Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Interested In a Microsoft Buyout, But Microsoft Isn't
Linux Blog writes "The Google-Yahoo advertising deal has been rejected by the Department of Justice, and Google has pulled the plug on a search-ad partnership with Yahoo that would have given Yahoo major new revenue, but that raised antitrust concerns. Now, Yahoo has said the 'For Sale' sign is still on its front lawn and that Microsoft should buy the company. The internet portal's co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang made this comment despite the fact Yahoo rejected a $33 a share offer from Microsoft back in May. What a huge loss for the share holders. Microsoft was quick to respond that their buyout efforts were a thing of the past, but left the door open to a search partnership."
A brilliant hand of poker played by Mr Balmer, I think.
I do wonder whether they ever would have actually bought Yahoo. There's no way they could buy them now at the price they originally offerred, thanks to the economic downturn. But if it wasn't for the downturn, I do wonder whether Microsoft would instead have done "due diligence" into the state of Yahoo the company, and then loudly and publicly walked away, claiming they didn't like what they saw, screwing Yahoo's credibility.
So without spending anything, Balmer's caused turmoil in one competitor (Yahoo), while getting the competition watchdogs interested in the power of another (Google) - and distracting them both, perhaps causing them to take their eye off the ball for a while.
Yahoo owns Zimbra which can compete with exchange.
I'd hate to see microsoft buy yahoo just for that reason.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
My Yahoo (new version) is more like a web based full feature RSS reader now. So people having My.Yahoo as default start page aren't all exactly AOL etc. types.
A wing of Yahoo does perfect and future ready things even replying every single user flame on their blogs. Another wing, sadly, can't understand the need of IMAP in todays World, tries "Tower" ads in Yahoo mail, doesn't allow search.yahoo.com tab customisation, doesn't tie "Yahoo Widgets" prefs to user account and doesn't make that genius "Yahoo Go!" work on high end smart phones just because of a simple resolution setting.
I got like 5-6 tabs on My Yahoo and it is my start page since Yahoo invented it (about '98).
Yahoo has a serious image problem among slashdot geeks it seems. It is up to Yahoo and the companies, consultants they should hire to figure the base of the problem. What causes it? The valid reasons of course, not "yahoo.com being lame". Yes, it is lame since it targets the average web public. Not you :)
As you mention them, AOL's image problem is beyond fix. Even their CEO says something like that. I am afraid Yahoo gets same treatment while they do everything in favour of geeks and developers recently. They should fix it before it gets to AOL point.