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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."
I thought Yahoo gave MS the finger a few months ago. MS offered $33/share for Yahoo, who is now worth $14. Epic phail for Yahoo.
Offer $.50 per share, nothing more. Yahoo is a dead brand and a dead service.
I am *shocked* that Yahoo didn't take MS's first offer and run away, giggling.
Yahoo has no chance for any kind of meaningful partnerships now that MS and Google are no longer in the picture.
... until they can get the pieces of Yahoo that they want for a good price. There is certainly no rush in this climate.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
They're like a prostitute with no clients and a huge "won't anyone buy us" sign strapped to their heads...
Don't mod this funny, I'm dead serious.
Someone please walk me through this. A few months ago, MS was trying hard to rape-buy Yahoo who debated itself like a virgin Catholic schoolgirl. Now Yahoo is getting on its knees and MS doesn't want it anymore? What on Earth happened to the both of them in the meantime?
You just got troll'd!
Where's your middle finger now Yang? Do you see the pitchforks and torches of shareholders on the horizon? Hope it was worth it.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Yahoo: Hey, wanna buy us?
Msft: Hey, remember how we tried to buy you and you repeatedly said "no" and caused us much embarrassment?
Yahoo: Well, yeah.
Msft: Good then. FUCK OFF.
Ya-who?
Here's a company struggling to survive and rather than let capitalism work and let them do a deal with the market leader you prevent it, and watch the company go down the tubes (pun intended). Here's the best part - without Yahoo sucking up advertising dollars, the vast majority of the interest in them will still go to the market leader - but no, you can't allow that to happen and then prosecute any sort of actual abuse - no, you have to prevent the possibility of abuse - you know what's best for everyone after all.
What's next - will we give Yahoo a few billion taxpayer dollars for a bailout?
Great system - government doesn't allow market to work - and then takes money to make it work (for sufficiently poor values of "work").
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/yahoo-plays-catch-up-offshore-tax/story.aspx?guid=%7BB54D432E-20D4-47B3-B7E9-204593E9E00D%7D&dist=msr_2
Long Story Short: MS & Google both have offshore tax dodges setup, so they end up paying around 24% tax rates, while Yahoo pays around 40%. Yahoo wants to join the offshore tax dodgers, but the IRS recently decided to crack down on the practice.
This isn't in the article, but IIRC, Obama has already made it clear that he's going to close such loopholes in the tax code, which will translate to higher taxes on corporations and more revenue for the Treasury Dept. (let's not have the discussion on whether this is a good or bad thing for business and the country)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"And now Google and MS don't even want of them anymore."
With Google, it was an understandable problem. But perhaps Microsoft is just playing games.
For me, the underlying issue is this: Have Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates ever made any statements that indicate that they have an understanding of technology? The book The Road Ahead was surprisingly empty of information, and Bill Gates had co-writers for that book.
An answer to that question would help answer another fundamental question: Is Steve Ballmer qualified to buy Yahoo and improve the company? Yahoo paid Terry Semel $528 million for working 6 years, then fired him because he didn't know anything about technology, and other reasons. Would Yahoo going to Microsoft just be another case of billionaires trying to do something about which they know little, and care less?
See, you're partially on to something. For all his chairs, Ballmer is *sneaky*. We're still bashing Vista as their technical offering, but MS got to where it is by some clever business deals. Way back in the day John Sculley torched Apple when MS pulled a fast one on them.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
SearchTechnology Disease?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
AOL died when dial-up died. it's been long enough that most of those users have learned how to use the web (the real one, not that AOL playpen crap).
the whole point of the internet/web is that there's no strict division between content-producers and content-consumers. and unlike TV/radio, you don't have a consolidated corporate media acting as gatekeepers of information. web users are free to find (search for) content that suit their own interests, no matter how odd or obscure those interests are. there's no censorship, and no spoon-feeding of pre-approved corporate-sponsored content. that's why indie music is on the rise, and file sharing has also boosted viewership of indie films. a "web portal" runs completely counter to that media freedom and independence--at least conventional Yahoo!-type web portals; iGoogle is a different story since you can customize the modular layout, and anyone can create their own widget.
in any case, most ex-AOL users were pleasantly surprised by how much better the "real" internet/WWW was compared to their previously sheltered online existence using AOL. by the time broadband became standard in most households, the internet was already well established in mainstream culture, and the web had become a vital tool in the daily lives of ordinary people. so people no longer needed the digital training wheels that AOL provided. most people i know were quite glad to be rid of AOL's restrictive and overbearing services & interface.
the only people who still prefer the AOL "web experience" are the elderly who still haven't adapted to internet culture and the information age we live in. but even many 60-70 year-olds are taking to the web surprisingly well. and the rest are, well, going extinct. AOL died because they catered to a transitional market/demographic. the internet was still new and largely alien to most people, so their "well integrated," penned-in and sanitized online environment was in demand. but it's 2008 now, and if Yahoo! continues to chase a long gone 1990's market, then they'll become a technological anachronism just like AOL did.
Yahoo has nine bazillion users, so it must be worth trillions.
Well, perhaps eight bazillion users since some folks may not welcome the Redmondian overlords. I've got my escape pod over at Gmail ready to go should Yahoo! be boarded.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
.
Microsoft saw a modest 2% growth in profits in its first quarter of FY2009. It held $21 billion in cash in September.
Microsoft is one of the six companies in the industrial sector with a AAA corporate credit rating from S&P - and the first industrial to make the list in ten years.
The others are Automatic Data Processing, Exxon Mobil Corporation, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer.
In 1980 there were 30 industrials with AAA ratings.
In late 2008 the odds are 7 in 10 a US industrial will be rated "below investment grade" - aka "toast:"
Microsoft joins select industrial club with S&P's AAA rating
Layoff the rest of the people you don't need. Cut unprofitable services. Improve the quality of those services that are profitable. Maintain your R&D division. Come up with some new products.
In other words, turn yourself into a profitable, but smaller company going forward. Why, you might even consider the possibility of being around 20 years from now as an independant entity.
I mean, at this stage, why continue thinking "exit strategy" like a 2-year old startup?
I know, I know. It's an odd idea in hi tech. It seems to work pretty well for the grocer, the tailor, the baker and various other businesses though.
Oh, and especially, please, pretty please? Get rid of the obtrusive 3rd party ads. I block all that crap. If you just put a tasteful, static GIF on your pages, I wouldn't block your ads. Nevermind that though; I've paid for Yahoo services before. Their music service was good before they stopped maintaining it properly. I've never paid Google for anything. So. Yahoo, why don't you start serving customers like you once did? Why don't you place unobtrusive ads like Google does?
Whatever you do, please don't change your old-school Finance pages--your GNUPlot based charts would be irreplaceable. Don't get bought. Please.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
No doubt, for all the things I dislike about Ballmer, I'll call a spade a spade; he played this one well. Now he can come back in a month or two when the stock bottoms out and offer $10/share, and with the ball in his court he can probably make other stipulations on the deal. I'm thinking he got this play straight out of Billg's play book - Bill's been known to be an awesome poker player from what I've heard.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
You know, all these companies sound like teenagers.
The rich asshole kid on the block (M) wants to get the cool chick (Y), not because he likes her, but because she wants to go out with the cool kid (G), and M won't have any of that. But then the cool kid realizes Y is just a whore and dumps her. And now even the rich kid doesn't want her anymore. So everyone thinks Y is a cheap slut. In the mean time, the geeks (Sun, IBM...) don't even try going for the whore because they are busy doing their own stuff. As for the classy chick (Apple), she's single because she looks down on everybody.
The stock market sure is one crazy high school.
Apple already got MobileMe and Eric Schimdt is on its board of directors.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Not as bad as you made it look. The MS offer involved MS stock, and if people had taken it, they would now have about $20. Still not the best decision Yahoo ever made.
Microsoft's stock is sure to go back up after the recovery comes. Does anyone honestly think Yahoo's is going to rise all that much?
No, grandparent poster was right. Epic fail. It's one thing to hold out for a better deal when several companies want to buy yours. It's another when no one else really does.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
YHOO was trading for around $30 on the open market at the time of that offer. If shareholders wanted to sell out, they could've just sold their shares through any broker on the exchange, and gotten $30. Instead they wanted to hang on and get the extra few bucks of merger arbitrage; and they lost their bet, since the merger didn't go through.
I don't really get blaming Yahoo's board here--- anyone who wanted to sell out at that price could have, without needing Yahoo's management's permission to do so.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Let's take a look at the whole MicroHoo saga from the start...
I wrote about this on TheTechStop.net back in May...
Let's for a moment forget that Jerry Yang is now http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120999265277067343.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo">getting grilled by Yahoo shareholders who think that he just lost them billions of dollars. Let's forget that they overplayed their "Poison Pill" position. The consequences of this bid battle will last for many years, assuming that Yahoo doesn't eventually fall to Microsoft for a much lower price or suffers the slow death of spinoffs and layoffs.
They will now have to make good on their 100% growth prediction. They will have to appease stock-holders who could almost taste a huge payday before it was seemingly taken away by Jerry Yang's stubbornness. They will have to shore up their battle-lines with Google even after they allowed Google into the Yahoo camp. They will be second-guessed, over-analyzed and criticized into the grave --- and Microsoft doesn't even have to lift a finger to make it all happen.
Say what you want about MS as an evil empire. Yahoo got Googled
I'd hate to see microsoft buy yahoo just for that reason.
You'll find out at the end of Act III, that's what the play was really about.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)