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Yahoo Ends Talks With Microsoft, Embraces Google Instead
snydeq writes with a story from InfoWorld which says that "Yahoo has ended its talks with Microsoft and is instead nearing an agreement with Google. Yahoo's purported reason for breaking off the talks? That Microsoft was only interested in purchasing Yahoo's search business, not all of the company. 'Such a transaction would not be consistent with the company's view of the converging search and display marketplaces, would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders,' the company said in a statement. The deal with Google allegedly involves Yahoo's search advertising business. The move likely will draw more ire from Icahn and may in fact remain part of the elaborate poker game between the two companies. Microsoft said this alternative transaction remains on the table and did not confirm that talks between it and Yahoo have concluded." Update: 06/12 23:58 GMT by T : CWmike writes "Just hours after saying it ended talks with Microsoft, Yahoo announced that it will start running advertising from Google alongside Yahoo search results. Yahoo expects the deal, which has a 10-year term, to generate $250 million to $450 million in operating cash flow during the first 12 months."
Because that is just want Microsoft wants to hear. Yahoo is teaming with Google. Burn baby burn.
My humor is probably your flamebait
Goohoo.
Given that MSN search is horrible, I can see where MS would want to vulch that one piece of Yahoo, and that probably wouldn't run afoul of anti-trust laws. In any event, as a huge fan of Flickr, I'm glad there is no longer a serious threat that my beloved photo service will succumb to Redmondian rapine.
And of course, it's highly plausible that this whole effort from Microsoft was intended solely to serve their own interests by creating the perception they were going to acquire, and they never intended to go through with it, for whatever arcane market reasons.
Programming is simple. Business is complicated.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Either way it spells hilarity. Surely a company with either name would be inherently incapable of evil.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Or does this mean that both Google and Microsoft are gathering their own Borg collectives. I am so confused. Someone get me a glass of water, something with a snazzy brand name please....
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
So first Yahoo doesn't want MS to buy them out. Next they don't like the fact that Microsoft only want part of the assets(instead of the entire company). Really, what does Yahoo wants? Sounds like asking your wife which restaurant for dinner. And she always says any one of them is fine, but just don't like the one you pick.
If there was one Microsoft gazillionaire I'd actually want to meet, it would be Paul Allen.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
antitrust. Competition made the search market healthy. If they team up and work together we lose that. It'll be just like Microsoft circa 1995 again, with googhoo(yagle?) having their fingers in everything search and ad related. No choices. I don't like this at all.
"Embraces Google Instead"
Next thing you know, Yahoo will be extending Google. And then, good Lord!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
With Google and Yahoo finally working together, just IMAGINE how many Chinese dissidents they'll be able to turn it!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why doesn't Microsoft just use their huge amounts of money and work for it, where is their internal drive and passion? Just get a clue already and stop trying to buy everyone just to get a shortcut.
Jonathanjk.com
Please, Google, don't incorporate anything from Yahoo. Please. I'm beggin' you.
"Who do you think will win after putting the whole thing in perspective?"
I'm guessing that no one will win. Apparently no one has done even a little bit of creative thinking.
...as if millions of chairs cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
...would we be seeing the same reaction on Slashdot?
Seriously, imagine if Apple were trying to acquire, for instance Transmeta, (purely hypothetical) and offering a 45%+ premium. And Transmeta in response turned it down and set up internal policies to make generous severence payments to employees who chose to leave after the acquisition.
What do you call that? I call it gross breach of fiduciary duty to your stockholders. I am fortunately not a Yahoo stockholder, but if I was, I'd be pretty pissed about this.
At least there'll only be one toolbar to remove from people's browsers...
No sig today...
His various dot-com and VC projects have mostly cost him money (IIRC), his sports teams have mostly sucked, his 413 foot yacht has fallen to number 8 on the World's Largest Yacht list and Jimi Hendrix was, in hindsight, wildly overrated. Without the billions in his pocket to begin with, you wouldn't say he's doing that well.
On the plus side, he's nowhere near as appalling as the seven guys with bigger yachts than his.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Wow, in about 15 seconds that went from being a site I've never heard of, to the one site I have chosen as the worst I've seen in years. Sometimes you think you've learned to keep clear of horrible sites, but the lure of something Slashdotty is too strong to resist. Apparently its own maintainer agrees, as it hasn't been updated in two years.
By the way, for an actual good Slashdot side-site, http://www.seenonslash.com/
Sam ty sig.
Also, in what way has Paul Allen failed? Seems to me he's doing rather well for himself.
Overall, sure, but he has certainly had his share of losers. For example, "BusinessWeek magazine calculated he had lost $US12 billion in the previous five years.".
Advice: on VPS providers
...and Jimi Hendrix was, in hindsight, wildly overrated.cough I think you mean the Experience museum in Seattle, not Jimi himself ;-)
Advice: on VPS providers
Except Yahoo's stock was at $19 before the Microsoft bid and now it's $23.50. How does causing its stock to rise by 24% qualify as 'tanking'?
The "elaborate poker game" is pure speculation (no pun intended). It is entirely possible that Yahoo mgmt and executives actually think ownership by Microsoft is bad for the future of the company.
This "Yahoo is bluffing" meme assumes that it is illogical for Yahoo to think that they are better off without Microsoft. Why is it so hard to accept? From where I'm sitting, a Microsoft deal would be bad for Yahoo.
...thinking of those poor, unfortunate billionaires.
Boy, I only hope you know what you are talking about... ;/
Ezekiel 23:20
Google is by nature of progression being too big and no matter how 'good' the leaders want the company to be, the competitive nature is shoving them to the very dark side. (Especially when Google is essentially a marketing company that makes money off of ads and market manipulation.)
It is like taking the the industry's two biggest's evils and putting them in one company model.
Take Apple's (less than truthful and borderline brainwashing) marketing team, and combine this with a company out growing its footprint with so many internal groups and people working with 'competitive' emerging technologies (like Microsoft of the early 90s) and you will get one of the biggest and evil company models in history.
Google digging through GMail years ago should of been the first 'heads-up', but their recent 'embrace, extend, use for the gain, not the consumers' mentaility has taken over tons of OSS projects that originally had no 'questionable' back doors, like Firefox does now with its search monitoring and Google ties that it easily hands the data to at any request.
As for Yahoo, they took a phone book model, moved to a real search engine (finally) and then was able to survive with gaming and IM (online gaming communities being the key for them). Yahoo has market share, not technology that anyone wants. Yahoo doesn't have internal development that is more advanced than Google or Microsoft when it comes to community, development, or search technologies. It would be more of a win for Google, as Google would get a solid IM technology, where MS doesn't need IM or any of the other services.
So I think it is good that Google will eat up Yahoo, so it will go away, but the warning on the label, it is giving more power to ONE company, and sadly this company (Google) is no longer by nature alone a 'do no evil' company, any more than Microsoft of the 90s was.
People act like Microsoft tried to use Windows around 1995 to kill off other companies, but people forget during this whole timeframe and Internet movement, Microsoft was heavily investing in MSN and online technologies, but the Win95 and Win98 OS CDs installed icons and installatino software for everything from AOL to Compuserve, as well as Java and other crap that Microsoft did not produce, most of which being competitive software outside the Windows division.
Google needs a big reign in, or a self check, if not as they doing now, will be bigger and far more evil than Microsoft... And be manipulating the online media with their ad control, like they have already done with their anti-MS shoves to tech journalists.
And in the fragile online world, all it sometimes takes is a mild threat or offering a free venue and some hardware...
Chris P. and his free Macs, just all of sudden deciding he hates Vista because HP wouldn't update their driver for his ancient scanner/printer, and this leading him to love Macs based on usage and 'technical' reasons. And the printer/scanner didn't work any better under OS X, but he failed to admit this part of 'his' story.
However having some contact with him, he admitted he really didn't understand the technology and his defense was that he was not a journalist or a tech person and was just in the entertainment business.
Yet he did 'technical' videos and blogs about OS X and Vista during this time that was information he 'obtained' from both Apple and anti-MS companies of interest, and was using their material because it was easier for him. And yet he made news off all this, and mislead a lot of people in the process for a couple of free computers and guaranteed venues for his 'show'.
Anyone that doens't keep one eye open on Google will find history repeating itself. Even the firefox ties should be enough to scare the crap out of users. Add in Yahoo IM, and their moving 'mobile' presence with a bit of 'borderline' Apple type marketing, and everyone will be racing to screw themselves when Google says, boo, let alone the amount of IT information they already control in the onlin
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/21/business/suit.php
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/15/business/fraud.php
As I stated somewhere else on this story, embezzlement and fraud are the kind of things that would give shareholders the right to damages.
And think about it. Where did you develop this opinion? This is the very definition of a meme.
"What is best for shareholders" is subjective. I'd say the very survival of the company is in shareholders' long-term interest.
Free market?
Splendid! I'll have two!
Ignore this signature. By order.
I just happen to be wearing my Hexdrix shirt today. He had potential to mature into an even better musician had he not died at such a young age, IMHO. He knew the things that couldn't be 'taught'.
I have several years of traditional music education under my belt and I'm a simply lousy (and then some) musician. No natural rhythm, and I could never improv. at all. I'm also slightly tone deaf to certain ranges of the register. However, programming is my natural talent. I 'learned' more about it from messing around and gut instinct than I really do in class. Then there's system/network administration; I can learn it and do it with a bit of effort, but I'm neither simply lousy or gifted at it.
I think this is how most people are. You either are gifted and only get much better with time, manage to be sufficient, or are lousy regardless of effort. It seems that musicians who are naturally gifted are relatively rare and (if they don't get in to jazz, where talent goes on to play and never get recognition) stand out amongst the rest quickly.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.