Make that three things: Google will laugh all the way to the bank.

Yahoo is so not a media company. In fact their strategy has been to move away from content creation (bye bye Vince Broady et al) and towards being an advertising seller – for themselves or anyone else who is interested. In Europe, Yahoo are, one-by-one, becoming the sales agents for the major mobile network operators (though selling diidly shit of their inventory, unfortunately).

Yahoo know that doing media is expensive, specialised and doesn’t create as much profit as services – that’s why they leave content to Disney, CNET, Time Warner etc.

But they are trying to be jack of all and master of none: mobile, display, behavioural, search – they need to win in one, not be mediocre in all.

Their best bet is in display and they do well in display sales, have innovative solutions. But hard to scale/offer effectively to third parties.

MSFT want reach to offer a whole new raft of services we haven’t seen yet (plus search and display ads). And an earlier post was right – AOL well may be a cheaper target for not that far-off many users (though far less email accounts.)

A Microsoft-Yahoo wedding only benefits investors and bankers, but not at all the end-user.

http://tech-tal...-love-weddings/

You’re a pathetic failure and you can’t even see it.

I don’t understand the focus at TechCrunch on continually lobbying for Y! to get bought by MSFT or to maintain a separate search/ad network. It’s clear it’s not Y!’s core competency, nor is it Microsoft’s, so the combination isn’t going to work any better, it will just be a many headed monstrosity without focus.

Does Michael have Y! stock that he needs to sell or something? The continual drumbeat here is strange. Y! can continue to exist without MSFT, although it does need to refocus and decide what it wants to do. This “stick a fork in them” talk is hyperbole. Had the MSFT offer never materialized, half the people making dire predictions would have much calmer.

they’ve already waited long enough to frustrate everyone involved; at this point might as well optimize for best price.

regardless, i agree this story is far from over… and Yahoo / Yang look very weak at the moment.

It already been played on the last bubble. Same old shits won’t get you anywhere even if you have more eyeballs than Google.

I realise many of you hate Microsoft – its cliche from the blogger crowd; but your personal feelings about whether you think Yahoo is better off with or without are irrelevant. By selling the company you are obliged to act in the other holders best interests. THIS is why Yahoo has suits cropping up against it.

Now that aside….
Microsoft does not *need* Yahoo. They are making many more billions than they know what to do with and despite the hype about their main platform (Windows) being on the way out – it still combined accounts for more than 85% of the market. It is a strategic decision in further boosting their profitability – but don’t be so naive to think that Microsoft is on the verge of collapsing and this is a desperate ploy to stay afloat. The Apple and Linux crowd (Personally I’m one of the linux crowd!) have been cooing about their downfall for the last decade and still haven’t managed to breach 10% market share.

- employees and some users don’t want yahoo to be part of microsoft. this is understandable. from this perspective, the deal falling through is a positive.

- shareholders only know years of “just give us two more quarters!!” on the conf call, no real uptake on panama, and $33 on the table that has now turned in $24. from their perspective, this is just more bad news from a company that has consistently disappointed and now arrogantly laughs at shareholder concerns.

yahoo is a public company, shareholder concerns trump employees’. its worth noting that yahoo employees also have less money in their pockets today. jerry never promised a retention package, only a poison pill. that pill does employees no good now. no more money goes into employee pockets – just more “earned” bonuses (i.e., the bonus you were promised is not the one you will be paid), perpetually delayed wage increases, and 401k matching reminiscent of 7-11 or strawberry picking jobs.

and now jerry is saying he is “open to a deal”???? astounding.