Microsoft and News Corp in Yahoo Bid Talks

KingAlanI writes "The New York Times website is reporting that Microsoft is trying another angle in its bid for Yahoo: joining up with another behemoth, Murdoch's News Corporation. This is still very much in the preliminary stage, if anything, but an important development to consider. The idea of Yahoo working with fellow Web giant Google, in a plan to counteract Microsoft's takeover plan, is also discussed."

Comments

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

[Doc Ruby]

If Microsoft is trying to convince anyone that its hostile takeover of Yahoo isn't evil, it's going in exactly the wrong direction.

Re:Is this a poison pill strategy?

[morgan_greywolf]

It's been a long time since I had a business class. Isn't this what is called the poison pill? Either buying up things that make the company a poor purchase decision, or entering into contracts that do the same thing etc? No, I don't think so. I think Yahoo believes that a deal with Google might be more lucrative than its current course of action, which is to do all advertising in-house.

All in all, the goal seems to be to strengthen Yahoo in order to push up the stock price to avoid a hostile takeover. The poison pill approach is to make the company look so bad that nobody would want to buy it. I don't think that's what Yahoo's trying to do at all.

Re:I have a feeling..

[mfh]

MSFT wouldn't enter the deal if it would hurt them.

Yahoo's Google test means MS was right

[pcause]

The recent announcement about Yahoo testing Adsense for search result advertising just proves that MS is right and that Yahoo is not a viable standalone entity. We need strong and serious competition for Google because the last thing the world needs is a monopoly on the source of revenue for ad properties. Yahoo has now admitted defeat and MS is willing to put up the challenge. Throw in Fox and we could have a real competitor for Google.

Of course, combining 3 "also rans"doesn't mean we get a winner, just that we'll at least likely have a fight!

AOL Bailout

[Thelasko]

From the article:

Yahoo, which wants to remain independent, has been in a desperate search for white knights, holding conversations with Time Warnerâ(TM)s AOL and News Corporation.

A Yahoo-AOL merger would make for one mediocre company. I don't think that will scare off giants like Microsoft and Google. In the end we will be left with just two companies, unless the SEC says otherwise.

Re:MSFT, Hotmail and Yahoo

[GauteL]

"Here are up-to-date numbers for a single country, Turkey:"

Those statistics being "single country" also makes them less valid on the world scale.

I thought I smelled a fish when your statistics seemed to indicate that 1/3 of all Turks are "MSN users". This also means that if this and this is correct, there are more MSN users than Internet users in Turkey. So let us just assume that EVERY single Internet user in Turkey is also an MSN user.

Could this possibly be representative for the world?

The answer is pretty obviously "no".
If all your statistics are correct, Turkey accounts for approximately 8.3 % of the MSN users in the world, but less than 1.3% of the worlds internet users (based on 1.32 billion Internet users from here).

Either your numbers are completely wrong, or MSN is over 6 times as popular in Turkey as the average for Internet users. Either way, they are completely useless as proof of total MSN usage in the world.