Yahoo! Rejects Microsoft's Offer, Says 'Still An Option'

mikkl666 writes "In response to an open letter from Steve Ballmer, Yahoo! posted a press release claiming that Microsoft's offer 'substantially undervalues Yahoo!' and is therefore not in the best interest of the company. They also bemoan that the letter 'mischaracterizes the nature of our discussions' and that the threat to make an offer directly to the shareholders is 'counterproductive and inconsistent with the stated objective of a friendly transaction'. Nevertheless, they explicitly point out that a transaction with Microsoft is still an option, but only if they are willing to pay 'a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo!'"

Comments

crack smoker

[timmarhy]

MS are offering 2x the going share price. what secret pot of gold does yahoo managment think they have that's worth so much?

oh and he must be pretty dense to think "friendly negotiations" are still an option if MS goes to the shareholders directly.

Re:crack smoker

[morgan_greywolf]

Hello? Rob Enderle? Is that you?

Re:crack smoker

[d3vi1]

I think that it's just another nice way of refusing.

I think that the Yahoo! folks realize that Yahoo! and Microsoft don't really mix together.

Microsoft only wants the userbase and the brand, not the products. If Microsoft were to acquire Yahoo!, all their technology (Apache, Oracle, MySQL, PHP, Java, etc running on top of Linux and BSD) would be replaced by Windows servers running IIS. That would make most of the Yahoo! engineers redundant.

I am pretty sure that they would just add the missing features to their Live products, and rebrand them as Yahoo! The Yahoo! products will start a short (i.e.: 1-2 years) death as soon as Microsoft buys them, to make room for Yahoo! branded MSN/Live ones.

Imagine a .NET/Mono based Zimbra.

Furthermore, I assume that at that level all negociations are 'friendly'. Unless they fail, when they become friendly only for the winning side.

Finally, I do believe that Yahoo! is worth more than that ammount, because there are countries where no competition exists (see Romania). In a blog from one of the Fedora Art Group members, the blogger said that over 90% of the email addresses in Romania were Yahoo! ones. I can confirm this with the Messenger part. I've never seen anyone giveout a GTalk or MSN id in Romania, only Yahoo!.

Re:crack smoker

[Brian Gordon]

the value of yahoo is a redirect to google and nominal competition.

Re:crack smoker

[ozmanjusri]

MS are offering 2x the going share price. what secret pot of gold does yahoo managment think they have that's worth so much?

For a start, it's nowhere near 2x, since the value of MS shares, and hence the offer have dropped since the initial approach.

Microsoft have some interesting times ahead too, and Yahoo shareholders might be considering the risk of turning their Y. shares into MS ones.

Microsoft's stock buybacks, for example, are being used to counteract stock options paid to executive employees. That's drawing down their cash reserve rapidly without generating much growth.

The net number of shares in circulation is roughly the same as in 2005, likewise, MS share price remains around the same $29 mark it averaged in '05 despite $50 billion worth being bought back.

Add to that the failure of their flagship OS on the market and the threats to their Office monopoly, both statutory and in the market, and there's good reason for Yahoo investors to hope for a better suitor.

Re:crack smoker

[rainhill]

"what secret pot of gold does yahoo management think they have that's worth so much?"

a CEO that does not jump on stage and throw chairs

Re:crack smoker

[Mongoose Disciple]

Microsoft only wants the userbase and the brand, not the products. If Microsoft were to acquire Yahoo!, all their technology (Apache, Oracle, MySQL, PHP, Java, etc running on top of Linux and BSD) would be replaced by Windows servers running IIS. That would make most of the Yahoo! engineers redundant.


Ok, so devil's advocate / tinfoil hat time.

I'm not exactly going to predict this because, come on, Microsoft, but I could sort of see them leaving Yahoo! alone technologically, at least in the short term.

Let's assume there's some viable evil reason for Microsoft to want expertise with PHP/MySQL/etc. in their stable. Microsoft basically cannot grow something like that organically from within. You can't create Microsoft MySQL without essentially admitting there's something wrong with SQL Server, etc.

But you could plausibly buy Yahoo, point to the past migration nightmares of Hotmail, and say that you were wisely letting Yahoo continue with their current technologies due to those experiences.

Re:crack smoker

[imstanny]

Finally, I do believe that Yahoo! is worth more than that ammount, because there are countries where no competition exists (see Romania). In a blog from one of the Fedora Art Group members, the blogger said that over 90% of the email addresses in Romania were Yahoo! ones. I can confirm this with the Messenger part. I've never seen anyone giveout a GTalk or MSN id in Romania, only Yahoo!. Microsoft's original $31 per share offer represented a 62% premium to where Yahoo's shares had been trading before the offer. The market determines price, and they were valuing Yahoo at $19/share. Also, look at the current trading price = MSFT's offer is $31, yet YHOO is trading at under $28. By your logic it should be trading above $31, but it isn't because Market thinks it's worth less than what Microsoft is offering them, and if they keep rejecting Microsoft, then their stock will go down - regardless of what they believe their stock is worth.

Re:crack smoker

[SetupWeasel]

This has nothing to do with the value of Yahoo! to the market. It has to do with the value of Yahoo! to Microsoft. Yahoo! can smell the stench of desperation all over Microsoft, and as much as Microsoft is trying to play hardball, Yahoo! knows they can and will cave to any demands no matter how ridiculous.

Re:crack smoker

[dedazo]

That's drawing down their cash reserve rapidly without generating much growth.

That's an interesting soundbyte. Can you explain how stock options paid to executives (which executives?) are actually eating into a $30 billion dollar cash reserve? Those must be some pretty large stock grants.

Add to that the failure of their flagship OS on the market

Looks like someone is connecting all those Vista machines that are not being sold to the internet. I'd like to have me a few of those failures every decade or so.

Re:crack smoker

[Grave]

No they won't. Yahoo can only make demands if their shareholders back the current board, but they do not. When Microsoft starts their proxy fight, they will win. The market already decided the value of Yahoo, and it is not as much as Microsoft offered. The board is failing to do their duty to the shareholders by not accepting this offer. Microsoft will win this fight, and I say for the better. Google needs proper competition in the search/advertising arena, which is something that only a combined Yahoo/Microsoft can provide. Although I doubt Google will become stagnant anytime soon, the only way to ensure this is by giving them a good competitor. Yahoo became stagnant and forgot about their core market, which helped spur the rise of Google.

Re:crack smoker

[dedazo]

Interesting. I looked through your meager comment history and I have to admit you're the first blog-style spammer I've seen on Slashdot. And I've been here for a relatively long time.

I doubt you retards have actually defeated all the posting restrictions /. has, so it's obvious that this is actual manual labor. I always thought it was some sort of automated system.

Weird.

Re:crack smoker

[TooMuchToDo]

There are almost always stocks out there that the market undervalues. The market isn't all-knowing. Being a savvy investor is picking up undervalued stocks before the market determines their true (hopefully, higher) value. Example: I bought Google a couple of days after their IPO for around $220-$230/share. The market has valued it as high as $700+/share. Now, you're not always going to beat the market (actually, you'll probably lose more than you'll win), but if done properly you'll still be ahead dollar wise.

Re:crack smoker

[wellingj]

Now, you're not always going to beat the market (actually, you'll probably lose more than you'll win), but if done properly you'll still be ahead dollar wise. Off-topic but, the dollar is behind and falling quick so what does that mean?

Re:crack smoker

[TooMuchToDo]

It means that not every trade you make is going to be profitable, but if you know what you're doing, you should still come out ahead across all your trades. I wasn't referring to currency value (dollar vs euro vs yuan).

Re:crack smoker

[Kalriath]

I think that the Yahoo! folks realize that Yahoo! and Microsoft don't really mix together.

Doesn't matter. What does matter is whether the executives refusing this offer is in the best interests of the owners, which is to say shareholders, of the company. If "they don't mix well together" is the excuse for refusing the offer, then the Yahoo! board has just broken the law.

Re:crack smoker

[radl33t]

This argument is tired. Yahoo's share price was above the initial offer less than 6 months ago. Tech stocks were the 2nd largest hit recently next to financials. For comparison, Apple shit out almost -40% too, should shareholders support their buyout at the low market cap? Yahoo mgmt is right, the offer does undervalue their potential and they can offer their share holding investors greater value (key: if they can execute). Unfortunately, investors are outnumbered by gamblers these days.

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

... Or you could point to the fact that they did eventually port Hotmail to their platform and turn it in to a festering pile of shit that Ballmer HAS to be proud of, saying "Look at how much VALUE ADD we introduced to the product!"... and then expect the worst if they buy Yahoo!

Re:crack smoker

[DECS]

It's the stock buybacks that are eating up MS' cash reserve. Buying back your own stock is an admission you have nothing better to do with your money that give it back to your shareholders

Remember the words of Michael Dell wrt Apple? Apple isn't buying back its stock, it's buying new campuses, data centers, retail outlets, investing in building products to serve new markets, all of which are selling off the charts.

Microsoft is failing in every consumer electronics arena it enters. It's brightest star is the xbox, which has only made a few million in the last quarter after billions of losses. Sales have now plateaued, forcing the company back to release a new xbox generation and start spending again.

Video Game Consoles 2007: Wii, PS3 and the Death of Microsoftâ(TM)s Xbox 360

Vista might be shipping on some new PCs, but remember that nobody ever questioned Windows' ability to sell. It's a monopoly! Everyone expected MS to sell Vista without any hiccups. It was the consumer business and Windows Media/PlaysForSure, Zune, WinCE/Windows Mobile, Windows Embedded that were all on fire and sustaining deep losses. Microsoft can't sustain mild sales on Vista after spending billions to develop it over the last 6 years and having nothing really to show for all that.

Windows 7 won't show up for another three years, so Vista has to generate cash across that whole time period, not just ship on some new PCs. What's happening though, is that cheap PCs like the EEE and OLPC are running Linux, premium PC sales are getting eaten into by sales of Macs that are outpacing PC sales by 4x, and major vendors are begging to ship XP.

Microsoft's flat stock has been placid for a decade during record earnings boosted by automatic OEM PC sales in a period where the PC-box was the only game in town and there was no effective competition. MS is now being hit by competition at the low end and the high end, while also finding the PC market itself coasting along statically. Sales volumes are shifting toward mobile devices.

MS hasn't successfully delivered mobile devices anyone wants. UMPC was a huge failure, Windows Mobile is a joke. Now its facing the iPhone/iPod Touch and an array of smartphones from other vendors, without any viable game plan.

At some point, you can't say MS will survive on its good looks and personality alone, because its business is facing several points of failures. Yahoo knows that. It also knows that a MS takeover would gut the company and destroy shareholder value.

Why Does Microsoft Really Want Yahoo?

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be taken a lot more seriously if you didn't link to that cesspool of unbridled Apple fanboyism and Microsoft hatred.

Just a thought. The rest of your comment seems interesting enough, assuming you're not getting your Microsoft insight from there as well.

Re:crack smoker

[DECS]

Actually, Google just ripped off Overture's technology and implemented it better. Yahoo bought Overture, and ended up giving Google a license to it in exchange for cash. It's not obvious that Yahoo ever did anything well, it just happened to be positioned well at a fortunate time in the development of the web.

That Yahoo is still around, and that Microsoft wants to buy it, really says something miraculous about the sustainability of bullshit and the absolute desperation/incompetence of Microsoft, which has been around trying to figure out the web longer than Google or Yahoo.

Try to fathom the reality that Microsoft's attempts to monopolize web search have failed despite its efforts to tie things to its OS/web browser. There is little reason for thinking that Microsoft+Yahoo would be even equal to the sum of its parts, but MS has little else available to buy and demonstrably can't build its own web strategy from scratch.

Why Does Microsoft Really Want Yahoo?

Re:crack smoker

[HalAtWork]

It's possible that they've already done stuff such as made a Yahoo-like front end to their Live mail web software, and other such stuff in preparation for this.

Re:crack smoker

[datapharmer]

newsprint publishers. yahoo does online advertising and is a portal. print news is dying and needs an update. if the printers bought a powerful portal it would give them a means of controlling new distribution online (a "get it from yahoo or don't get it at all!" attitude backed up by lawsuits would put a sudden halt on the news free-for-all on the internet. they could require a subscriber login for news and offer different tiers of advertising to content for different amounts. What does microsoft have to offer them in terms of profitability?

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter what reason Yahoo!'s management has for refusing, this is the only acceptable one. By law, Yahoo! has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of its shareholders.

The only reason a stockholder would not accept an offer at twice the stock's value was if said individual thought he or she could somehow gain more utility from holding on to the stock. This letter is simply Yahoo! covering its ass.

Re:crack smoker

[jayminer]

If Microsoft tries to collect the shares from the market, the price will skyrocket, more than double.

If they go to shareholders, the information will go public and the price will skyrocket, again.

So there is no viable option to buy this company other than negotiating.

Re:crack smoker

[andydread]

Imagine a .NET/Mono based Zimbra.

Not happening. Microsoft will start an aggressive campain to migrate all Zimbra users to Exchange and kill it. No need have competition to your cash cow based on all open source competing technologies. Stick a fork (no pun intended) in Zimbra if Microsoft gets a hold of Yahoo!.

Re:crack smoker

[somethinghollow]

As a developer, Yahoo's work on their JavaScript library, ignoring their other freeware projects like the pattern library and Doug Crockfords talks on YUI Theater, is worth more to the web community than double the stock price. I can't expect share holders to know the good stuff Yahoo is doing for the community, and how things may change if Microsoft buys Yahoo. I think respect is what Yahoo Management thinks they have that is worth so much.

I still use Google for search (and I don't use Y!UI), but I respect the hell out of Yahoo. I don't think Microsoft can cultivate the kind of environment Yahoo has in recent years.

I hope to all that is good in the web community that Yahoo manages to resist a Microsoft takeover.

Re:crack smoker

[Z34107]

Hello? Morgan Greywolf? Is that you?

OK, it is. Just checkin'.

If someone's ever not Morgan Greywolf, plz to let me now kthx.

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if you realize, but that's his cesspool of unbridled Apple fanboyism and Microsoft hatred, and he's very proud of it. Shameless self-promotion, too.

Re:crack smoker

[Yvanhoe]

If MS is going to buy 50% of Yahoo shares to stockholders directly, be sure that at the end the stock price will be far higher than two times the current price. Also you know MS, it would not be friendly if it was not in its best interest.

Re:crack smoker

[Kugrian]

I can confirm this with the Messenger part. I've never seen anyone giveout a GTalk or MSN id in Romania, only Yahoo!.

This part worries me a bit. Are we going to see a GTalk/AIM vs MSN/YIM thing going on? Worse still, it wouldn't be inconceivable for the latter two to be linked together and Windows only. Do either of the two like third party IM clients at all?

Re:crack smoker

[Repossessed]

I'd point out that Office still qualifies as a huge positive point in MS's favor right now, since people seem to have bought into the upgrade cycle, and even if you didn't, the price schemes are high enough with the 2007 version to ensure you put down at least a couple hundred on a new computer if you insist or get forced into using the Microsoft product. This may change of course, but you'd have to pound it into the heads of the PHBs that the cheaper option isn't worse first.

Losses and competition in the OS department aren't a huge deal in the short term. (best I can tell, they lost 1-2% marketshare, a lot of those they still got payed for), but yeah, mobiles may kill them monopoly wise if more countries start to go the way Japan has.

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't create Microsoft MySQL without essentially admitting there's something wrong with SQL Server, etc. I understand (and with respect to some other applications might agree with) the point you're trying to make here, but the specific example you used was unfortunate because, as much as I favor OSS, MySQL is a joke compared to MS SQL Server.

Re:crack smoker

[jimicus]

Imagine a .NET/Mono based Zimbra. I think you may have hit the nail on the head there.

Microsoft can't afford to lose their monopoly on the desktop because they don't have anything else viable as a business plan capable of generating that kind of revenue. Right now, about the only thing underpinning that monopoly that they have significant control over is Office - and specifically, the combination of Outlook and Exchange.

Now, hold that thought for a minute.

OSS can't be destroyed by Microsoft. But the major sources of funding can be - at least where a buyout would be unlikely to attract the interest of the authorities.

Yahoo is a major source of funding to a lot of projects which are thorns in Microsoft's side and could realistically be threats to their monopoly.

I don't think this is Microsoft trying to take another direction. I think it's more likely to be Microsoft trying to direct the way technology moves by buying out anything which goes against what they do.

Re:crack smoker

[SlashJoel]

Finally, I do believe that Yahoo! is worth more than that ammount Your personal opinion is swell and all, but the fact is that the market values Yahoo! differently. The Microsoft bid is something like 68% more per share than Yahoo! was worth the day before it was announced. If people genuinely believed Yahoo! was worth more than this, they'd put their money where their mouth is and Yahoo! stocks would rise.

Microsoft is playing hardball, but they are well within their rights to go directly to the Yahoo! shareholders, who do own the company, after all. You and the Yahoo! board of directors can believe whatever you want, but the shareholders own the company and they will decide whether or not to accept the offer.

Re:crack smoker

[shutdown -p now]

The thing is, neither PHP nor MySQL are actually any better than Microsoft offerings. Microsoft doesn't need to "grow them from within" - it has something much better already. Java, now that's the real competition - but I don't recall Yahoo being particularly associated with that, and anyway, Microsoft has already dropped J# in VS2008, which was the last Java-related thingy in the Microsoft land; why would they suddenly turn back to Java now?

Re:crack smoker

[ozmanjusri]

Can you explain how stock options paid to executives (which executives?) are actually eating into a $30 billion dollar cash reserve? Those must be some pretty large stock grants.

It's a pretty big topic to summarise in a Slashdot posting, and you'd be a LOT better off doing your own research, if you're genuinely interested. But...

Basically, stock options are a company's way of convincing employees to take less real wages. Paying in stocks has some advantages, but one in particular is that they don't show up as a business loss. The downside is that the more shares out there, the lower the EPS (Earnings Per Share), and therefore the lower the value of each share. Microsoft has been playing this game for a long time, and had more than 20% of it's shares optioned out this way. About 5 years ago, shareholders started to get antsy about the constant dilution of their holdings, so MS restarted the buybacks.

Microsoft recently announced that, at the urging of analysts, it would resume buying back its stock to provide for the companyâ(TM)s huge pool of employee stock options and to counteract potential dilution of its shares. Science Direct [pdf warning] It's probably best to think of the buybacks as being MS paying out back pay owed to employees. They've deferred that cost in other words.

There's also a Business Week article http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_04/b3968099.htm which might be an easier read.

It doesn't look like that'll be the only problem facing MS either. Yahoo subsidiary Alibaba is bailing now the buyout looks likely.
http://www.secinvestor.com/2008/03/19/Alibaba+Wants+Out+Of+Microsoft+Deal+YHOO+MSFT.aspx

I'd like to have me a few of those failures every decade or so.

I don't think Microsoft would agree with you. If you look at W3Counter's stats, MS Operating systems have been losing about half a percent market share per month for the past 6 months.

Now, I've given you the benefit of doubt and responded politely in this post, but frankly I'd be much happier if you stopped stalking me. I'm finding your attention a bit creepy. Thanks.

Re:crack smoker

[ConfusedVorlon]

quote: It's the stock buybacks that are eating up MS' cash reserve. Buying back your own stock is an admission you have nothing better to do with your money that give it back to your shareholders

Why is it bad for a company to return cash to investors? 'You invested in us, and now you get some of the profit' sounds like thouroughly sensible economics. I'd expect it if I invested in a company directly.

Re:crack smoker

[protobion]

MSN/YIM already inter-operate, Gtalk/AIM already inter-operate, Gtalk is XMPP-ish, and AIM is testing its XMPP in beta mode.

Given that , I would want MSN/YIM to move to XMPP really fast. Still, most people who use a particular instant messenger rarely do it because its better software or service- they do it, because their friends are on that particular service. IM war victories are therefore catalyzed by who gets the maximum new users onto their service. I think, MSN being bundled with Windows already has that one nailed.

And MSN and Yahoo display ads through their messengers (I dont know about AIM, Gtalk doesn't). Yet, their large user bases clearly show that quality is not what drives IM adoption. It also means that they hate 3rd party clients - no ad revenue.

Re:crack smoker

[z80kid]

>>Buying back your own stock is an admission you have nothing better to do with your money that give it back to your shareholders

>'You invested in us, and now you get some of the profit' sounds like thouroughly sensible economics.

Dividends are company profit shared with investors.

Stock buybacks are just that - buying the stock back from the investors so that there are fewer shares in circulation. Each remaining share should then be worth more. If you've bought back a lot, and the remaining shares aren't going up - well, that's not good.

What he means by "nothing better to do" is that investors buy stock expecting that the company is going to go out an make a pile of money so it's value goes up - not just buy the stock back from them. He's saying that they have a pile of money, but no ideas for building it further. So they are buying out some of their investors to maintain value for the rest.

(I haven't followed MS stock so I don't know if what he says is true - I'm just trying to explain the concept).

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

The only direction for an independant Yahoo!'s stock is down. Google will kill them off on 2 or 3 years unless this deal goes through.

Re:crack smoker

[Mongoose Disciple]

You're probably right about PHP. I haven't used it enough to fairly judge its shortcomings or strengths.


Java, now that's the real competition - but I don't recall Yahoo being particularly associated with that, and anyway, Microsoft has already dropped J# in VS2008, which was the last Java-related thingy in the Microsoft land; why would they suddenly turn back to Java now?


Yeah, I don't know. I can't see them really going back to Java either. C# is really their answer to Java. Syntactically, the two languages are near-identical, with the major differentiator being the libraries/frameworks that have grown up around them -- and right now, C#'s is way better. Although competition with it has been spurring Java to finally improve a lot in the last couple years and I don't know how long that will last. Today, though, for business applications C# is the Firefox to Java's IE, ironically.

So what that leaves for a Yahoo's-preferred-technologies strategy, I don't know.

Re:crack smoker

[maxume]

2007 earnings per share were up 27% since 2005, which is about 12% a year. That's pretty good, but it isn't really growth stock territory(Google eps went up ~70% a year over the same period).

Google added about $2.5 billion in income, and about $10 billion in revenue. Microsoft added about $1.8 billion in income and about $12 billion in revenue.

What it amounts to is that Microsoft is doing a reasonable job of finding new revenue, but they have so much revenue to begin with that it doesn't grow the company all that much, so investors are less and less willing to pay a premium for the stock, and the price per share ends up staying the same, even as earnings grow. I would guess that Microsoft will hit $50 per share by 2012, unless they royally screw up several more times.

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

Astroturf bingo 07 claimed for D12.

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully they learned their lesson with hotmail and not move it until MS is ready. I think that was their mistake with hotmail was they moved too quickly to avoid admitting that they were using competing technology rather than assessing the overall situation and realizing that they were not quite ready.

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. One negative aspect of the deal is that it will put MS into debt. From some estimates $16 billion or so into debt. If it works out, MS-Yahoo will be stronger and in a position to take on Google. If it doesn't work, it might signal the downfall of MS as we know it. That's one big bet.

Re:crack smoker

[obijuanvaldez]

I'm sorry but are you suggesting that Microsoft has no option for attracting PHP/MySQL talent but to spend 45 billion dollars? Are you an out of work PHP/MySQL developer?

Re:crack smoker

[ozmanjusri]

If "they don't mix well together" is the excuse for refusing the offer, then the Yahoo! board has just broken the law.

[Citation Needed]

Re:crack smoker

[dedazo]

Now, I've given you the benefit of doubt and responded politely in this post, but frankly I'd be much happier if you stopped stalking me. I'm finding your attention a bit creepy. Thanks.

What?

Re:crack smoker

[netringer]

Microsoft only wants the userbase and the brand, not the products. If Microsoft were to acquire Yahoo!, all their technology (Apache, Oracle, MySQL, PHP, Java, etc running on top of Linux and BSD) would be replaced by Windows servers running IIS. That would make most of the Yahoo! engineers redundant.

That would make most of the Yahoo Network servers become Microsoft NotWork servers.

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok I read the article and the only thing I could say was

      Wow .... what an amazing example of

                            CRAP !!!

the authors lack of research and obvious inability to take off the apple/google blinders is at the very least astonishing. The only thing this article helps me to understand is that the internet has no editor.

My god did this guy not get hired after the Microsoft interview.

Why does MS want google ... simple. Because MSN sucks .... yeah that is literally the long and short of it ... they SUCK ....

If MS was smart they would announce that yahoo is irrelevant and isn't worth 22 billion much less than 44

Yahoo would likely fail in a few years anyway.

Now take all that money and build a separate company right beside google. Don't be to public about it ... make it one of that worthless hippy shops (yes google is WORTHLESS as a real business) and only do uber worthless services ... like .... hmmmmmmmmm google webapps

then when all the droolgle monkey come over for the higher paychecks and having friday off .... google will look tarnished ... thus creating a sucking sound from the amount of money lost on that overvalued stock ...

remember folks the quickest way to beat google is to present the appearance of worthlessness ... and lets be frank the reality of google is that its another yahoo .... about worth half what its priced

Re:crack smoker

[falconwolf]

Your personal opinion is swell and all, but the fact is that the market values Yahoo! differently. The Microsoft bid is something like 68% more per share than Yahoo! was worth the day before it was announced. If people genuinely believed Yahoo! was worth more than this, they'd put their money where their mouth is and Yahoo! stocks would rise.

AH but some large Yahoo! shareholders said they wanted Microsoft to raise it's offer otherwise they'd oppose a buyout. And buyers have raised share prices, it's above $27, whereas MS's stock dropped below $30.

Falcon

Re:crack smoker

[westlake]

Looks like someone is connecting all those Vista machines that are not being sold to the internet. I'd like to have me a few of those failures every decade or so.

It interests me that once a Geek gets an idea in his head no force on earth can dislodge it.

Microsoft posts spectacular returns each quarter in the client and office division - online stats show healthy growth for Vista while Linux barely registers a pulse... but "Microsoft is dying."

Re:crack smoker

[rtechie]

Buying back your own stock is an admission you have nothing better to do with your money that give it back to your shareholders. This is usually because the shareholders are bitching about dilution, which is EXACTLY the case with Microsoft.

Apple isn't buying back its stock, it's buying new campuses, data centers, retail outlets, investing in building products to serve new markets, all of which are selling off the charts. So MS isn't making any new acquisitions? Can you back that up considering the topic is a major acquisition by MS?

And "all" of Apple's products are selling "off the charts"? Apple is the #1 retailer of MP3 players. That's it. RIM stomps all over them on smartphones, and HP, Dell, etc. stomp all over their desktop and laptop sales.

Microsoft is failing in every consumer electronics arena it enters. Except for mice, and game peripherals. And MP3 players (the new Zune is selling pretty well). Tho original XBOX was in some ways a financial disaster, but the 360 is doing pretty well. The only big disaster I can think of in recent years is WebTV. And personally, I *LIKED* WebTV. YMMV.

And that was a pretty crazy hit piece on MS. Why is he comparing iPods to XBOX (except the fact he is a slobbering Apple fan crowing about iPod sales)? Does he really believe there are 10 million unsold 360s sitting on store shelves? He also seems completely unaware of the Nvidia lawsuit which caused the early discontinuation of the original XBOX.

Microsoft can't sustain mild sales on Vista after spending billions to develop it over the last 6 years and having nothing really to show for all that. Fact: Vista is the fastest selling OS in history. It's beating Win98 for adoption. Simply because it hasn't replaced all WindowsXP installs in a year people are saying it's stillborn. Windows Me was sillborn. Vista is not. The major reason for the relatively slow adoption of Vista is that the relatively high hardware requirements means that most older PCs (built before 2007) can't be upgraded to Vista and that "upgrade" portion of sales (which has ALWAYS been a small part of sales) has been significantly reduced. Even worse, many entry level PCs sold in early 2007 couldn't run Vista which hurt adoption even more. And there were a number of serious bugs that weren't fixed until SP1. Ironically, despite all the delays, it now appears that Vista was launched too EARLY instead of too late. Lesson learned.

Apple took 15 years to ship a new version of it's OS. Apple fans should shut the fuck up about ship dates. I'd also point out that, at launch, OS X ran like complete shit on every system in Apple's lineup except the most expensive Power Macs.

Windows Mobile is a joke. It's the #2 mobile OS, beating iPhone, Palm, and Symbian sales handily. Lots of people, including myself, prefer the Windows Mobile platform. The iPhone is nice, but the keyboard is completely useless which makes the iPhone completely useless for ME. It's also a pretty crappy phone, the Tilt has better reception and a better speakerphone. As a media player, the iPhone stomps all over Windows Mobile. I think the iPod Touch is a great device and probably the best media player on the market. A little pricey though.

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

"...as much as I favor OSS, MySQL is a joke compared to MS SQL Server."

Depends on use. How funny is that joke when you want to set up an low-cost, low-end database on a non-MS box? Oh, you can't. MS SQL isn't multi-platform and you need a lawyer to read its EULA.

Re:crack smoker

[rtb61]

Whoops, http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MSFT $28.77 http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=YHOO $27.74. You are aware that it is a cash and 'share' offer and that you have just lied and in fact it is legally a pretty dangerous lie that you have told.

This also ignores that after selling the yahoo stock to M$ you somehow have to dump the M$ stock in order to get your money, and it will mean billions of dollars of M$ stock on the market at the same time inevitably leading to a fall in the price and basically shrinking the effective buy price.

It might be said that after the M$ bid fails that the Yahoo stock will fall in price, but the reality is the fall might not be all the great because M$ have basically admitted they have lost to Yahoo on the web and also that Yahoo remains the only significant competitive threat to Google on the web, otherwise why would M$ try to buy it.

Re:crack smoker

[Mongoose Disciple]

How funny is that joke when you want to set up an low-cost, low-end database on a non-MS box? Oh, you can't. MS SQL isn't multi-platform and you need a lawyer to read its EULA.

That's true, yet, for as much as most of the non-Slashdot world cares, you might as well be pointing out that SQL Server doesn't play Betamax tapes.

Multi-platform just isn't a feature with high demand in the market today.

Re:crack smoker

[stephanruby]

...as much as I favor OSS, MySQL is a joke compared to MS SQL Server.

Who cares if MySQL is a joke compared to MS SQL Server. Two years ago, my startup was paying something like $10,000 for each license of the MS SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition (never mind getting the Enterprise version). Now thanks to the pressure from MySQL and some of the lesser known open source databases, we paid a fraction of that cost last year for the SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition (without sacrificing on the functionality from the Standard Edition), and Microsoft has even come out with a free version dubbed the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (which is comparable to MySQL because it doesn't come with all the wizards and the goodies the higher versions come with, and yet it's more adequate than just using a crippled purposefully limited data source created from Access).

Re:crack smoker

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think the move to buy yahoo! and force the decision down the Yahoo!'s boards throats just tells how much Microsoft is attempting corporate takeover and more than likely will replace it with their own closed-source technologies. Microsoft has never, and will never(I don't care how many CodePlex sites they set up) have respect for the open-source community. I'm not even so sure they want the brand, maybe this whole thing is just to take another engine out and promote the MSN network. I applaud Yahoo! for moving to close the deal to Microsoft and I think at all costs the shareholders should refuse Microsofts' hostile takeover. I think IBM or Sun should make a move for Yahoo!. I think it would make more sense that way...

Pay for Yahoo's true worth?

[rolfwind]

I thought Yahoo wanted more money, not less.

Premium Price

[eebra82]

Taken from the open letter:

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects. If Microsoft is willing to pay a 62%+ premium, why is this not enough for Yahoo and why are they not making a counter-offer? I am not an expert, but to me, this sounds like extremely personal business.

Re:Premium Price

[Lunatrik]

Not only that, but what does "a friendly transaction" even mean? I assure you that a great many Yahoo! shareholders will be more than willing to be "friendly" with Microsoft if it really does come to a showdown...

Re:Premium Price

[DECS]

Because, somewhat obviously, Yahoo thinks it is worth more than its current market valuation.

Next year, the market's hypersensitivity in the outlook for tech could be replaced with optimism that brings Yahoo back up. The board may have some insight as to future profit potential as well, although it looks like there are no magic rabbits to pull out.

Today's value isn't the only thing they're looking at. If you were a homeowner sitting on a property greatly devalued by the current lending crisis, it wouldn't be a great deal to sell your house at a "market premium" if that price was only a premium due to the market being in a trough.

If you thought you could sell for substantially more by waiting for the market to bounce back, today's "market premium" wouldn't be attractive at all.

Re:Premium Price

[kripkenstein]

Taken from the open letter: If Microsoft is willing to pay a 62%+ premium, why is this not enough for Yahoo and why are they not making a counter-offer? I am not an expert, but to me, this sounds like extremely personal business. Nah, it isn't personal. The question is, a 62%+ premium over what? The current stock price? Yahoo! leadership might believe that the stock price is not indicative of actual worth. There could be many reasons for this, including the obvious one that the stock price only reflects what the market thinks Yahoo! is worth. The market, of course, is unaware of secret skunkwork projects going on in Yahoo!, of which there are presumably many (nothing special about that, the same is true for Google and Microsoft). Perhaps one of these projects is particularly promising in the eyes of Yahoo! leadership. We've actually seen several new projects come to light in recent months from Yahoo! (not a coincidence).

In addition, much of the transaction is for Microsoft stock. It isn't the most attractive stock to own, and hasn't been for several years. Perhaps Yahoo! leadership believes an exchange of stock from Yahoo! to Microsoft isn't worth it for the stockholders. Again, this isn't a matter of simple math, it's a judgment call, that's how the stock market works.

Re:Premium Price

[Anonymous Coward]

The 62% premium was based on Yahoo's stock being $10 less than it was at the start of the talks, and MS' being about $5 more. Now the gap has closed and Yahoo shareholders stand to gain a whopping $3/share.

This deal is so utterly ridiculous its insane. Even heavy stockholders are barely making anything. The only ones who'd walk away from this deal with anything are the top 5 Yahoo guys (who've made it clear they dont want to sell to MS) and MS themselves.

-j

Re:Premium Price

[Achromatic1978]

Uhhh, why exactly do you think the stock price climbed from where it was to "near the offer price"?!?

Perhaps because people were able to sell, because they believed it a strong possibility that the offer would be accepted, and so people were willing to buy just for that small increase?

It has nothing to do with any magic rabbit pulled out of a hat by Yahoo. If MS walks away now, expect to see Y drop back down to the original price at offer, if not below.

Basic cause and effect.

Re:Premium Price

[10101001 10101001]

Perhaps it's not spelled out well enough with the offer Microsoft is making, but Microsoft really needs (or at least, thinks it really needs) Yahoo!. Microsoft has been working since around 1996 to get into the internet game. They have spent billions of dollars (including all the IE stuff) in a bid to control the internet. And what has that lent them? A very far third place, with them only having any ranking at all because of the vast support from the actually successful divisions of Microsoft.

More to the point, that 62+ "premium" is no such thing. Microsoft isn't out to fund charity cases. It knows full well that Yahoo!'s actual potential worth is a lot more than its current assets. It's precisely this reason that Microsoft has spent so much money up until this point trying to gain a strong footing on the internet, going so far as to buy up a variety of properties along the way to try to compete with the other big players. The fact that Google was capable to grow from basically nothing to something that surpasses' Microsoft's presence should make it clear that either (a) Microsoft is very inept in spending their money or (b) companies like Google and Yahoo! are severely undervalued. I'd imagine it's a strong combination of the two.

In any case, it is in the best interest of shareholders to get the most money out of Microsoft as they can. I'd imagine that'd translate into a premium closer to 100% to 150%, at least, not necessarily because Yahoo! is worth it but because Microsoft is sincerely that desperate--what else would you call it when after ten years of competition, their brightest idea is to try to buy out the competition, not with money earned by fighting the competition, but by using their main cash cow as their own means to compete? The sad part is most investors will likely see the premium in a very narrow minded way, not realizing that Microsoft really doesn't really have any other options, at least in the English speaking world, when it comes to buying up search engines.

Re:Premium Price

[mgblst]

They mean with the support of management. If the management is against the buy out, then it is referenced as a hostile takeover, and both parties actively partition shareholders to approve/deny the takeover in a vote.

Re:Premium Price

[Mongoose Disciple]

what else would you call it when after ten years of competition, their brightest idea is to try to buy out the competition, not with money earned by fighting the competition, but by using their main cash cow as their own means to compete?


I'd call that business as usual in this industry.

Example: YouTube wasn't bought with money Google made off of Google Video. Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo all do this all the time.

Re:Premium Price

[10101001 10101001]

what else would you call it when after ten years of competition, their brightest idea is to try to buy out the competition, not with money earned by fighting the competition, but by using their main cash cow as their own means to compete?

I'd call that business as usual in this industry.

Example: YouTube wasn't bought with money Google made off of Google Video. Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo all do this all the time.

True. How much was YouTube bought for again? "So GOOG has bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, thats oodles for a company thats making less than $20 million in revenues." -- Some random blog quickly googled. Sounds to me GOOG was pretty deseperate to own the king video site.

Now, Microsoft wants to buy out Yahoo!, which itself is a conglomerate of YouTube-like purchases (well, not entirely to that sort of ratio) at a measly 162% of the stock price? Either Microsoft is incredibly cunning to realize how worthless Yahoo! and its purchases were (although that rather knocks the whole point of buying Yahoo!), or they're trying to shock stockholders into believing that Yahoo! is really that worthless to Microsoft and that they should take such "generous" money as quickly as they can for the "looming recession" (or whatever other fear message they can drive home).

However you put it, Microsoft's offer to buy Yahoo! is insulting. Put another way, I don't think Microsoft really has the resources to legitimately--for ever worth that word has--buy out Yahoo!.

This is like...

[seanadams.com]

This is like watching ugly people kiss.

Re:This is like...

[Missing_dc]

Yuck!
Thanks for the mental image.

Re:This is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Microsoft is an M and Yahoo is a Y. We know which penetrates what. Microsoft just doesn't yet realize they're the bitch.

Yahooooooo!!!!

Hm.. If Yahoo! was a girl....

[Izabael_DaJinn]

I think she'd be what we call coy ;-)

Re:Hm.. If Yahoo! was a girl....

[Grave]

I'd go with incredibly stuck-up and stupid, to be honest. Coy would be if the offer legitimately undervalued the company, which it does not.

Re:Hm.. If Yahoo! was a girl....

[falconwolf]

I'd go with incredibly stuck-up and stupid, to be honest. Coy would be if the offer legitimately undervalued the company, which it does not.

Do you know more than Yahoo!'s largest stockholders? "Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante".

Falcon

The real question is why?

[Whuffo]

What does Yahoo! have that Microsoft prizes so highly? Anything that Yahoo! has done successfully (although not often profitably) has already been "independently reinvented" by Microsoft.

The most likely result of such a purchase would be that they'd try to turn Yahoo! into another Microsoft division and destroy what they were after in the first place.

Seems a strange purchase to be chasing after so hard...

Re:The real question is why?

[Spy der Mann]

You're absolutely right. Part of the value in Yahoo! resides in that they're a Microsoft competitor (in Yahoo! mail, for example).

If that transaction ever takes place, I'll immediately wipe my Microshoo! mail account.

Re:The real question is why?

[truthsearch]

Yahoo has more pages and traffic than just about any site on the internet. Yahoo and Google are Microsoft's only real competitors on the internet. So my guess is they simply want to absorb one of their competitors to leverage against the other. Microsoft's not gaining market or mind share on their own, so like usual they're trying to buy it.

Re:The real question is why?

[rolfwind]

Microsoft has a ton of cash it is sitting on and it's burning a hole in their pocket. They're also a company that has lost an overall focus and their major enemies from the past generations are gone. They are building up a new "feindbild" with Google in the lead role -- so to them taking over number 2 (Yahoo) would be a logical procession if they can't buy #1 (Google).

Microsoft always needed an enemy to rail against (because they usually didn't innovate, rather copied and improved upon). They have been at this unfocused lash-out stage for quite a number of years.

But really, this purchase is redundant. They're better off taking the excess cash, paying dividends, and let that be the end of it. The MS/Yahoo merger will be stillborn. The management there will be hostile and leave after the buyouts and the Microsoft drones won't be any better.

Re:The real question is why?

[Shipwack]

Yahoo is ahead of Microsoft in a few areas... Yahoo's search is worse that Google (IMO), but Microsoft search is worse. Yahoo has Flickr and the social network 43Things, neither of which have a Microsoft equivalent. There's Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Groups, both of which are superior to what Microsoft has. But I agree... Microsoft has a tendency to be heavy-handed with new acquisitions, not to mention the ones it drowns in the bathtub on purpose.

Re:The real question is why?

[porcupine8]

What does Yahoo! have that Microsoft prizes so highly?

Probably a web portal that they've managed to not run into the ground quite as badly as MS.

they'd try to turn Yahoo! into another Microsoft division and destroy what they were after in the first place.

That, I totally agree with. I've already submitted a letter to Yahoo's feedback page letting them know that I won't be using their many services anymore if the MS deal goes through, because I know that a service decline is inevitable. What good can come of letting a company that's already been proven incompetent running a similar business run your business?

Re:The real question is why?

[Mongoose Disciple]

I'd say that Yahoo Video is also a stronger offering than anything in the MS stable at this point.

It's no YouTube, but that's really a lot more about mindshare than quality per se. Google sure didn't buy it for the technology.

Re:The real question is why?

[aztektum]

I am seriously expecting Ballmer to completely lose it any day now. He'll announce Microsoft's intention to buy Google for 1 million a share (in Monopoly dollars), while juggling chairs and developers.

Say what you want about Bill, the company did nothing but grow under him (granted there was the .com to help). Under Ballmer MS is doing everything it can to piss anyone and everyone off and fuck itself into oblivion.

Re:The real question is why?

[Enderandrew]

Yahoo's web-services run on Apache servers, and are often developed with open source software in mind.

I can't imagine that would continue if Microsoft bought them out. And most of the in-house developers would have to learn asp real quick, or be out of jobs.

Re:The real question is why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to Windows Live/MSN? Microsoft sees this as a cheap way of moving their entire Internet business org down to Silicon Valley. They've finally given up on trying to pull it all off from Redmond. The single campus model has reached its limit of scalability.

Remember MS has settled many antitrust suits for billions of dollars apiece, so they perhaps regard this deal as the price of a half dozen of those put together. That thought has surely crossed the minds of Yang & Co. as well.

Re:The real question is why?

[4D6963]

What does Yahoo! have that Microsoft prizes so highly?

Well see, the boxers I'm wearing right now are worth $2. But if you offered me to buy them for $3.24 (a 62% premium), there's no way in hell I would accept. Surely that's way more than they are worth though, but I still wouldn't accept. However, I would accept if you made an offer I would deem good enough, something way above my boxers' real value, somewhere around $50.

So what's so worthy about my boxers so that I wouldn't let them go for less than 20 times their true value? Nothing, I just would hate to give you my bloody underpants, so I would only let them go for a ridiculously high price.

Re:The real question is why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that my business means jack to Yahoo! or Microsoft, but I'll stop using Yahoo! services once Microsoft grabs them. For my sake, not to make any statement.

Re:The real question is why?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does Yahoo! have that Microsoft prizes so highly?

Brand name recognition -- for most people Internet search is Yahoo! foremost (remember to count in Asian countries) and Google then.

Re:The real question is why?

[Anonymous Coward]

surely MS wants the good techs that yahoo has. why would they get rid of them? if anything, they're going to offer enticements to the yahoo people to stay on.

Re:The real question is why?

[DECS]

And not just a competitor in selling similar products (search, email, etc), but also a competitive threat.

Yahoo owns Zimbra, the FOSS threat to Exchange. This is a cheap way for Microsoft to destroy a wide swath of open source products and projects Yahoo contributes toward.

The market has given Yahoo a low valuation based on its earnings and future outlook both as a company and in the current recession. It's the perfect time for Microsoft to exploit that to expand its monopoly power and kill off competition.

Even for shareholders who only care about money, the issue should be: since MS is going to be paying this "premium" with stock (it doesn't have enough cash), is the shell game price really a premium at all?

Re:The real question is why?

[MrNaz]

my bloody underpants

Hey look, I have no problem with women on Slashdot, but if you're going to hang out here you're going to have to learn to deal with the things that make you different from men.

Re:The real question is why?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft always needed an enemy to rail against (because they usually didn't innovate, rather copied and improved upon)"
Should read Microsoft always needed an enemy to rail against (because they usually didn't innovate, rather copied and turned into a steaming pile of shit)

There, fixed that for you.

Re:The real question is why?

[theurge14]

Then why has Yahoo's LaunchCAST page been IE only for more than 5 years now?

Re:The real question is why?

[blind biker]

$20?

Re:The real question is why?

[Enderandrew]

You'll note I said "and are often developed with open source software in mind" and not always.

Re:The real question is why?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Microsoft has a ton of cash it is sitting on and it's burning a hole in their pocket.

God forbid they pay it out in dividends to their shareholders. They are obviously incompetent to get their stock price up.

Re:The real question is why?

[Phantom of the Opera]

Yahoo is playing hard to get.
In the end, Yahoo is going to be bought, and for all intents and purposes, it is the end of Yahoo.

Yahoo's been kind of sucking recently. I can imagine what it will be like when the questionable yahoo toys will be replaced with the even more rediculous Microsoft ones.

Just imagine a web enabled Clippy.

Re:The real question is why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried Live Search recently? Google still give better results more often, but I find better results on Live around 20% of the time.

Re:The real question is why?

[falconwolf]

But really, this purchase is redundant. They're better off taking the excess cash, paying dividends, and let that be the end of it.

Microsoft would actually make better use of the money they have by innovating and creating something people would actually want to buy.

Falcon

Re:The real question is why?

[dancingmad]

I just would hate to give you my bloody underpants
I would get that checked out. You could have a serious medical problem there.

Yahoo has enhanced value

[eclectro]

because the chairs there are easier to throw.

This highlights the decline of both companies

[religious freak]

Why on Earth would MSFT offer so much when they could/should develop the search technology, content, and customer base themselves? I don't think they can.

Why would Yahoo refuse to accept an offer that is clearly more than they'd get from anyone else? Maybe management has its head in the sand as to its marketplace position.

Going hostile on the acquisition is really, really stupid since one of the best parts of an IT company is the IT talent.

Going hostile will antagonize the whole company, including the best IT talent, IMO.

Re:This highlights the decline of both companies

[d3vi1]

Because Yahoo! wants independence. Because Grandma considers Yahoo! Mail to be the only Email option. Or to put it more correctly, she thinks that the Email service and Yahoo! Mail are one and the same thing. She doesn't know that there are alternatives, and she doesn't care. She likes emailing other grandma's and she will follow the guidelines that I wrote on the side of her screen and only apply to Yahoo!

Re:This highlights the decline of both companies

[DogDude]

You're right. I wouldn't be surprised if the shareholders file a class action against the board on this one. That's a huge premium to walk away from.

Re:This highlights the decline of both companies

[10101001 10101001]

Why would Yahoo refuse to accept an offer that is clearly more than they'd get from anyone else?

Imagine you're a vendor, living with your wife in the middle of the desert. There is no place within 50 miles, other than you, that is offering water or any other kind of beverage. Because of this, you haggle with everyone who enters your shop.

In rolls Bill Gates. He knows your game. He's talked to the locals, so he knows how much most people spend for bottles of water in your place. He asks for a bottle of water. His voice sounds scratchy and parched. He offers you 62% above what the locals will pay, thinking that the extra amount will make you quite happy to part with the water.

Now, knowing how much Bill Gates is worth and knowing the seemingly dire situation he's in, would you blindly accept that 62% "mark-up"? Or, would you consider that the simple fact that he gone all this way to your shop, in the middle of the desert, means he's really desperate for a drink right now and is willing to fork over a lot more?

Do you think his threats of going to your wife and only offering a 50% (or whatever lower amount it is) "mark-up", promising to let her know that you missed out on an even bigger "mark-up", would persuade you? Or would it only prove to you more that he's so threatened by your realizing how much he's low-balling you that he's trying to start infighting in hopes it'll persuade your wife to accept an offer well below what could really be gained?

Oh, and just to note, this is in no way meant to defame Bill Gates. His name has just functioned for so long as the prototypical "guy with more money than God" that he's convenient to use in a story.

Re:This highlights the decline of both companies

[religious freak]

Yes, but the reality is that not only is Bill Gates parched, the vendor is going to go out of business because people are sick of walking to the crappy, inconvenient desert location that is Yahoo.

Re:This highlights the decline of both companies

[10101001 10101001]

Um, the fact that the locals and even Bill Gates have gone out of their way to go to the vendor to buy water belittles the idea that the vendor is going out of business. No, "Bill Gates" is screaming, "What are you, crazy?! If you don't sell me water at 62% mark-up, then you're doomed! Doooomed!!". That's just fear mongering. It has nothing to do with the actuality of the vendor's ability to remain in business.

In any case, the analogy is obviously far from perfect. But, it's crazy for the #3 competitor to go to the #2 competitor and expect #2 to so willing accept a buyout, regardless of the amount of money offered. The sheer fact that the company is still #3, even when they have the money to buy #2, greatly implies that company #3 knows dick about the industry and any buyout will just fuck over company #2. Now, perhaps investors will say "gosh, I'd rather cash out now than wait for #2 to grow the industry (or eat up the rest of #3's spot)". Now, *that* might well kill Yahoo!. But one can only hope that most investors are not so short-sighted. If they are, Yahoo! was doomed from the start. Or, was that the point?

Re: This highlights the decline of both companies

[gabrieltss]

"Why on Earth would MSFT offer so much when they could/should develop the search technology, content, and customer base themselves? I don't think they can."

They can't, look at MSFT's history, they have bought, stolen, strong armed into beign sold, run out of business then stolen the majority of all the products/offerings they have. Then those products were bastardized in the usual MSFT fasion (Visio, Foxpro anyone). Anything they have built themselves is a giant piece of $h!t. Microsoft Bob, Windows Me, Windows Vista anyone..... Even the XBox is a money loser despite people still buying the piece of $h!t thing. MSFT buiness tactics are some of the WORST in the industry! I don't see how so many people put up with their Bull$h!t! If I ran a company (maybe some day I will) I would make it a firing offense to install a MSFT product on my systems or networks and I would block access to their web site(s) at the firewall(s) in protest of their tactics. I would love to see more companies do this. Maybe then MSFT would get a CLUE! I think the board of MSFT needs to demand the management of the company be cleaned out from top to bottom. If the company actually built better products, and acted in a less childish and monopolistic manner people might actually buy their products and services more and their stock might actually do better. I think it should be the MSFT stockholders that should be targeted (by us, the mass media, companies etc...) not Yahoo's.

Re: This highlights the decline of both companies

[endeavour31]

ROFL -

Actually from a pure business standpoint MS has dominated the industry BECAUSE of their business tactics. Like it or not they have been hugely profitable and that has a lot to do with the business end. As for your running a business just to teach MS a lesson - THAT is childish and your Board/shareholders will definitely fire you.

You may hate/dislike MS for their business practices but from a pure balance sheet perspective they have been damned effective from the 1980's. All the rest is personal commentary.

I figured it out

[ILuvRamen]

I think they're stalling why they try and figure out why the hell Microsoft would ever want to buy such a crappy company. I mean really, they've been sued for human rights violations and basically everything else you could think of, they've served up malware, they've rivaled AOL in annoyingness and quality of software and everyone with a brain hates them. I still can't even figure out why Microsoft would want them other than to just make them go away.

Re:I figured it out

[jc42]

I still can't even figure out why Microsoft would want them other than to just make them go away.

Bingo!

The only motive here is the elimination of a competitor. Price is no matter; Microsoft wants Yahoo! destroyed because it's one of the two barriers in the way of Microsoft owning the search business.

It's similar to back when Microsoft decided that Netscape had to die. It rapidly became clear that the leaks were true: Bill and Steve had decided that they would lose whatever money they had to lose to own the browser market. They succeeded, and although they've made no money from IE at all (i.e., they've sunk the entire cost of developing it), they are now firmly in control of what the majority of eyes see on the Web. Sinking a few hundred million into IE was a small price to pay for that power.

Their goal now is to control what all those eyes see when they search the Web. Their problem is that most people think either "google" or "yahoo" is what you type to do a search. Not even MS fanboys like MS's search. They understand that they can't compete in the search arena on quality. So they're going to use their huge pile of money to destroy their remaining competitors. Yahoo is the easiest target, so they're going after it first. And they'll lose whatever they have to lose to kill it.

Then it'll be google's turn in the crosshairs.

Re:I figured it out

[Achromatic1978]

You might want to tell NewsCorp. They were under the impression that they, not Yahoo, were the ones that bought Myspace.

del.icio.us has very little following outside the geek world, I hate to say, too.

Re:I figured it out

[doktor-hladnjak]

Which is interesting because if Microsoft just wanted Yahoo to go away, the best thing they could probably do would be to drag this out as long as possible. Executive leadership would be distracted dealing with the proposed acquisition instead of focusing on their actual business, current employees would be planning their escape plan instead of being focused on their work and potential employees would steer clear of a company with such an uncertain future. Then, after dragging it out, Microsoft could just withdraw their offer and walk away from the table. Almost instantly, Yahoo's stock price would fall back to the mid to high teens it was valued at before the proposed acquisition was announced. Shareholder lawsuits would almost certainly ensue over the board not acting in shareholders' best interest. That would only hurt the morale of current and potential employees more while creating yet more distractions to the leadership.

Re:I figured it out

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: market share.

More market share means more niche ads which is where all the money seems to be. There seems to be feedback loops in targeting ads as well. The more ads you serve the more feedback you get and the better you can target ads. Google is so far ahead of both Microsoft and Yahoo in this area. Even combined Microsoft/Yahoo will be in for one hell of a battle against Google. Separately, neither one stands a chance.

Re:I figured it out

[Anonymous Coward]

they are now firmly in control of what the majority of eyes see on the Web.

Well, they were. But then they sat on IE6.0 for so long it pissed off their customers enough to move some to a competitor (FireFox/Opera etc). Their control is slipping.

MOD PARENT UP

[d3vi1]

Briliant.

What's Microsoft gonna do with no cash?

[geoffrobinson]

When Microsoft burns through all of their cash buying Yahoo, they might be in a whole bunch of trouble. No more ability to absorb losses in business areas when trying to break into a market.

So for this reason. I hope Yahoo accepts the deal.

Re:What's Microsoft gonna do with no cash?

[Anonymous Coward]

When they burn through this cash, they'll sit back, smoke a cigar, and wait a year. TA DA! $12 billion in new cash!

Re:What's Microsoft gonna do with no cash?

[blind biker]

Microsoft will NOT burn through their cash for this aquisition. It's not a cash-only aquisition AND Microsoft makes (roughly) $10.000.000.000/year, netto.

This deal WILL NOT destroy Microsoft. I may wish it did, but I'm a realist.

Re:What's Microsoft gonna do with no cash?

[mgblst]

Yes, if everybody stopped buying anything from them, like Microsoft Windows or Office, then you would be correct.

This is partly the problem with Monopolies, they make huge amounts of money in one market, they can unfairly influence other markets, destroying some great and worthwhile businesses.

Re:What's Microsoft gonna do with no cash?

[maxume]

They have $19 billion in cash and are making $16 billion a year:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT

So it would take them approximately 18-20 months to completely write down the $45 billion that they offered Yahoo. That would be a disaster, but it would be a disaster they could survive, and they aren't going to have to write down the whole thing.

MSYahoo!

[david@ecsd.com]

I think that the main problem is--and correct me if I'm wrong--that Steve Ballmer is a great big douche bag, and that Yahoo can sense that if Ballmer sticks his nasty, greasy fingers into the Yahoo pie he'll turn it into shit just like they turned Hotmail into shit.

I've already started moving my homepage rss feeds from my.yahoo.com to google in anticipation of the inevitable Microsoft fucking it up.

I get my email from sbc^H^H^HAT&T/Yahoo DSL. It's always worked great. POP3, no problem. Don't have my laptop? Web mail works nicely (if a bit much on the ads).

I can forsee a day that my.yahoo.com will stop working right or looking right unless I'm looking at it with Internet Explorer.

Do they realize how long it took me to get my wife used to Firefox?!

Drunken ramble over.
Just sayin'...

Meanwhile

[Enderandrew]

Yahoo has been discussing possible partnerships with other companies they are less afraid of. Yahoo wants no part of Microsoft. Price isn't an issue here. The stock went up with Microsoft's offer initially, but has gone done since then, and will likely continue to drift back down to the pre-offer value.

I Can Only Imagine What Ballmer Is Doing....

[Skeetskeetskeet]

Ballmer angry!!! Ballmer mad!!! Ballmer smash Yahoo!!! Ballmer smash!!! Ballmer smash!!!

My yahee, my yahoo

[tepples]

the blogger said that over 90% of the email addresses in Romania were Yahoo! ones. I can confirm this with the Messenger part. I've never seen anyone giveout a GTalk or MSN id in Romania, only Yahoo!. So that's what the Numa Numa guys were singing about: "My yahee, my yahoo."

Re:My yahee, my yahoo

[WaltBusterkeys]

In other words, eastern Europe runs on Yahoo! and LiveJournal, and the US runs on Gmail and WordPress.

At least we all use the same alphabet... oh, wait.

Re:My yahee, my yahoo

[vivin]

Thank you. My keyboard is now highly caffeinated.

Yahooligans, more like it.

[imstanny]

Looks like Yahoo has a lot of computer programmers, and not enough financial analysts. Company's 'value' = that which others are willing to pay for. It's like me selling soap on ebay and asking for $50 when the highest bidder is only offering $15. Guess what, either I take the $15 or I don't sell my soap.

If I was a shareholder, I would be very mad. If Microsoft is going to do a hostile take over by buying their shares on the open market, they'll probably get Yahoo for less than their current offer. Same thing happened with Cablevision a few months ago. When the Dolan family offered a buy-out for $36, some 'major' shareholders rejected the offer, pompously saying that Cablevision is worth more. Well guess what, the market didn't think so. The second the buyout was rejected, the stock plummeted below $30 and is now at $23!

Re:Yahooligans, more like it.

[setagllib]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahooligans

Re:Yahooligans, more like it.

[mgblst]

So if I offer you $10 for your car and no one makes anymore offers, then your car is somehow worth $10???? This is idiotic.

Yahoo believes that there company is worth more than market value, even more than market value +62%. They are choosing to to sell it as such, and will even try to convince the shareholders not to sell.

Company's Value != what other are willing to pay for it, if you don't want to sell it.

Re:Yahooligans, more like it.

[imstanny]

So if I offer you $10 for your car and no one makes anymore offers, then your car is somehow worth $10???? This is idiotic. Yahoo believes that there company is worth more than market value, even more than market value +62%. They are choosing to to sell it as such, and will even try to convince the shareholders not to sell. Company's Value != what other are willing to pay for it, if you don't want to sell it. You're not understanding how the market works. Yes, if you don't want to sell the car for $10 then it is because YOU think it's worth more than $10. However, there's more than 2 parties in this transaction. Yahoo doesn't control all shares of the company. Shareholders, the other owners, also control shares of Yahoo. If the Shareholders want to sell their shares for $31, or less, they will do so - and if Microsoft accumulates Enough shares of Yahoo, they will end up owning Yahoo whether or not Jerry Yang thinks it's 'too cheap'.

This is why Yahoo's price is trading BELOW Microsoft's offer, not above. Microsoft is the highest bidder, and since Yahoo is rejecting them all the other 'bidders'/'the stock market' are willing to pay less for Yahoo's shares than Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft's original $31 per share offer represented a 62% premium to where Yahoo's shares had been trading before the offer. The market determines price, and they were valuing Yahoo at $19/share, whether or not Jerry Yang, or you, thought otherwise!

Just a part of Microsoft's Open Source Strategy

[stox]

Just think of how many FreeBSD/Linux servers would disappear from Netcraft if Yahoo went over to the Dark Side?

Embrace/Extend/Extinguish

Yahoo is way overpriced

[Animats]

Yahoo's stock is way overpriced. They're a large, mature company, not a growth company. Revenue is down. So they should have a P/E ration in the 10-20 range, like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.

But YHOO has a P/E ratio of 59 today. Which is far, far too high. Their market cap is around $37 billion. Divide that by 4 and you're close to what the company is really worth. Maybe $10 billion.

This is why Microsoft's institutional shareholders are unhappy with the proposed deal. Microsoft is overpaying, and that makes Microsoft less valuable.

Of course, if Microsoft just drops the deal, the bottom falls out of Yahoo stock, and it probably goes down to something closer to what it is really worth.

Google is overpriced too, but not as badly. Their P/E is around $36, while their revenue is flat or declining slightly. The fundamental problem with Google is that all those free services they give away don't make them any money. They've never found a second big moneymaking product.

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[phantomfive]

They're a large, mature company, not a growth company. Not sure why you think this. The internet is a revolutionary zone, where something completely new could come out at any moment. Furthermore, non-revolutionary revenue, such as advertising and online sales, are growing at a rapid rate. It is reasonable to assume that Yahoo will continue to make money off both of these areas. Even if advertising/Yahoo marketplace revenue doesn't increase significantly, Yahoo could still increase their value significantly with a reorganization and streamlining of their operations. Some of their departments have a separate manager for each programmer. That is horribly inefficient.

Google is overpriced too, but not as badly. Their P/E is around $36, while their revenue is flat or declining slightly. The fundamental problem with Google is that all those free services they give away don't make them any money. They've never found a second big moneymaking product. They don't need to find a second big moneymaking product. All it takes is one. Internet advertising spending has been going up around 30% each year, a trend that's not ending any time soon, and Google's profits will rise right along with it. Those free services don't really cost that much, and have potential to be an additional revenue source (from advertising) if they become popular.

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[MoosePirate]

PE isn't the be all end all of valuing companies. In Yahoo's case, it has particular problems because Yahoo has substantial unconsolidated holdings in other companies such as Yahoo Japan and Alibaba. The value of these companies shows up in the P part of the ratio, but the earnings aren't counted in the E part. The value of these holdings alone would put the value of the company close to the $10 billion number you propose.

If we believe Yahoo's forecasts, their stock price has a fair value closer to $40/share, but even coming up short of this doesn't make them very overpriced. They are in a rapidly growing industry and have had double digit revenue growth for many years, so I think they still qualify as a growth company.

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that having only one revenue source makes a company highly dependant on it, especially once it becomes a monopoly. Once growth stops, and even retreats, then the company begins to degrade. We see this today with Microsoft, who constantly struggles to find new markets to enter, after its core has been fully capitalized (remember, the original vision was simply office automation). There are many scenarios were the current model could become outdated in a decade's time and leave Google in a bad position.

For example, imagine replacing most ad-hoc searches with a single mash-up of services. For example, most people search a wide range of sites before purchases (e.g. flights, jewlery, etc). Imagine a single site that acts as a mall of services, which automatically mashes up multiple data sources. Just like most of us go directly to Amazon for our books, there won't be much of a reason to search elsewhere for anything else. This would drop a lot of Google's advertisement value if it didn't win the contract on those sites, and with Microsoft's eagerness to compete, they most likely won't. There's a lot of startups taking this at different angles, for example Rearden Commerce. Facebook may grow to the point that, rather than searching for a name on Google, all relevant information is better aggregated there. Microsoft already supplies those ads, and Google could lose a bunch of traffic.

So there's a lot of ways the industry could shift and not all of them are good for Google, if it doesn't diverify.

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[ZepHead]

Why not throw a few pennies at Yahoo! to help it with its top-line growth. Go to Yahoo and search for something like Enzyte or Verizon. Then click on a few ads.

You'll feel better having transferred some money from slimy companies to Yahoo so that it can fight off Microsoft.

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[Anonymous Coward]

When will the public learn that stock price in the short term has nothing whatsoever to do with P/E ratios (or even anything related to the company earnings)?

Perhaps around the same time that the public learn that they are allowed to access the market to provide liquidity for the professionals. The market exists to enrich the strong at the expense of the weak - if you do not understand the market, you will get fleeced.

No disrespect intended, but your "analysis" is about as astute as pundits who have been calling financial stocks a "buy" due to their "cheapness" or "historically low P/E" for the last six months. Who do you think was selling to the public when the public were encouraged to buy bank stock? I wonder how the people who bought a considerable amount of NRK.L or BSC feel about their stock being "cheap" now? Every time a company gets in serious trouble and the stock collapses, a bunch of "bottom feeders" jump in and buy enough stock that the insiders and professionals who were caught long can offload.

Anyway, this is /. - feel free to discuss anything geek related about the potential merger, but please don't pretend to understand stock pricing, or worse, stock value.

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[Anonymous Coward]

better yet, search for 'vista'

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[Animats]

In Yahoo's case, it has particular problems because Yahoo has substantial unconsolidated holdings in other companies such as Yahoo Japan and Alibaba. The value of these companies shows up in the P part of the ratio, but the earnings aren't counted in the E part. The value of these holdings alone would put the value of the company close to the $10 billion number you propose.

Yahoo's earnings statement includes their 44% share of Alibaba. See Yahoo's 10-K filing for 2006, "Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements", Note 4, "Investments in Equity Interests": "The Company records its share of the results of Alibaba and any related amortization expense, one quarter in arrears, within earnings in equity interests on the consolidated statements of income." Yahoo's 34% stake in Yahoo Japan is accounted for similarly. Total earnings from equity interests for 2006 were $112 million. That's about 15% of Yahoo's net income, and it is included on the consolidated balance sheet.

If we believe Yahoo's forecasts, their stock price has a fair value closer to $40/share, but even coming up short of this doesn't make them very overpriced. They are in a rapidly growing industry and have had double digit revenue growth for many years, so I think they still qualify as a growth company.

Ignore the wishful "forecasts" and look at the actuals. Yahoo's revenue peaked in 2005, and it's been downhill since then. They're not a growth company any more, they're a declining company.

Read the SEC filings, not the press releases.

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[Animats]

The internet is a revolutionary zone, where something completely new could come out at any moment.

It's 2008, not 1998. There are no more dot-com parties.

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[magus_melchior]

Isn't it interesting how you can put certain words into a sentence and have the OP retort with a knee-jerk response? You may as well say, "It's 2008, not 1984. There are no more tech innovations."

Re:Yahoo is way overpriced

[MoosePirate]

Estimates of the value of Yahoo's cash and its holdings in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan are around $12B, so suggesting that the entire company should be worth $10B because of the PE is missing something.

In the 2006 10-K that you linked to, it shows 2004 revenue as $3.6B, 2005 as $5.3B, and 2006 as $6.4B. Finance.yahoo.com shows their 2007 revenue as $6.97B. Yahoo doesn't have the same growth as Google, but I think it can still be argued that they are growing.

Yahoo trying to force the issue?

[s0litaire]

It sounds to me like Yahoo is trying to force Microsoft to start a "Hostile Takeover" bid. Yahoo probably does not want to be part of the Microsoft hegemony and has probably got it's lawyers on the case. I bet within a few hours of Microsoft announcing it's started hostile takeover bid Yahoo will have lawyers in the American and EU courts blocking the Bid due to Competition/Monopoly rules. And we all know how he court's just love Microsoft's antics.... :D MS will get loads of bad press (share prices drop) Yahoo get good press (there shares prices level out above the original value when this started). then Google comes along and snap up the two of them....... :D:D

Re:Yahoo trying to force the issue?

[Grave]

Neither company has a monopoly on anything that would be impacted by this merger. There will be no antitrust or court issues here.

I'm simply amazed at how many people think this won't happen. This merger is going to happen, regardless of what the current Yahoo board may say. If they don't approve it, they will be replaced by the angry shareholders, who are being robbed of the best offer they'll ever see for their shares.

Re:Yahoo trying to force the issue?

[Kalriath]

There needs to be a "Score: -1 Delusional".

There's no monopoly here (though there would be if Google bought either of the two) and no court would touch a Yahoo!/Microsoft merger or purchase. There's simply no issue to speak of.

Re:Yahoo trying to force the issue?

[DECS]

Microsoft still has a monopoly position over desktop PC software. Google has already complained that MS is tying its failed search products into Windows in order to replace the currently competitive market into another annex of Windows.

So while neither MS nor Yahoo have a huge chunk of the web search/advertising business, a merger would not only inflame the competitive threat Google is already complaining about, but also destroy a number of competitive products, including Zimbra and other FOSS projects Yahoo contributes toward.

That's anticompetitive and an anti-trust issue.

Re:Yahoo trying to force the issue?

[miffo.swe]

A monopoly cant use money gained from their monopoly to extend into other markets by force. If Microsoft uses money from their Office/Windows monopoly to kill google they can be charged. Its perfectly sufficiant to have a monopoly, it do not have to be in the market you are trying to overtake.

I would not be surprised to see the EU take a hard look at this. The US not so much until change of government, current administration tends to look at laws as something very bendable.

Re:Yahoo trying to force the issue?

[F34nor]

I can't understand why you idiots aren't bothered by this merger in general. Duopoly or oligopoly is only marginally less effective than a monopoly. This focus on monopoly totally ignores the fact that if it ends it -opoly it's not a fucking free market economy and is basically a license to bone people sans lube.

Ok, here's the plan, we seize all the bastards assets without compensation and turn them into a national internet search utility paid for by an internet sales tax. (Just kidding.) Or wait, no... we break them up into tiny companies and force total transparency and low barriers to entry on them. (Just kidding.) Oh shit neither communism or capitalism will ever work, WE'REALLGOINGTODIEAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Re:Yahoo trying to force the issue?

[falconwolf]

his merger is going to happen, regardless of what the current Yahoo board may say. If they don't approve it, they will be replaced by the angry shareholders, who are being robbed of the best offer they'll ever see for their shares.

"Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante".

Falcon

Larger than Google

[BountyX]

In theory, if yahoo was taken over by microsoft, microsoft would control more of the search engine world than google. Remember overture? that was bought out by yahoo and it was a strong competitor against google adsense. I def. do not think yahoo is worth that asking price....microsoft is agressivly trying to consolidate the web advertising market and level the field with google. Somehow...I dont see that happening.

Re:Larger than Google

[spisska]

In theory, if yahoo was taken over by microsoft, microsoft would control more of the search engine world than google.

That would be a nice theory if it were at all true. It isn't.

Different sources put Google's share at around 2/3, and Yahoo and MS combined at around 25-27 percent.

So what's that theory again?

Re:crack smoker - if they replace the technology

[Anonymous Coward]

http://reviews.cnet.com/web-mail/msn-hotmail/4864-9236_7-30980702.html?messageID=2512903

If you google "hotmail reliability" you get lots of hits complaining that hotmail lacks reliability. If Microsoft replaces Yahoo's technology, there will probably be massive breakage.

If I were a Yahoo shareholder and Microsoft offered me a substantial premium, I would take it. Yahoo hasn't gone up over the last two years, it has gone down. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=YHOO&t=2y At best it could be called stagnant in a volatile kind of way. The price was around twenty bucks and going down until sometime around February when it shot nearly to thirty. To my untrained eye, it looks like the only thing keeping Yahoo's stock price from tanking is the Microsoft offer.

The day I loose my flickr account...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and see it turned into a horrible myspace-like blog with my beautifull jpgs recompressed into muddy crap, will be the day I strap a belt full of dynamite arround my chest and start the final run to Redmond.

Hope more like me feel the same.

Maybe Yahoo execs want to keep their jobs?

[walterbyrd]

If you a job like that, wouldn't you want to keep it?

If msft buys yahoo, msft won't need those execs anymore.

Good reasoning, Wrong Conclusion

[dmadzak]

"Finally, I do believe that Yahoo! is worth more than that ammount," If that was true, Yahoo would already be valued at that much. While it may be true at some point in the future that may be the case, but if I was a Yahoo investor considering the economy is entering a recession and Google is starting to slow down I would take the money and find a better investment. The Yahoo board doesn't have its shareholders best interest in mind here. Whether it is good for the internet, computers, world peace, global warming or the war in Iraq it doesn't matter. The CEOs have a duty to the shareholders that they seem to be neglecting here.

Re:Good reasoning, Wrong Conclusion

[falconwolf]

"Finally, I do believe that Yahoo! is worth more than that ammount," If that was true, Yahoo would already be valued at that much. While it may be true at some point in the future that may be the case, but if I was a Yahoo investor considering the economy is entering a recession and Google is starting to slow down I would take the money and find a better investment. The Yahoo board doesn't have its shareholders best interest in mind here. Whether it is good for the internet, computers, world peace, global warming or the war in Iraq it doesn't matter. The CEOs have a duty to the shareholders that they seem to be neglecting here.

Back when Microsoft made the offer one of Yahoo!'s largest shareholders said MS had to raise the offer: "Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante"..

Falcon

Re:Good reasoning, Wrong Conclusion

[dmadzak]

I would have done the same, it looked like Microsoft would have to pony up the cash at the time with more potential suitors out there. But with the current economy, Yahoo's current share price, and no other suitors waiting in the wings any leverage for a higher price is gone.

Re:Good reasoning, Wrong Conclusion

[falconwolf]

I would have done the same, it looked like Microsoft would have to pony up the cash at the time with more potential suitors out there. But with the current economy, Yahoo's current share price, and no other suitors waiting in the wings any leverage for a higher price is gone.

Actually because MS's offer was for an exchange of stocks and MS's stock price has gone down there's more leverage. When MS made the offer MS stock was $32.60 but today it closed at $28.75, almost $4 lower. And Yahoo!'s price has gone up quite a bit.

Falcon

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

"Psssh, what-ev. More money, plz."

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Tin hat time

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so devil's advocate / tinfoil hat time.

Naw - that position is held by this thinking:

Microsoft wants FreeBSD dead. Buying Yahoo! would help in doing that. Microsoft knows how well FreeBSD works (Due to the Hotmail experience)

Reasons:

1) When Microsoft unloads on GNU/Linux - a place to go to would be gone.
2) Hurts Apple.

Re:Tin hat time

[Codifex Maximus]

AC (tm) said:
"Microsoft wants FreeBSD dead."

WTH? Are you crazy? Why would they? They've shown time and time again that they'll take BSD code and incorporate it. It's a free ride man.

The BSD guys write the code, the MS/Apple guys take the code and profit. It's a sweet deal for them.

Killing BSD would be like biting the hand that feeds you.

Your points:
1) When Microsoft unloads on GNU/Linux - a place to go to would be gone.

Microsoft is already unloading on Linux. Linux ain't dyin - far from it.
Microsoft is profiting from Linux via it's agreement with Novell.

2) Hurts Apple.

BSD is not going away either no matter what MS does. They're not coding primarily for the money but for the purity and freedom of the code itself.
MS profits from Apple - they own stock in the company.

Microsoft is a corporation with shareholders also. They have to satisfy their own shareholders.

Smart move by Yahoo

[melted]

They know Microsoft is offering all the money they've got, so by asking more they say "no" without pissing off the shareholders and at the same time play to their shareholders' primary instinct - greed. This makes it less likely for Microsoft to win in a hostile takeover scenario.

Microsoft Yahoo! Vista 2008 Ultimate Edition SP2

[suck_burners_rice]

In other words, Microsoft Yahoo! Vista 2008 Ultimate Edition SP2 hasn't quite been announced, at least not yet.

Last Stand

[deanston]

Jerry Yang knows that Yahoo's days are toast. He's just messing with Ballmer cuz Ballmer deserves it. Then the top guys at YHOO will cash out and start their own company again. Leaner and meaner.

If Yahoo really wanted to shake off MS, it could have set up a new subdomain and show the strength of loyal Yahoo users who will leave when MS takes over by asking them to sign an online petition saying so. MS will be shock by the numbers, I think.

MS is basically admitting to the world that it cannot build an online empire on its own to take on Google without Yahoo's help, so why shouldn't Yahoo play up its value?

Someday Alibaba will buy MS with chum change.

90% penetration?!

[the0]

God, Romania truly is the asshole of the world! =p

doh

[someone1234]

if Ballmer is the 'boy' every girl is coy

Why is Yahoo still relevent?

[interstellar_donkey]

I'm being serious here. Other than a few poor dolts who don't know of better alternatives for email, or those hypnotized by "Yahoo Games", why does anyone care about Yahoo?

Sure, it was a big deal back in the late 90s. But hundreds of other search engines ate into them, and eventually they got passed over. So now they are a "content" provider. Sorry. Just doesn't fly.

MS buying Yahoo is stupid; as in: stupid. What are they paying for . . . really? A brand name that is on its way out? Heck, while they're at it, why not buy up Wards department stores too. And CompUSA.

Re:Why is Yahoo still relevent?

[falconwolf]

MS buying Yahoo is stupid; as in: stupid. What are they paying for . . . really? A brand name that is on its way out? Heck, while they're at it, why not buy up Wards department stores too. And CompUSA.

Microsoft wants Yahoo!'s eyeballs I think. Unlike MS it is big in net advertising, but MS wants in. As for buying CompUSA, Bill Gates is no longer the world's richest person, that title now belongs to Carlos Slim Helú the largest shareholder of CompUSA.

No Means No?

[Greyfox]

Oh Yahoo, playing hard to get! Your management says "no no!" but your shareholders say "Yes, yes!"

Re:Yahoo.net

[petermgreen]

Afaict most shareholders are in it for the money. They don't give a fuck what MS does with yahoo after the deal is done.

The current board can stall, get some concessions or a slightly better price maybe, whatever but ultimately MS is offering a lot more than the pre-negotiations share price and as such this deal is going to be very hard for anyone to block.

Flagship OS !Vista

[GordonCopestake]

Add to that the failure of their flagship OS on the market

I'm not convinced that Vista is their flagship OS compared to Server 2003/2008 which generates a LOT of revenue. Is Windows Server failing?

South Park style

[hee gozer]

I'm the head of the WZA, the World Yahoo Association, and I'h here to tell we want more moneh.

Ok great except stocks aren't your underpants

[Sycraft-fu]

See Yahoo is already bought and sold. That's what the stock market is. You are literally buying pieces of a company. So Yahoo is already bought and sold on the open market, and as such the market has set a price for what they are worth. Now MS is offering substantially more than that price. This is normal procedure when you are buying out a company, and yet Yahoo is still refusing.

So this isn't like your underpants situation. This is like going in to a store that is selling something and having them refuse to sell it to you, even when you offer them more than their retail price.

The reason this may not work out for them is that Microsoft can force the issue. While the Yahoo board of directors makes decisions on behalf of the shareholders, the shareholders are ultimately in charge. So MS's buyout could happen three different ways, regardless of what the Yahoo board wants:

1) They can simply buy up enough stock. Provided there aren't majority holder(s) that simply don't sell stock, and I don't think there are for Yahoo, MS can just buy enough stock on the open market until they own Yahoo, regardless of what the board wants. It isn't as though the board can order the owners not to sell, they don't have that authority.

2) The owners can decide that it is in their interest to sell, and replace the board. This offer is public, so the people who hold Yahoo stock know how much of a premium is being offered. If they decide that they want the money, they can have a shareholder's meeting and just replace the board. Like I said, you own a part of the company when you hold stock, and that means the shareholders ultimately run things.

3) Even if there are big majority holders that won't play ball (maybe they work for Yahoo or are friends or whatever), it can still be forced by minority holders. Minority shareholders can bring a suit against a company in a case like this. Basically, a company has a fiduciary duty to it's shareholders to make money for them. So suppose a company decides to screw over it's minority holders for whatever reason, because the majority holders want to. Well, they can get sued for that that, and lose. Just because the minority holders are a minority, doesn't mean the company doesn't have a duty to them.

So, at this point it depends on what happens, but MS could very well force the issue. The board has to convince the shareholders that MS's offer really isn't a good one. If they can't, MS will most likely be successful, one way or another.

IIS needs a PHP showcase

[bentob0x]

Ever heard of FastCGI? PHP on IIS?

If the deal goes through, Microsoft will bring IIS/MSSQL in Yahoo! and use it with PHP (I don't know when but it will happen, that's a given).

This would be a major showcase for IIS and it will help the vast majority of PHP developers to eventually switch to IIS instead of EasyPHP or any other Apache/MySQL system (remember people that most of the PHP developers are on Windows, NOT Linux).

If the deal goes through, Microsoft will be able to showcase FastCGI on a worldwide scale and through this, they will dent (or take over) the webserver business with IIS.

This is, to me, the most important aspect of the whole deal.

Re:IIS needs a PHP showcase

[deanston]

That is an interesting point. I've personally thought of using FastCGI but only as a temporary solution to wean off our internal legacy Perl apps. It is an optimistic proposition for MS, but whether it will be a success is questionable. There are lots of risks. 1) Most organizations I know that switched to Windows servers did so because they like the one single platform integration. 2) Many managers and Windows sys admins do not like to add open source solution into their tight MS back-end. 3) There is also the question whether Windows technology can actually handle the size of online business MS is aspiring to. 4) And if you're a developer and the entire .NET platform is already available to you, what is the incentive to move to PHP? 5) Let's say PHP on IIS actually caught on, there is still no reason for 90% of the ISP out there to abandon Apache since their OS are often *nix because it's cheaper (It's just their customers develop PHP apps at home on Windows). 6) Even if MS succeeds at promoting PHP into a even more popular platform, PHP/Ruby are open source, and MS will not be able to control them unless it offered its own version, and until it integrates into Visual Web Developer (free) to entice more users. 7) The ease and power of PHP/Ruby might actually entice Windows developers away from Visual Studio ($$) and .NET and cause the popularity of MS's native development platform to drop. Just my hypothesis.

Re:IIS needs a PHP showcase

[bentob0x]

1) Single sign-on is very important for intranets and corporations, Microsoft has a winner there if they can drag the vast majority of PHP devs onto IIS.
2) True, although Gartner forsees a 90% Open Source implementation in businesses between now and 2012. You don't have to be an expert analyst to see the true benefits of Open Source (it's a bit daft not to like Open Source tbh. I like to call Open Source "Programming 2.0")
3) I think they can, they are fighting hardcore on that front.
4) It's not going in that direction: it's not for current .NET users to start to use PHP, it's for current PHP users to start to use IIS.
5) Hosting providers don't care about using Apache or IIS, all they care about is making money. Maybe the technical guys and admins in those hosting companies have a word to say but if the clients ask for IIS, they will implement IIS solutions.
6) It's not about PHP, it's about bringing the market share of IIS servers up, if PHP is in the way, they'll use it. Microsoft and Zend are already working closely together to 'optimise PHP on IIS' through FastCGI.I don't think it's a good idea to play with the devil but its definitely (and unfortunately) making sense for Zend/PHP.
7) It's the other way around here also: bring the PHP devs into IIS.

Do you really think that Microsoft is after Yahoo!'s 'community' when they have MSN? Or trying to make money out of taking over the company? Do you really think that the real value of this deal lies in what Yahoo! is worth now? Advertising is a real good source of income alright, but Microsoft isn't an advertising company, they're all about computer OS and software, that's their core business (although having a share of the advertising business pie is probably a good operation too). And within that core business, if there is an area where Microsoft isn't leading, an area where there is a lot of potential improvement, it definitely is in the webserver business.

I'd say Microsoft is really interested in having a marketing tool, a showcase for their IIS/FastCGI system and Yahoo! is ideal for this.

swap meet conversation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is similar to the dialog my wife had with the seller when she bought a purse at a local swap meet. In other words this is a done deal with the usual posturing to settle on a price.

Hotmail wasn't migrated sooner because...

[Mark_in_Brazil]

No, they'll do what they did with hotmail.

They'll leave them alone until it makes sense to move over to windows/IIS. Hotmail stayed on BSD for years, but it's been IIS for quite a while now. they're not stupid, they'll treat it as business and move them over when it makes sense to do so. But the Golden rule in most markets is you sure as hell better eat your own dogfood if you expect your customers to, and eventually they'll have to move Yahoo! over if they do buy them. While it is true that Hotmail remained on BSD and Solaris for a long time, that's not because of some kind of smart business decision made by Microsoft. It's because Windows and IIS, even backed up by Microsoft's vast financial resources (permitting, for example, a much larger server farm with a much larger operating team and additional security measures), simply wasn't up to the task of hosting Hotmail.

Hotmail was launched on the 4th of July of 1996 and was bought by Microsoft in December of 1997. Microsoft believes strongly in the concept of "eating one's own dog food" (please note: this is a common term for using one's own products internally), and so immediately started making announcements that Hotmail would be migrated to Windows NT. The NT migration utterly failed, and there were even problems with the Windows 2000 migration. In June of 2001, Microsoft announced it had migrated the BSD portion of Hotmail to Windows 2000, but was forced to retract that statement a few days later. The final migration of all of Hotmail to Windows wasn't completed until 2003.
Not only because of Microsoft's belief in the "eat your own dog food" principle, but also because Microsoft had made public statements saying it was going to migrate hotmail to Microsoft operating system and web server software, it is clear that Microsoft really wanted that migration to work, but it still took over five years and three versions of Microsoft's server software.

Re:Hotmail wasn't migrated sooner because...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Not only because of Microsoft's belief in the "eat your own dog food" principle, but also because Microsoft had made public statements saying it was going to migrate hotmail to Microsoft operating system and web server software, it is clear that Microsoft really wanted that migration to work, but it still took over five years and three versions of Microsoft's server software.


You know, for the first time you've made me wonder if Microsoft actually did make the long-term smart move by migrating Hotmail.

I mean, from the perspective of Hotmail, it was a disaster, yet... Windows Server got a lot better during that time frame, and I have to wonder how much of that was driven by trying to do projects like Hotmail on it and paying attention to the ways in which they spectacularly failed. If you take the position that at core they're an OS company and it's worth sacrificing a side business to improve their OS...

It's probably too soon to say, but if you had asked me ten years ago I would have predicted that Linux would have crushed Windows even more out of the server market by now than has been the case. If MS is able to get any of the server market share back over the next few years, maybe it was all worth it.

Re:Hotmail wasn't migrated sooner because...

[Mark_in_Brazil]

yet... Windows Server got a lot better during that time frame, and I have to wonder how much of that was driven by trying to do projects like Hotmail on it and paying attention to the ways in which they spectacularly failed. Ehhhhh...
While the parent post doesn't quite reach the level of astroturfing, it does feel like an attempt to find a silver lining in what really was an unmitigated fiasco for Microsoft. The company announced quite loudly that it would be migrating to NT, then failed repeatedly. It then more quietly began migrating to Windows 2000, then announced success, then had to retract that. It then issued a white paper on the migration, arguing that Windows 2000 was a better platform than UNIX, even though there were still Solaris and even BSD servers being used until 2003, well after the white paper was issued, and in many cases, BSD code was used to replace the parts of the Windows server OS that just weren't up to hosting a major application like Hotmail.
Please note that I am not saying there is anything wrong with Microsoft using BSD code - the BSD license clearly permits that. The point is that for whatever reason, despite immense financial resources and huge financial and PR incentives, Micrsoft appears to have been completely incapable of making an industrial-strength OS as late as 2002 that could match the power and security BSD and Solaris had in 1997, and when it did have success, it was by simply appropriating the superior code from the BSD base.
Additionally, and actually this is my main point in writing this post, whether or not Microsoft had bought and tried to migrate Hotmail, the evolutionary pressure to improve its OS's security and scalability would have been just as strong. So I really don't see the silver lining in this story the way the parent post does. If there is a silver lining for Microsoft, it's that they learned that BSD code is often just plain better than Microsoft code, and simply taking the BSD code is more effective and a lot cheaper than trying to catch up. One wonders why they don't take something like OpenBSD and make a Microsoft front end for it. Windows would then basically be a window manager, a lot cheaper and simpler to maintain, and the heavy lifting would be done by a system that has time and time again been shown to be better than any Windows ever built, especially in terms of security, which is really the biggest issue with Windows these days, what with there being multiple botnets of hundreds of thousands of Windows machines out there eating massive amounts of internet, LAN and machine resources.

Re:Hotmail wasn't migrated sooner because...

[ps2os2]

While this is not exactly the same, the incident below indicates (at least to me) that just because you are big doesn't mean you can handle the real world. As you may recall there was a merger (take over) between AOL and Time INC a few years ago. AOL argued that their mail servers were better than the mail servers that Time was using and in a cost saving moment Time agreed to use the AOL mail server code. It was a *TOTAL* disaster response time was in minutes and eventually the Time Inc servers went back to their original software. This indicates to me that when it comes to *REAL* corporate environment The servers (LIKE AOL's) don't hold a real candle to real life. This is exactly what will happen, IMO to YAHOO if MS takes over. I have already started to move my 20+ YAHOO groups over to Google mail.

Shareholders are joint owners

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Share holders are not obligated to sell when the price reaches a return of X%. Shareholders are joint owners in the corporation and their responsibility, if they have any, is to see to that the business is run well and taken care of. Seeing as no previous business has really gained or grown from similar takeovers from the same bidder, there's every reason for shareholders, in their role as joint owners, to tell the fat man to take a long walk off a short pier.

Other countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, I do believe that Yahoo! is worth more than that ammount, because there are countries where no competition exists (see Romania). In a blog from one of the Fedora Art Group members, the blogger said that over 90% of the email addresses in Romania were Yahoo! ones. I can confirm this with the Messenger part. I've never seen anyone giveout a GTalk or MSN id in Romania, only Yahoo!. I wholehartedly agree. In my 5 months in Japan over last year, I noticed that Yahoo doesn't really do much in the US, but their international offerings are huge. Yahoo (paired with SoftBank) run a HUGE FiOS/DSL offering, that extends pretty much throughout the whole country. And since Japan is big on brand loyalty (look at Sony and Panasonic), there's really a sticking point with the name Yahoo! as well. If MS were to buy out Yahoo, they lose all of these international offerings and partnerships as well, and that's going to be the biggest hit to them.

You haven't heard it from me, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of 3rd quarter 2007, yahoo will make an announcement where it's value will drop a certain amount. Making MS's value too high and lowering their offer for yahoo.

A Great Disturbance

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of chairs cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Madness?

[Anonymous Coward]

You bring the crowns and heads of conquered CEOs to my city steps, you insult my software... you threaten my admins with slavery and death!

Oh, I've chosen my words carefully, Microsoft.

Re: Yahoo! Rejects Microsoft's Offer, Says 'Still

[Codifex Maximus]

ShOw Me ThE mOnEy! (from the Cameron Crowe movie Jerry Maguire)

MS is a lot of things, but...

[IsaacSchlueter]

...they're not stupid when it comes to business.

They have second-rate crash-prone products in half a dozen markets, and they're #1 or #2 in most of those. You don't get there without some business savvy. Call it evil if you want, but it ain't stupid.

They have consistently had problems in the web sphere. Yahoo!, despite any criticisms of the company, has done pretty well online, to say the least.

Microsoft wants Yahoo's expertise along with the brand and users. Yahoo has an army of top-notch developers, designers, and product managers who have driven a lot of successful products on the internet. Forcing those people to use .NET would drive them out the door, and, given the severance plan in place at Yahoo, that choice would give them a "good reason" to leave, meaning that Yahoo/MS would have to pay them 6 months severance.

That would not be good for business.

Microsoft is not going to buy something, and then turn around and destroy the value in their purchase.

As for the value of Y!, the stock price is not a direct measure of a company's value, but rather a measure of the desirability on the market of that company's stock. Most of the time, that's a pretty good proxy. However, if you just add up the value of the companies that Yahoo owns, it adds up to more than the current y! stock price. So, yes, the stock is undervalued, unless you think that mail, messenger, search, and all the other products Yahoo owns are a financial *liability*, which is just absurd. At the very least, I think we can all agree that Yahoo's revenue is non-zero. The fact is that the whole market is undervalued due in large part to other sectors of our economy falling on hard times. That's why MS acted when they did, because they see an opportunity to get y! at a bargain.

Full disclosure: I work at Yahoo, as an engineer (no kind of CxO, so it's not like my intel or opinion matters all that much in the big scheme of things). If this merger goes through, my feeling on the matter (which is echoed by most of my coworkers that I've spoken with) is: I don't care if the paycheck says "Microsoft", but if my workplace starts to suck (either because of undue bureaucracy or being forced to use Windows/IIS/MSSQL/.NET), I'm going to start calling back all those recruiters who keep bugging me. (Some, of course, are more or less passionate about it, but that's by far the most common attitude.) I have to think that Microsoft knows this, and wouldn't do anything so monumentally foolish.

It would be perfectly appropriate for them to say, "If you're Yahoo's size, then open source solutions make sense. If not, then ours offer a better cost/benefit ratio." Personally, I disagree with the second part, but they wouldn't exactly be cutting out that much of their customer base with such a statement.

Hotmail was and is *puny* compared to Yahoo. Converting all our products to run on IIS would be unrealistic by the time our grandchildren retire, and would cost a lot more than $40B in the long run. Unless this is a "buy and trash" strategy, I don't see that happening.

MS profits from Apple

[falconwolf]

- they own stock in the company.

I heard years ago Microsoft sold the Apple stock they had, nonvoting stock. Unfortunately, hoping to provide a link I didn't find one that gave details though I did find a slashdot article from 2005 with comments saying the same thing.

Falcon

stockholders

[falconwolf]

Yahoo can only make demands if their shareholders back the current board, but they do not.

"Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante".

Falcon

Re:stockholders

[Grave]

From your linked article:

"We think it will be hard for Yahoo to come up with alternatives that deliver more value than Microsoft will ultimately be willing to pay," Miller said in the newsletter.

And Miller characterized Microsoft as needing to do the deal. Said Miller: "We think this deal is a strategic imperative for Microsoft."

--

Sure sounds to me like this particular shareholder is saying that Yahoo is going to be hard pressed to prove they are worth more than what Microsoft is "ultimately[] willing to pay". I gather that his implication is that Microsoft might be willing to pay more than their current offer, but I'm pretty sure they're not willing to budge as they've previously stated they will not increase the already extremely high offer. Where his firm is deriving their $40/share value from is beyond me, because the market has already made its determination of value, and it is not even close to that. Looks like we'll be finding out what the rest of the shareholders think of it all in three weeks.

Re:stockholders

[falconwolf]

I gather that his implication is that Microsoft might be willing to pay more than their current offer, but I'm pretty sure they're not willing to budge as they've previously stated they will not increase the already extremely high offer.

This is one reason MS needs to raise it's offer, it needs Yahoo! MS is trying to get into net advertising whereas Yahoo! is already established and has a healthy though small chunk of the market. MS already acquired online advertiser aQuantive, for $6 billion and handles ads on Facebook but it wants a bigger piece of the pie to take on Google.

stockholders

[falconwolf]

The only reason a stockholder would not accept an offer at twice the stock's value was if said individual thought he or she could somehow gain more utility from holding on to the stock. This letter is simply Yahoo! covering its ass.

"Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante".

Falcon

stockholders

[falconwolf]

They can simply buy up enough stock. Provided there aren't majority holder(s) that simply don't sell stock, and I don't think there are for Yahoo

"Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante".

Falcon

stockholders

[falconwolf]

Why would Yahoo refuse to accept an offer that is clearly more than they'd get from anyone else?

"Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante".

Falcon

stockholders

[falconwolf]

You're right. I wouldn't be surprised if the shareholders file a class action against the board on this one. That's a huge premium to walk away from.

"Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante".

Falcon

Yahoo! stock price

[falconwolf]

Yahoo has been discussing possible partnerships with other companies they are less afraid of. Yahoo wants no part of Microsoft. Price isn't an issue here. The stock went up with Microsoft's offer initially, but has gone done since then, and will likely continue to drift back down to the pre-offer value.

According to Google Yahoo!'s stock price has been on a roller coaster. At closing of NASDAQ today the price was $27.70, and on 17 March 2008 it was $25.85. I wouldn't call today's price lower.

Falcon

If I was a shareholder, I would be very mad.

[falconwolf]

If I were a stockholder I would of been mad if the board had accepted MS's offer. Those who have been to a bazaar and have offered to buy something, an those merchants who sell in bazaars, know the first offer a buyer makes is low.

If Microsoft is going to do a hostile take over by buying their shares on the open market, they'll probably get Yahoo for less than their current offer.

No they wouldn't, as more stocks are bought it drives up the price of the remaining stocks.

Same thing happened with Cablevision a few months ago. When the Dolan family offered a buy-out for $36, some 'major' shareholders rejected the offer, pompously saying that Cablevision is worth more. Well guess what, the market didn't think so. The second the buyout was rejected, the stock plummeted below $30 and is now at $23!

Guess what? "Yahoo's second-largest shareholder says Microsoft will need to up ante". And today the price closed higher than before MS made the offer.

Falcon

Yahoo is doing the only right thing!

[aim2future]

Microsoft is a doomed company. Their business model dysfunctional.
Microsoft's wild business model only works when you can eat or harm other companies.
Google said no, all companies should say no to Microsoft!

To compete with Google you need to be innovative, Microsoft is not, the problem is that Microsoft believes it has the power, it has not.
Only desperation now.
Innovative companies over the world, say no!
Don't be fooled by their money. They are nothing worth.
Don't let a dying beast catch you!

A.I.O