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Google May Scrap Yahoo Deal

Posted by Soulskill on from the packing-up-their-toys dept.

JagsLive points out a Reuters story which suggests that Google may walk away from its deal with Yahoo instead of accepting possible antitrust limitations from the government. The ongoing investigation of the deal by the Department of Justice has caused new concerns to be raised over whether the two companies have adequately addressed issues such as privacy and competition. From Reuters: "'Are they more serious about walking away? Yes. Have they decided? I'm not sure,' one source told Reuters on Friday. 'Yahoo wants the deal, and they're willing to have Google sign anything at the Justice Department to have them do it.' ... Part of the impetus of Google's walking away could be Yahoo's talks with Time Warner Inc about buying the content and advertising operations of its AOL unit. Google initially struck the deal with Yahoo as a way to fend off Microsoft Corp's unsolicited bid. Yahoo and AOL are conducting due diligence to see what a combined company would look like."

9 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. It's sad.. by dalurka · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's sad that yahoo has to be sold at all.. I rarely use yahoo but it would be less than optimal to remove it from the competition. If it were removed there would only be MS and Google left as major search and advertising I think, please correct me if I'm wrong here.
    But I'd like it more if Google was the future owner of yahoo.. Microsoft is large enough in my opinion.

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    1. Re:It's sad.. by MrNaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Google actually has a stronger foothold in its primary market than Microsoft does in its, at the moment. Google is not embattled by free alternatives to its main product line that are catching up rapidly.

      If you ask me, Google is the company that we have the most to fear from at the moment, given that they are the biggest pushers (quietly) of "cloud" computing, which is essentially an effort to remove control from you of the computer on which you work.

      You can be as much of a fanboy as you like, but accept it or not, Google is a business which has a very large interest in turning you into a controllable revenue asset.

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    2. Re:It's sad.. by owlnation · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't know if it's sad. Yahoo is a dead company. Its death is entirely of its own making -- corporate greed over user experience. For me their death is well deserved, can't happen fast enough, and I will revel in schadenfreude.

      That said. Your point is valid. There is nothing like enough competition in search. I find that search has never really met my expectations, and that it is doing so less and less. There has to be new ideas and new players in this market. Google is the only show in town, and Google is well and truly gamed.

      However, innovation in search is not going to come from Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. Corporations are far too bureaucratic, conservative, and slow to develop new ideas. If you work in a corporation it can take you months to get approval to even start work on a new idea. No, It is going to come in the same way it happened for Google. Two guys working in their garage, with a damn good idea. These guys can pick it up and run with it, much faster than any corporation ever could.

      The sad thing is that with the current credit clusterfuck there may not be funding for innovators. This is good for Google, but it's really bad for everyone else. Google seriously needs competition, it would even be good for them too, they are getting stale and a shaking up would do them a lot of good. There's been no significant innovation in search for 10 years. This is bad for everyone.

    3. Re:It's sad.. by dalurka · · Score: 2, Interesting

      However, innovation in search is not going to come from Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. Corporations are far too bureaucratic, conservative, and slow to develop new ideas. If you work in a corporation it can take you months to get approval to even start work on a new idea. No, It is going to come in the same way it happened for Google. Two guys working in their garage, with a damn good idea. These guys can pick it up and run with it, much faster than any corporation ever could.

      Google actually lets its developers use 20% of their time to work on own projects...which is an emulation of the twho guys in a garage I think...It leads to innovation and many of the best google services were born this way.

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      If it was hard to write it should be hard to read.
    4. Re:It's sad.. by owlnation · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even if it's the case that 20% of their time can be spent on side projects, that's still not really a mirror of the 2 guys in their garage model.

      Obviously those 2 guys can spend 100% of their work time on their idea (as well as much of their free time most likely). They should obviously do documentation and will wear a lot of hats, but they don't report to anyone and don't spend half their week in meetings, reports or preparing powerpoint presentations probably. I assume Google, like all corporations, requires some sort of reporting. So that 20% is in reality 15% on developing, and 5% (at least) on reports, BRD's, evaluations, project documentation etc. Plus, they will be getting lots of distractions from the job they do the other 80% of the time.

      Secondly, if the 20% of their time model worked, why is their search engine so gamed? And why has there been no significant progress in search? They even have developers (I assume) working 100% of their time on search. The results speak for themselves, and HR promises almost never do.

      Competition is the only answer. They need it, they are distracted from their core search business into apps, and whatever the "cloud" is. They don't have any burning need to improve since they are making lots of money from search, as there is no serious competition. Much, like Yahoo did before them. While Google has made much more of an effort to include user experience than Yahoo ever did, it still falls short of many user's expectations. Today's Yahoo could still be tomorrow's Google. For Google, Yahoo should stand as a warning from history.

  2. Re:Yahhooo! by MrNaz · · Score: 3, Funny

    While someone at Google throws a chair. How the tables have turned. Or chairs, as the case may be.

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    I hate printers.
  3. What was Microsoft's top offer? by kclittle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    $33 per share, right? And now it's at $12 or $13? Hmmm... can you say "stockholder lawsuit"?

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  4. And what about the employees? by OakLEE · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What's really sad is that Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang had a lot of support from employees who feared that Microsoft would can them. The threat of their revolt was in part what drove Microsoft away.

    Now he's turning around and repaying them by announcing a second around of layoffs that will total about 10% of the workforce. Source. Looks like everyone got the raw deal out of this. It makes you wonder if Yang even had a plan for Yahoo post-merger.

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  5. Re:Yahhooo! by L4m3rthanyou · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Uh, not really. Microsoft and Yahoo are in separate markets, for the most part. Some of their stuff overlaps, but a combined MS and Yahoo would not have a massive marketshare dominance over any one thing (aside from the OS market, maybe, but M$ already has that).

    It's very different from Google purchasing Yahoo, because those two companies offer many of the same services, and would have a huge portion of web searches if they combined.

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