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Microsoft Offered $40 a Share For Yahoo
fistfullast33l writes "Bloomberg is reporting that a recently unsealed court case by shareholders against Yahoo reveals that Microsoft offered $40 a share for the Internet search company in January 2007 and Yahoo turned it down. We've extensively discussed Microsoft's bid for Yahoo earlier this year for $33 a share, which was rebuffed. Investor Carl Icahn has launched a proxy fight against Yahoo over the spurning of the Microsoft deal." CWmike notes Computerworld's coverage of the revelations: "The complaint places much of the blame on [Yahoo CEO Jerry] Yang, describing him as someone with a 'well-known' antipathy toward Microsoft who acted out of a personal interest to keep Yahoo independent. Something wrong with that? Oh, yeah... public company."
Who hasn't already written off both of these companies? Anyone holding either of them for the long term simply does not grok where the internet and personal computing are going, or how desperately inept these two companies have become due to their size and age.
Microsoft's asset is an OS that people are still locked into, but becoming violently sick of. Yahoo's asset is a rapidly diminishing brand and user base. Combine them and you just get an even faster and more epic fail. This is the next AOL/TW.
The guys who will eat their lunch are the Googles and Apples of the world, who are both innovating and listening to their customers. Size alone won't help you compete with that, you need to get back to innovating. I think people are being way too slow to jump the sinking ship here - if I were a YHOO shareholder, I'd have dumped as soon as the offer hit the table and the stock hit $30. Why on earth would you hold out for $31?
Fair warning: Rant
Public companies are now being run by the shareholders that take out payday loans, refinance their houses so much they owe money when they sell, cannot build traditional savings since all their income is treated as disposable. Basically the get rich generation with no long term goals other than their next big "fix".
Why does it surprise anybody that the driving force behind these companies is to sell out no matter what the cost to the business, the employees, or even the customers?
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
I dont think anybody is stupid enough to think that Yahoo would last that long after a Microsoft takeover. As soon as the assets (its users) was migrated to Windows Live or whatever brand is up for the day it would have been dismantled and chopped up to pieces. The only thing Microsoft wanted was a quick way to get some users to its online services since they cannot get anyone to come by themselves.
Its far better from Yahoos point to get together with Google in the long run. A good partnership could generate new revenues that they themselves cant get alone. For example they together have enough of the online sphere to use as a lever in phones, smartphones and UMPC's and get a real firm foothold in those.
Killing a company is not in any way in the shareholders best interest. The only interest it serves is those who dont hold them but merely buys and sells them on a daily basis. If companies should take that as their prime interest all a company needs to do is to fire all the staff and sell out all the assets to be successful. It would make China very happy but it wouldnt be fun to be an american for very long.
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I hope everyone realises that Carl Icahn isn't a long-term shareholder upset with how the company is being run. He thought he could run it better when Jerry Yang rebuffed MS, and AS A RESULT, bought a significant number of shares. In other words, he bought into the company for the sole purpose of getting Yang tossed out.
In the world of billionaires, not always the most friendly of folks, Icahn is about as pleasant as a rabid shark with PMS. If he gets his way, he'll install a new board, sell Yahoo to MS at $40, help gut the company, and then leave with a few more dollars in his pockets. Yahoo staff will be out of work, the search engine market will become a battle of two titans, and basically everyone will lose except for Carl and his board.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Honestly I don't see people getting sick of Windows, there is no alternative on low end machines that people will flock to because there is no software for them. It is human nature to complain and the biggest target is Microsoft. I use Windows and OS X at home. I am strictly restricted to XP or NT at work on PCs. It doesn't get in my way, it doesn't do anything wrong. If anything the same problem I have with OS X I have with Windows; OS X handles it better; and that is bad software. Hell even my iMac wasn't immune to bad video drivers.
Of course the real monster is Office. I know Mac fans who did not move to Intel versions until Office was native. It is more important long term than the OS under it is.
Apple to me seems to be moving away from the desktop trying to redirect us to the living room; one place I refuse to allow a PC to enter (apple or ms or linux)
I know its accepted to ridicule Ms and speak of imminent doom and gloom but its been the same for ages here. I remember day one here for me and it was always Microsoft is going to die. There are just too many smart people there to write them off.
Now Yahoo, yuck. I can't even stand going to their clutter of a page. If anything they probably are the loser here, they need someone to use them because the public isn't
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If it came as a surprise to anyone that Yahoo's founders and high-level managers have an antipathy towards MSFT then they must've been living in a cave, or are total morons. From Yahoo's inception there has been little love for MSFT--if they ever cooperated it was grudgingly, in their own self interest. There is a cultural gap bigger than the Grand Canyon there.
It doesn't help that there is a giant impedance mismatch when it comes to technology and infrastructure. A Netcraft search is telling: Yahoo is almost universally FreeBSD, and what is left is Linux. Yahoo has ZERO Microsoft in their data centres. MSFT, of course, is almost universally Windows Server.
Remember what happened to Hotmail when MSFT bought it? They ripped out all the FreeBSD over the first couple of years, subjecting users to regular periodic disruptions. "To hell with users, we eat our own dogfood dammit!". Not only that, I'd say most of the hotmail employees were abandoned too--wandered away or pushed out.
Hotmail still exists today as a cornerstone to MSFT's "Live" initiative and is probably the biggest webmail provider out there so it wasn't all bad of course, but there is a difference here: MSFT had no webmail service of note before buying Hotmail. In the case of Yahoo, what have they got that MSFT doesn't have? They both have an IM platform and client, a search portal, webmail, advertising services, etc...except NONE of Yahoo's runs on MSFT technology! Within 2 years, the yahoo portal will be gone, the IM client will be gone, the webmail will be gone, everything will be gone. Yahoo is coveted for its customer base and advertising presence. It'll live for awhile as "MS Yahoo! Live" for awhile then it'll be gone. It's employees will be gone. It'll be a footnote in history.
It doesn't matter all that much to me; I have no great love for either company and think they both offer mediocre service and crappy software. However, if Yahoo's directors and Yang himself care about the company and really believe it would grow, they've made the right decision to resist a buyout by MSFT. You'd have to be a fool to think there'd be anything of substance left of Yahoo after MSFT slayed them and feasted upon the corpse. Some of us would cheer to see that, but I'm betting the founder, directors and loyal employees would understandably NOT want to see that.
Anyways, who is to say that Yahoo shareholders would be better off with the MSFT shares tossed their way in a buyout? Right now, I'd say NEITHER stock is going anywhere exiting in the next 2 years. By the way, if you just go by the charts, Yahoo did the right thing; in the past year, YHOO has lost just over 9 percent, but MSFT has lost over 10 percent. If you extend where things have been out to 2010, if you think YHOO is heading towards $11, then MSFT will probably be $10.50.
It seems to me that many of you do not have your fingers on the pulse of the day to day users in a corporate enviornment. That is why you fail to see why companies use, and will continue to use, Windows as a base OS for their client systems.
It's true, I've been out of the cube farm for about a year and a half. And I think it's true that there, Windows still has significant penetration.
But consider the following:
(1) Even in the corporate world, users are ready to get off the upgrade treadmill at Windows XP. Precisely for the reason you mention "It works just fine for what these users need to do." Nobody needs the next version of Windows, nobody really cares, and Vista really isn't that great.
(2) There exist increasingly capable alternatives that also "work just fine for what these users need to do."
(3) More and more work is done on web apps.
It does not 'break' as often as you would like it to, or believe it to break
I'm sure that somewhere, there's a place where seasoned Windows sysadmins correctly administer Windows boxes built from well-selected reliable hardware so well that your statement is true. However, it certainly has not been the case in the business and home environments I've been a part of. And "as often as I'd like it to?" I'd be a happier man if it broke under my use not at all.
But even assuming your statement is truer than I think it is -- the other three points are what I really mean by "Windows is stagnating." Microsoft's licensing revenues certainly aren't going away overnight. But right now, in the main, Windows is pretty much headed to the ignominy of just another commodity.
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I don't think acquiring Compaq has anything to do with current success. The merger cost tons of money, held up HP for a good two years, and led to Carly's demise as CEO.
HP has done reasonably well since then, but that is akin to saying just because Time Warner has some success now, that doesn't justify the disasterous merged with AOL.
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