This is the problem when Wall Street sets a technology company’s agenda: independence and innovation are frowned upon in favor of instant gratification.

Question here, why doesn’t MSFT put their resources into Search and their online ad platform? Are they not confident with their engineers. Where’s the innovation here? Trying to acquire the competition is not innovative, it stinks of desperation and arrogance. Even if the deal were to go through, MSFT would still be #2 in Search.

I’m sure you don’t know how to use “begs the question” either.

Perfect…

I’d LOVE to be a fly on the wall when the Yahoo Board meets next (and starts dealing with all those shareholder lawsuits that will be filed beginning in the next week or two).

http://quote.ya...mp;p=m65,m130,s

please post this poll on TC and let’s see where people think YHOO will drop to

http://avc.blog...-will-yhoo.html

if you click the share tab, you’ll get the embed code

Fred

Ballmer ’s hardball playing at the beginning and “microsofteded ” its position to sweeten the deal to $33 later and finally gave all up, all proved that Mallmer was not a good deal maker and might have taken a myopic view.

Was it due to his personality or due to culture issue? Maybe both. MSFT shareholders may take a deep release for the short while YHOO’s may take a hit. But Keep in mind, the market is to reflect a company’s long term value instead of the short eventually.

While Ballmer said MSFT can go forward without YHOO, I hope he is right or he may have made a big strategic mistake by walking away as time waits for no one..

Fair point, but home owner analogy might not fit here.

Unlike homeowners, shareholders do not have emotional attachment with the company. They are interested in better ROI (In fact their attachment is with the “investment”, so they would happily invest in any company: in this case, for shareholders it does not matter who owns the company, as long as they get good ROI). I can understand that Yahoo management might have been emotionally connected with the company, but this decision is made by the BoD, not the management.

We only need to take a look at Google’s stock price history. It was above $700 in December, dropped to $420 just last month, and it’s now back at $580. So in the course of 5 months, we’ve had a 40% drop in price, followed by increase of 40%.

Apple’s stock has had a similar run reaching $200, dropping to $120, and now it’s back at $180.

Has anything big changed at these 2 companies? No. They have been doing business as usual and nothing justified the gigantic swings in price.

Sort of like all the home owners these days who believe their houses are worth hundreds of thousands more than anyone is willing to pay?

Yahoo’s incompetence is what has got them where they are.

They better have a BIG rabbit in that hat.

My prediction: MS rebids $10/shr within two months.

Like others have said though, they’re probably not done. Still, surprising!

A judge might be likely to toss a shareholder suit for that reason if the litigious shareholders have not at least nominated candidates and the current board survives in tact. This is particularly true because the full board comes up for election in a matter of weeks.

Marc Andreessen made a good post yesterday about the concerns of both companies to the deal. A good read. http://blog.pma...ning-micro.html

Only in hindsight can any of us really say whether the board did the right thing or was smoking something. I personally feel they did the right thing and the company is worth more, at least to Microsoft.

While YHOO might no longer be worth 40b, I think its still worth more than that to MSFT, and that’s what matters in the long run.