Yahoo’s Bold Whimper

Oh my, I read this first on arstechnica. Getting sloow

oh yeah, we’re dead last on this story today (even CNET covered it). but that’s cool, it gives me a chance to link to some other sites with good commentary.

If you look at the reasoning, you can tell Yahoo is grasping at straws with contradicting logic:

http://www.techconsumer.com/20.....om-google/

Vastly undervalued….at least they could tell the truth like - let’s get as much overvalued coin as we can!

Ray - Agree. Yahoo’s stock was at $19 when the Microsoft offer hit. $40 is very, very aggressive…

Michael, don’t confuse stupidity for boldness. Wow, Yang is dumber than I thought. Buckle up the seatbelts, folks, because Yahoo is about to crash.

$31 a share “vastly overvalues” Yahoo. MSFT shareholders agree since they’ve been furiously dumping MSFT since even before the deal was publicly announced (but obviously privately leaked).

If MSFT ups their bid, shareholders should be suing Gates & Ballmer.

Report: Yahoo will reject Microsoft bid.
Translation: Yahoo desperately hoping Microsoft will raise bid.

“it’s a bold whimper”

You’re on a roll.

Keep up the great work!

MS should walk far away . . . and watch that house of cards collapse.

You should always ask for more ..

I am sure MIcrosoft expected to raise the bid .

I remember when face book turned Yahoo down .

Its Ok to say NO !! I won’t Bend OVer

Seems like the only one interested in yahoo’s future is MS …

No kidding about the excitement! I wonder if rather than increase the bid, Baller and his team will gang up on Key board members, aka HP buddy, Joshi and force a take over.

it’s good to see some change of pattern in the valley. bold!

the question is, how does Microsoft play it next, if they are 100% confident that Yahoo is just going for more money, they are likely to just go quite for a while and make Yahoo sweat it, Yahoo are likely to come back begging to take the original offer.

Or the Yahoo board could just be deluded…

I completely agree with you Michael, it’s getting even more exciting…
It surely looks like a negotiating tactic, but you never know what might happen

They probably looked at the valuation MS gave to Facebook and aQuantive and did their math.

lovin’ the drama

Don’t confuse shareholders with Yahoo itself.

I think Yahoo the company has no problems going it alone and would rather die slowly than be taken over by Microsoft. Let’s not forget that they were not shopping the company here, Microsoft made the offer out of the blue with perfect market timing. It is the shareholders that are putting the pressure on because they want a cash out.

I bet Jerry wishes that he had the same provisions that Larry and Sergey does for Google with absolute veto power over everything.

Or maybe they just came to the conclusion that they don’t want to be the next AOL. Seriously, why does anyone think this will work? An acquisition isn’t as simple as adding numbers from Column A and Column B or that buying a company and getting it integrated will take about 5 minutes.

They realize than any bump large or small will only push more advertisers to Google. Ballmer needs to take a look at history here. The biggest tech merger that worked out was HP and Compaq and how did Carly make out in that one? If this goes through Ballmer will be out of MS in 2 years max.

Smart move Yahoo, now start innovating and let MS rot away online.

What’s their logic for rejecting besides hot air? You’ve got to give us a plan, guys. They will have next to zero credibility selling it.

I was very pleased to see this, more competition does not mean consolidation. I sincerely hope that Yahoo! finds it’s niche and liquidates all tech where it struggles.

Yahoo! should focus on content creation YUI and Flickr seem to be it’s strengths. Search? Not so much… Also, I know they made a bid for a Facebook takeover. Why don’t they pull the same move Microsoft did with Facebook. Just buy a piece of the pie…

This is not a bold move. This is a retarded move. Microsoft will not pay more than what they offered, they don’t feel any other interested potential buyers are truly a threat unless it’s Google (which won’t happen due to legal issues). Microsoft was just looking for a quick jump in marketshare for several platforms, their overall strategy can still continue without the acquisition of Yahoo.

ej - sometimes just standing up and holding yourself with some dignity is a good plan, at least to start.

It doesn’t matter what anyone sees in Yang’s eyes, even if the fire of failure has lit up. There’s no one in place to take Yahoo anywhere. Microsoft is the only and best option.

I would argue that Microsoft itself is in crux. They are struggling themselves to compete with Apple(Operating Systems) and Google(Search & Office). This could be a make or break moment for MSFT… Good move with the Facebook buyin, but other than that they cannot compete on the 2.0 front.

Mr. Ballmer will up the bid to $80bln and 12 diamond chairs

I agree with the possiblity that “no” really means “no”. There is no doubt that Yang is currently working very hard to reshape the future of Yahoo. Then, in the middle of all this, Microsoft decides to throw its muscle around. Yang wants to, at least, let his vision play out before selling out.

If Yahoo decides to stay independent, maybe the jolt created by this bid can finally wake the sleeping giant.

If (or when?) Yahoo! denies this offer, they certainly won’t get one for $40 a share.

If they are serious that they won’t consider an offer under $40 per share, Yahoo! will slowly fade off the radar and into insignificance. Yahoo, if you commit suicide, no one will care for you!

Does Google seem to be positioned to see some upside from this development?

This is a standard practice in M&A. Yahoo on its own may be worth 19$. But yahoo in microsoft’s hands will be worth a lot more because of synergy. Who gets how much of the gain is the question.

Obviously microsoft thinks so and hence the 31$ bid. Yahoo thinks that it will be worth a lot more and hence wants 40$. Fair point there.

31.00 a share is a fair price for the sites potential. It’s my personal belief that Yahoo fell asleep at the switch, or better yet rested heavily upon its past accomplishments.

Tons of potential and Microsoft will unlock it

http://www.whatshottoday.com

If Yahoo wants to negotiate, I would tell them to kiss my Vista if I were Microsoft. They gave them a life preserver, a more than fair one. Yahoo showed that they have zero clue what they want to do with the company, Yahoo Lifestreaming failure showed that.

Give it a few months, Yahoo will come crawling back. And if I were Microsoft, I’d lower the price even more.

Sue Decker is on her way out within 14-21 days…you heard it here first.

Anyone got any work?

sue decker isn’t the problem.

Keep it up.

Buckler Browser
http://www.jhatak.com/buckler/.....rSetup.zip

Ignore all the noise, MSFT wouldn’t come out of the gate with their best offer. Period. Whether they will up the offer or not obviously remains to be seen, but even if YHOO wants to stay independent, it’s going to be a struggle from very pissed off shareholders, to a board takeover/proxy fight. I simply can’t see Ballmer/MSFT now saying, “Oh well, we really didn’t want you anyway.” They had to expect this. Interesting also how this was released on Saturday afternoon.

Here is a complete archived synopsis of the Yahoo / Microsoft/ Google events as they were being broken and updated

Yahoo remains yahoo and im ya yahooligan for almost 9 years! This is just great News, cause the brand yahoo contrary to what we read is still strong and will be going stronger

Not anyone to take yahoo anywhere??? Well The world is not missing any good CEO, Yang has the vision and it takes time to set the company straight. Im pretty sure rejecting MS will relight their desire to succeed. As said above, content is yahoo’s future… turn yahoo into the real social community site powered by Google search and the formula is there

Yahoo is imploding…just look at the key staff it has lost over the last few months.

I hope Yahoo stands firm. An acquisition by Microsoft would mean the (valued) downfall of Yahoo’s services. Microsoft has a tendency to destroy what it touches. Screw ‘em.

Microsoft offered $31 per share, Yahoo board wants $40.

If they meet halfway, the compromised figure is about $36 per share.

Simple math tells me it is about $7 billion above the $45 billion Microsoft offered.

Microsoft is perfectly capable of coming up with $7 billion more from its coffer.

Great! It was a bad deal for Microsoft anyway - such a waste of money! Yahoo! lacks vision - it turned itself into a fat brainless copycat. All its new stuff is total crap! It shut down so many projects - it’s a total disaster! And by doing such poor jobs, it in fact created huge opportunities for companies like Google, Skype and so many others instead of ruling the market itself! Yahoo! is dying and not dying slowly. Turning down Microsoft was their last and fatal mistake! RIP! The market will punish them harshly on Monday for their poor poker skills!

well they are trading at 29.20 and this announcement wil make it drop like a stone again so they will lose this argument. Its going to end up with a shareholder revolt I think. MS are not going to go to 40.

The worst part is that Microsoft offered $40 last year. That was during the “promise” of panama. You snooze, you lose.

This reminds me of the TV show Deal or No Deal. Here, Jerry Yang is the contestant with 6 cases left. The banker has offered him a six figure amount to sell his case. This offer was less than his last offer, but contestant Yang had a bad round, knocking all of the high value cases out except one. In typical Deal or No Deal fashion, contestant Yang thinks the $1,000,000 is in his case. Of course, there’s only a one in six chance that it is, but he insists it’s in his case. His supporters, played here by Yahoo!’s board, are equally delusional. They tell him “it’s in your case!” and urge him to reject the deal and play on. The crowd, who are the shareholders in this analogy, are screaming “DEAL!”. Contestant Yang says “No Deal!”, shuts the plastic box thingee and waves his arms.

The only problem is that Yang doesn’t likely have $1,000,000 in case. He probably should have taken this deal, just like he should have taken the last deal which was even higher.

“Whatever happens, this is great stuff. Yahoo is being bold. It may be a whimper, but it’s a bold whimper. And I’m damned excited to see what happens next.”

Well said, Mike! Exciting stuffs. If you gotta sell your company, make it so that you can walk out with your head up, at least. Everybody knows Microsoft is willing to go a few bucks higher. But exactly how badly they want Yahoo? We’ll see. Remember, they want to fight Google, not to destroy Yahoo.

#43

This reminds me of Oracle/BEA System deal. It started out with $17/share, then after all the “way undervalue…we want $21/share” and “an impossibly high price…”, we had $19.375/share takeover.

There were a lot of failed takeover attempts also, but it’s still early to go there with this one.

ms doesn’t need yahoo or anything it offers - particularly at these prices. steve will have a shareholder mutiny on his hands if he ups this.

It seems to me like a risky strategy trying to make MS rise their bid.

All Microsoft has to do is bring a flood of nominees for director seats since Yahoo does not have a staggered board. They can get this done the Larry Ellison way. Yahoo is toast.

What does “grew a pair” mean? I neve heard this from a real journalist.

All power to Yahoo and other smaller competitors against the Microsoft and Google monopolies. We need you to succeed and protect our independent rights!

why sell means no dignity?
business is business.

OK - so Yahoo is profitable, has increasing revenues, and is one of the biggest global brands in a growing industry. Why is everyone under the impression that Yahoo needs Microsoft so badly? They are certainly far better off than Apple was in ‘97/’98 (~$6/share).

Analysts might have lost faith in Yahoo, and some snarky pundits in the Valley have too… but Yahoo is a known and loved company by half a billion *actual customers*. Just think about that for a second.

They are #1 in Mail, #1 in News, #2 in Search — these are not weak positions, and it’s a test like this which brings real clarity to a company’s priorities. This is what we are seeing today. The board and the executives have a serious belief in what can be created, and true tech folks know that’s at the core of everything good. Will they succeed? Clearly, nothing is guaranteed - but today they’ve made it clear that they are ready to fight.

they will accept the bid, you freaking morons.

Why is Microsoft persuing Yahoo to begin with?
Waste of money…

Carmelo Lisciotto

The reality is, the two cultures of these two companies are too different. Can you imagine the infighting between the microsoft programmers and yahoo programmers? Power vs creativity. Long story short, if in fact this deal ever goes through it is a lose-lose, similar to AOL-Time Warner, culture is key.

Is this journalism or a JY tongue-bath?

“Grew a pair?” Pu-leeze.

They’re turning down Microsoft on Monday ….

and they’re announcing the layoffs on Tuesday

that’s the plan

I don’t like this deal. Less competion.

“massively undervalues”????

I thought that was what the stock market was for?

Microsoft must be freaking out and that alone is hilarious. Ballmer will have to offer more money because Yahoo is his life preserver. Without Yahoo, Microsoft is almost a non-entity when it comes to search and advertising. Sure they have Facebook but god they overpaid for that. Like someone else said about that deal, you don’t save money when you buy your ticket as the plane is taxiing down the runway.

Yahoo is #1 in mail, #2 in search and #2 in advertising. The shareholders may be getting fed up but seriously, they need to take a good look at why they are losing to Google. Google simply has a better search engine and advertising platform. Yahoo’s biggest misstep was not buying Google way back when. Sorry Yahoo, you just got beat by a better company plain and simple. Sure the management wasn’t the best but them’s the breaks.

Microsoft needs to start pulling back on the internet in a hurry. They aren’t going to win no matter what. Honestly, they aren’t an internet company, they are a software company and one that is getting worse and worse. NEC is pulling back on Vista and would anyone be surprised if more followed suit? They need to focus on software. You know the saying,”dance with the one that brought you”? They are ignoring the one thing that made Microsoft, well, Microsoft. Go back to innovating operating systems that we can be excited to have and be willing to pay for. Don’t roll out 7 versions just to boost your sales.

The bottom line is this: the merger won’t work for the simple fact that Microsoft and Yahoo are too big, too different and too clumsy. It cannot be said enough that if they screw up even a little, the scales will be tipped in Google’s favour so much that it would be impossible for anyone, possibly even the government, to stop them, right now, it’s only improbable.

Yahoo, start innovating and get smarter…fast.
Microsoft, go back to software, once you get that right, then we’ll talk about you being on the internet but don’t call us, we’ll call you.
Google, stay the course, you’re doing just fine.

Yahoo! decides to go on its own this time.

@Damon, of course the stock market can overvalue or undervalue a company, the whole point of Warren Buffet’s investing strategy is to buy those undervalued stocks. Yahoo! at $18 is way undervalued, but at $40 might be overvalued as well.

If they said “no” just to say “no”, then why even give a selling price of $40? With all the BILLIONS being spent on recent upstarts like Facebook and others that don’t nearly compare with Yahoo, you have to imagine that Yahoo wants some of that speculation money too. Why shouldn’t they be overvalued too?

Does Yahoo NEED Microsoft? Does Microsoft NEED Yahoo? You don’t see Apple trying to get into the search business (yet). I think MS-Yahoo would be a good match and they could get rid of a lot of overlapping online divisions and keep the strongest brands. I just don’t think that Yahoo wants to be bought by MSFT. It’s admitting defeat. If MSFT had offered to buy Apple when it was $8 or so, everyone would have said Apple needs to do it. No one predicted they would be where they are now. I think Yahoo bets they can become great once again also.

Anyway so glad I sold my YHOO last week (and not so glad I bought it during the boom).

Now for my take on the Google quarterly report and MicroHoo commentary this weekend.

First, the Microsoft/Yahoo/Google idea-

It is an interesting idea on Google getting into the Yahoo fray. There would be less overlap and quick monetization once the search engines are changed. Yes, there are EU and US monopoly concerns but I think the “do no evil” philosophy could be granting enough assurances to the US and EU to appease regulators. Remember the EU and the US Department of Justice hate Microsoft. Imagine the uproar if Google got the EU and US approval and Microsoft was denied. The DoubleClick approval is pending by the EU as well.

One way or the other, a Yahoo acquisition by Microsoft or anyone else will take at least a year. It would be so contrarian and a Ballmer nightmare if Google was to scoop this deal from Microsoft. Perhaps someone from the Google office will make this their personal project. Just a thought…..remember while the lawyers, regulators, shareholders, and others debate the Microsoft/Yahoo marriage; Google will keep innovating and moving forward while Microsoft and Yahoo commit resources to work on integration issues.

Second, the earnings report-

The financial numbers are out there for all to see and the analysis and spin on the numbers is interesting. However, fundamentally the Googleologists continue to open the internet Web 2.0 and Android in the new Cellular 2.0. Google has a track record with open source protocols and these will only get larger as the “build out” of the Web and Cellular 2.0 continues. More revenue sharing is possible for all participants. This whole arena is a work in progress requiring fine tuning and tweaking constantly. You just have to see past the edge of your desk into the new internet without borders and cellular without limits. Many of the old business mantras are simply obsolete in this arena.

This weekend many of the bloggers and “talking heads” blather openly predicting the demise of Google and internet monetization in a slower economy. NOTHING COULD BE FARTHER FROM THE TRUTH. A slowing economy demands internet usage for cost reduction comparisons and economy of motion utilizations. Are you driving around town with gas at $3 per gallon looking for the best deal on your next purchase or are you researching online and getting information on the location and price of the item that suits your budget? Web 2.0 and Cellular 2.0 are in still in their infantile stages. There will be some missteps and flawed executions. What separates the truly great companies from the mundane is the ability to rapidly correct flawed ideas and implement a solution or a new direction rapidly by doing what is right and necessary without hesitation.

The recent decline in the stock price is an opportunity to invest in the next “Microsoft” for the 21st century: GOOGLE !

Disclosures: Author has a long position in GOOG

Everyone, go read #52. He is the only one in this entire thread making any sense. The rest of you are idiots.

Being bold is good too!

I hope everyone has rung the register on YHOO the past week…because the market won’t be kind to YHOO this coming week…can u say deja vu…back to $19 we go….

Good article and forum here Mike.

Well said @his is not about Microsoft… this is about Yahoo! and Paul.

Its funny how people say the company is dying when it is highly profitable.
Yet the same people praise all the startups and social networks who are losing vast amounts of $ with no end in sight.

Y! does have its problems, but companies go through that and hopefully Y! can make it.
Being #2 is not the deathly position people think.
Should pepsi sell to #3 to take on Coke? Should GM sell to Ford to fight against Toyota?

Would be harder to refuse had it been an all-cash proposal… 50% cash 50% stock is perhaps less attractive.

2 aging, overweight gladiators enter the arena and the mob goes wild.

What will happen now to Yahoo shares on Monday when the market opens? My guess is they won’t go higher, will they, could they drop below where they were before the Microsoft offer? Why would Microsoft even consider offering any more then $31? No other company bid for it, because it’s not worth it to any of them. They can buy AOL for half this amount and get a similar portal to Yahoo’s. I think Microsoft sticks to the $31 dollar offer as Rupert did with Dow Jones, he didn’t sweeten his bid, why should Microsoft bid against themselves.

@68 “The Hater” - I think #52 is a she “Lisa”

I want to know what’s up with that AD on TC? “Mommy why is there a server in the house?” and then the book on “helping your child understand the stay at home server.” Is MSFT getting funny??

Ok, so they want $35 - $37 per share. I can understand that.

Yes; Eric’s right; Yahoo needs to something radical.

Why not enable their SERPs to display relevant, PPC ad results to us when we all (anonymously, of course) enter our demographics (keytraits) into their search box, ie “male + 38 (age) + 2 (kids in household) +$55,000 (income) +homeowner +(our) hobbies + (our) interests” . . . where the advertisers bid on only on those keytraits applicable to their products/services?

I think one of things that gets overshadowed by Microsoft’s 44 billion dollar bid is that fact that it is not Yahoo! that needs Microsoft. We should not forget who has more market share of the two. Microsoft approached Yahoo! for a reason, and that is because it most certainly has the most to gain. I personally commend Yahoo! for not folding because they are holding the aces, not Microsoft.

Yahoo has the largest social network on the net. Larger than facebook, larger than google, and has all the products to serve these people. Its just a matter of time ” which is happening now ” that yahoo! will get it all together and make it work.

Think about it…… the board is waiting to see how it all comes together in the next year. Yahoo! holds its destiny in its hands and has the people to prove it.

yahooooooOOOOO!O!OO!O!O!O!O!O

Yahoo is far from being in trouble. They have over 10k employees and are profitable. Per #55…they have extremely strong positions.

Everyone’s emotional obsession with Google and startups without a revenue model leads them to conclusions that everyone but Google or a startup burning through funding is “in trouble”.

Business 101 - profit is king. Yahoo definitely has to nail down a strategy to better monetize their traffic. That’s a much easier solution than what many startups (who are readily praised here) have….”how can we get acquired?”.

Take emotions out of the equation and it makes perfect sense why Yahoo would decline an initial offer to be taken over by a company who has had much less success on the internet than Yahoo itself.

And Microsoft needing (fill in the blank)? That’s hilarious. Microsoft hasn’t had much success online…agreed. However, they have 100s of millions (i’m guessing here) of PAYING users. That’s not changing anytime soon. They have to come up with strategies but they’re such a dominant force that there’s still time to do that—-Yahoo is in a similar situation.

NEITHER of these companies is desparate.

@74: Again, you’re an idiot.

“They can buy AOL for half this amount and get a similar portal to Yahoo’s.”

Are you kidding? Y! is the most visited website IN THE WORLD. It has been for upwards of three years. It’s the world’s largest user base, the #1 email provider, and oh yeah, also happens to have a comfortable #2 position in search. Comparing

@74: Again, you’re an idiot.

“They can buy AOL for half this amount and get a similar portal to Yahoo’s.”

Are you kidding? Y! is the most visited website IN THE WORLD. It has been for upwards of three years. It’s the world’s largest user base, the #1 email provider, and oh yeah, also happens to have a comfortable #2 position in search. Comparing them to AOL is an absolute joke. The only thing similar about it is that AOL completely ripped them off.

#79, in addition to #55, is also correct. Y! is a social network, and it’s the biggest one out there. The amount of information that is stored across Flickr, My Yahoo, Yahoo Local, etc. is staggering. Don’t you think Jerry Yang knows this? Don’t you think they see where the wind is blowing in the market?

Gee, let’s put two and two together here, people. Social networks are hot. Y! has absolutely unreal potential for bringing soccer moms and everyone else into the social framework. GEE, I WONDER WHAT THEY COULD POSSIBLY BE WORKING ON.

I think you give Jerry Yang a little too much credit. If you’re not aware, Roy Bostock took over as Chairman of Yahoo! just minutes before the MSFT deal was offered. He’s an inveterate dealmaker and one who knows how to extract the best valuations for companies.

You can bet that Bostock’s assessment is shrewd, as he’s got deep experience in advertising & marketing - which will come into play in any deal YHOO does - as well as a Harvard M.B.A.

My guess is that he’s wagering that MSFT is coming back with higher stakes.

I can see how this would be bold, if it were backed by some sort of a plan.

Yahoo! was valued at $19 a share, with this rejection it will be taken lower than that on both market reality, company outlook, and the speculative M&A scalpers that will be caught on this one with their pants down.

Bold would be a rejection with a gameplan to take the company to $40 a share.

This is more like a suicidal yelp. What now, give more money to Google so it can crush them faster?

-Vlad

Microsoft’s offer price is only a few per cent short of acceptable, but the merger won’t work due to culture clash and MS ineptitude. Yahoo has great email, financial pages and good groups. It should focus on taking these into the mobile future through partnerships with phone manufacturers and mobile carriers. A yahoo phone would be great, and good competition for the iphone and gphone. Probably they’re working on it already.

What Yahoo doesn’t yet have is online storage in the scale of s3. That would be one loyalty-related killer app for the next decade, much like email for the past.

Re Ydrive - yahoo used to have something called briefcase (maybe still does) - which gradually became more and more difficult to find, and the capacity was minute anyway. Then box.net and everyone else came along. So Yahoo really fumbled that one.

#85 - “suicidal yelp”

I may be unhappy (or maybe not) if I held stock in Yahoo. But as a financially neutral observer, all I can say is, “pass the popcorn.”

“A yahoo phone would be great, and good competition for the iphone and gphone. Probably they’re working on it already.”

What planet are you people on?

War Games is on AMC right now and it occurs to me that Microsoft is sort of like the computer “Joshua.” Doing anything possible to win something (online user/ad wars) that’s probably not winnable and in doing so possibly hurt everyone in the long run. They should evolve the products they already have.

@88.. yeah.. and, i’d tend to think that while yahoo does have the capability and infrastructure to roll out a great online storage service, i think they don’t want to deal with those illegal-use issues like what youtube was faced with.. and see all those all-time top-10 services like rapidshare and megaupload..

But, well, no pain no gain. And Google’s picking up YouTube was not due to that Google was stupid There’s always this pros and cons, costs and benefits decision to make for the Yahoo’s top tier.

This is exciting indeed! Being relatively new to these kinds of games myself, pardon me for asking: Why will Yahoo sue Microsoft? Is a takeover bid illegal?

I agree more with the Yahoo supporters here on this post. Yahoo is #1 in a few areas. That says a lot despite Google and MSFT efforts. Yang deserves more credit and time.

MSFT is not stupid. They don’t buy sinking ships or loser companies. They’re buying an undervalued #1 entity that will clearly help propel themselves to #1 with what will be by far the largest user base period. Yahoo was, is and if they work quickly can still be a great company in the future.

I look at my logs and see the natural search from yahoo = zero and the natural search from google = a lot

Then I ask everyone who uses yahoo for search = none. Where does their traffic actaully come from and go to?

Even going to yahoo.com it’s hard to figure out what they are or is it just the portal and groups that drive traffic?

Yahoo has it on their home page that they will spurn Microsoft’s bid
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080210.....yahoo.html

Still don’t get the deal between yahoo and microsoft
http://www.i-guide.ro

I could watch the MS-Yahoo dance forever, as it’s going to get even better. Personally, I think the shareholders will revolt — with a little help from Microsoft — and the extent to which they do so will clearly determine MS’ next move.

However, what if MS reconsiders, doesn’t try that hard, and lets Yahoo go? What does Yahoo do next? They’re still sliding downhill with, frankly, no end in site. One of the non-Microsoft Yahoo “partnerships” discussed bothers me a lot more than the MS deal:

http://thesmallwave.com/2008/0.....-yahoogle/

Frankly, I think the deal will go through, and as others have said, is simply a ploy to extract a higher bid from Microsoft. Clearly MSFT needs this deal to go though, and thankfully, due to Yahoo’s sagging stock price, probably has the big institutional shareholders on its side. If they don’t end up agreeing to a higher offer, my expectation is that Yahoo’s market cap will continue to sag. With weak financial markets, and threat of the sub-prime led recession, its highly likely that key corporate advertisers will cut back display advertising spending and therefore cause Yahoo to falter on the earnings front yet again. Sure they’re number one in a lot of areas, but right now, simply don’t have much going for them in the eyes of their major shareholders. Playing 2nd hat to Google is just a bad option. Besides, Ballmer isn’t an idiot - he wants to buy the company because he recognizes its brand value. My expectation is that the deal will go through, and that MSFT will heavily favor Yahoo properties over its own.

Just my two cents.

-Arpan
http://www.siphs.com

What will the price of Yahoo be on Monday morning should Microsoft not respond to the Yahoo news with a higher offer? I think the stock tanks Monday morning, watch the trading in Asia tonight to get an idea as to what’s to come. Microsoft should use some of the cash they have to promote MSN & Live Search more. Google is number one because the teens and college kids like the cool name, Yahoo was number one in search at one time too. Microsoft is one of the best corporations at marketing in the world, they need to start to market Live Search and MSN more to drive traffic They have Hotmail and that should be leveraged to push traffic to their search platform. It’s all about execution, and they need to execute they have a good search, I like it more than Google and Yahoo. It’s not riddled with useless sites that just want you to click on text ads to generate click traffic for their own pocket book.

As I’ve said before, this is a classic case where the Mgmt Team at Yahoo! is resisting a clear benefit to the shareholders because their jobs/reputation is on the line. There is no bold strategic plan that will save Yahoo! if it remains independent. There are still a lot of good people that work at Yahoo!, but unfortunately it is controlled by power-hungry execs with no clue.

They should check this video:
http://www.5min.com/Video/How-.....oo-5794173

Funny and smart

Thank god.

Thanks for the compliment Michael. I’ll be sure to give you a piece of the action.

Btw…am I not handsome? Damn my smile is hot. I am single and ready to mingle ladies!

What ever it be.. partly going with what @John said above..

retail traders (investors) in the stock would have something to smile about..

and well.. if i have to throw my hat in the ring (betting on what happens.. lol.. NOT on bidding).. i think, this juggernauts gonna be there for some time.. and till then.. the prices rises would give these people enough reasons to smile.

Eventually, M$ would find something else to do and go about taking up and over other businesses (and also the criticism of existing stuff they have to make better)

Yahoo founders would get more media bytes and Google would linger ON till it can figuring out its moves

I guess Im just posting this for myself but I didn’t understand why lawsuits would occur - now I do. I just read this article from Web Pro News:
http://www.webpronews.com/topn.....yahoo-deal

“After turning down a 62 percent premium for shareholders in the form of Microsoft’s takeover bid, Yahoo opened itself to litigation from unhappy stakeholders.

Unhappiness manifested itself quickly as one group decided they would rather take their chances with Microsoft acquiring Yahoo, and filed a lawsuit to force Yahoo to consider takeover overtures.”

My next question is, how does this ruthless takeover effect the value of the end result? It seems like Yahoo people will not be happy and no matter how great the assets of Yahoo are, doesn’t it need the people there to be happy and motivated to be of value to Microsoft? If everyone thinks Microsoft stinks, wont that alone kill the value of the assets?

Or is Yahoo’s stuff enough just by itself, without the people?

As a Yahoo shareholder who bought back in 2000, I’d glad they’re holding out for more…