Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Takeover Offer

mksmac writes "According to the KOMO TV Website, Microsoft has withdrawn its bid for Yahoo after presenting them with an increased offer that was subsequently declined by Yahoo. Frankly, this seems like a smarter decision on Microsoft's part, but I'd like to hear how other people feel about the deal. Should Microsoft have walked away, pressured Yahoo via a hostile takeover or sweetened the pot until Yahoo gave in?" For those who prefer it, the NYT also has coverage, and the story is also at news.com, among many others. I like the Beeb's version as well. And for the Microsoft-centric explanation of why the courtship is over, see Steve Balmer's letter to Jerry Yang.

Comments

Re:No future.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you smoking? Is that you SteveB?

MS wanted them, but they wanted them the same way
they had every other acquisition they made: Trousers down, bent over, no lubricant, and the
acquisition *paying* to be acquired.

What this debacle signals is the bell tolling alright, the bell tolling
for Microsoft: they are on the way down. They couldn't bluff and screw
Yahoo like they've done to every other "acquisition" (damn, that's such a polite word
for screwed-without-lubricant!)

Microsoft tried lowballing, and when that didn't work, they tried bluffing,
and damn I wish I had been at that table just to be able to say
"I'm all in Steve. Let's see what you got."

Here's a clue for those folks who don't have any kind of Microsoft corporate memory:
Remember the parable of SpyGlass:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass,_Inc.

Thank God

[rastoboy29]

As much as I love to see MS waste vast quantities of money, I'd rather they did it building ridiculous computer operating systems for incomprehensible budgets, and not dragging down companies with some value with them.

On a side note, I wonder how much it cost Apple to build OS X?

Yahoo = Spam = 0

[shanen]

I really can't understand what Microsoft wanted with Yahoo. Below is my summary of the situation, the piece I've been pasting in response to their quasi-robotic replies. The last item directly addresses the Microsoft bid.

Yahoo email = SPAM and *everyone* hates spam.

Yahoo claims to hate spam? Self-hate,eh?

The value of Yahoo is the value of spam = nothing.

I often have constructive suggestions. I send them to Google because Yahoo is obviously NOT very sincere about dealing with the spam problem. I even believe that Google has implemented a few of my suggestions--but regardless of the source of the improvements Google continues to increase their functional superiority over Yahoo. Here are just a few of the reasons why I think Yahoo has zero credibility (and the taint extends to the ads, too):

1. Stop denying that you received the full headers when you received the full headers of the spammer's spam and double the offensiveness when Yahoo's involvement is such that the full headers are irrelevant. (By the way, I'm convinced your response email is almost always lying about this, but it is simply the favored excuse of your least competent employees.) This is a very commonly proffered excuse, and it makes Yahoo look incompetent, lazy, stupid, and offensive.

2. Stop with the BS excuses about why you can't read your *OWN* attached email or why the problem belongs in one of your other pockets or why you can't figure out what your relationship to the spam is (especially in cases of privacy violations in Point 8 below).

3. Stop hosting the spammers' websites. (This is an area where Yahoo seems to be doing better these days, so congratulations.)

4. Stop accepting the spammers' email (for *MONTHS*--and even when routed from other accounts for fake opt-out claims (just used for harvesting valid email addresses per the warning in one of your own childish robotic replies). You are STILL helping the spammers by providing them with email services.

5. Stop ignoring complaints about failures in your so-called spam filtering. (You must be ignoring them since sometimes the same spam appears days or weeks later and is still not recognized as spam.)

6. Stop letting spammers route to their websites using faked Yahoo search requests. (Another one that Yahoo may have fixed, since it hasn't appeared recently--but Google fixed it first. Slightly related, but actually congratulations and thank you for the redirection trap that (only?) Yahoo Japan has recently added.)

7. Fix your CAPTCHA system so spammers can't get more spam delivered using the shreds of Yahoo's reputation. This one is especially annoying for the garbage that comes into my less polluted email accounts from Yahoo. It does *NOT* matter if you delete the accounts *AFTER* the spammer has already used them to flush the spam at the victims.

8. Stop letting (unusally incompetent) spammers violate your users' privacy by sharing Yahoo email addresses in the public address lines and headers of spam. Some of these morons will list 20 addresses in the CC: field.

9. Stop demanding or expecting that the regular users like me should have the technical expertise to deal with professional criminals. Hey, I can't even figure out if your own so-called 'forward as attachment' option includes the entire email with the headers. (If it doesn't, that's just another metric of your technical incompetence--and I'm not interested in hearing more of your childish excuses.) If you aren't forwarding the headers properly, then that's just *ANOTHER* thing you Yahoo people should fix.

10. Stop asking me to pay protection money to your protection racket for better protection from the spam you support. By the way, that's the proof you don't really want to stop spam, along with the money you make selling ads to show to people who get 95% spam email via Yahoo.

11. Stop sending childish and patronizing excuses that apparently assume I'm a perfect idiot. No one's perfect, eh? I know full well you will neve