about in making "google" a verb?
Why would they bid against themselves?
If MS were to big higher they'd be bidding against Yahoo!'s board not against themselves. As for whether Yahoo! made a counter offer, TFA you link to provides no details about any such offer. It says "team Microsoft sources scoff at Yahoo's $40 counter-offer" but offers no details such as when it was given. Looking at the date on your TFA it's dated 12 February 2008, however this one dated 14 February says "Yahoo Inc's second-biggest investor urged Microsoft Corp to raise its $42 billion bid for the Web pioneer and warned Yahoo it has few options left, raising the pressure on them to seal a deal." Week in review: Microsoft the magnanimous? dated 22 Feb'08 also says nothing about a counter offer.
FalconShould there be a Law?