Yahoo's done its best to
fend off Microsoft's
aggressive advances until now, but it suddenly looks like the struggling company might be getting some help -- both the Wall Street Journal and Reuters are reporting that the Yahoo is "closing in" on a deal to merge with Time Warner's AOL division and partner up with Google on search advertising. Yeah, that's pretty major, and it would probably do something about those declining shares Microsoft's been making noise about. The idea is for Time Warner to sell AOL to Yahoo and make a large investment in the new company, which would probably be valued at around $10B. There's apparently a lot of work left to do on the deal, and it would still have to be approved by Yahoo and Time Warner shareholders, but it looks like Yahoo is no longer stuck taking Ballmer and Co. to the dance.
[Disclosure: Look up to the right. See that? Yeah, Engadget is owned by AOL -- but trust us, we have no idea what's going on.]
Read - WSJ article
Read - Reuters article
posted Apr 9th 2008 10:46PM
Engadhoo!
Hoogadget? Yagadget. Engagya!
I prefer the first.
wtf .. AOL? did I just hit a warp back to 10 years ago?
Separately, The New York Times reported that Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp are in negotiations on making a joint bid for Yahoo. That merger would join Yahoo, Microsoft Corp's MSN and News Corp's MySpace, the paper said.
.....Micfospace....
I have to say, that's the best picture since the satellite Alien. Only thing missing is the Barry White music.
I think that picture's the closest thing we've got to Rule 34 of competing IM client logos. That is, until I invoke Rule 35... which I just did...
God help us all.
Look, I hate the way Micro$oft runs it's business just as much as the next guy, but AOL is just....I mean come on! What are the Execs at Yahoo thinking?! AOL SUCKS!
Thats what happends when you hate Microsoft with a passion and run a corporation.
I agree! What are they smoking over there at Yahoo?
they are smokin those good old Stanford vibes...booo M$ haha
Yeah, MIKKKRO$O(swastika)(burning cross) sucks, bro. Try to rage against the machine a little more, it's awesome.
@Martin
...my guess is beluga caviar wrapped in a 1000-British pound note (USD aren't worth enough) and sealed with the egg-whites of endangered condors.
Hate AOL? Hate Endadget too? You know AOL owns this site right? Probably not since you think AOL Sucks.
Just what I was thinking...ANYTHING is better than AOL.
aaannnnddd..... Yahoo stock goes down to $9 per share... way to go Yang.
Pre MSFT offer: $19/share
Post MSFT offer: $29/share
Post AOL merger: $9/share
Watching Yangs childish ego and desperation: priceless.
Makes sense that TW will pawn of the bad sheep on someone else.
NOOOOOOOOOO I despise AOL and their evil discs they used to hand out with a new version on an almost daily basis if not for AIM I wouldnt mind them disappearing forever
And of course, Engadget?
I just use the discs to practice my Ultimate throws.
I flush the discs down the potty.
i would like to see the company that makes up all these wonderful blogs split from aol.. I have the same feelings about them, the only reason and only thing involving aol on my computer is aim, and even then i'm using trillian!
Aw, come on. The discs are yesterday's news and AOL is not the old evil AOL anymore. I favor this merger more than Microsoft's.
I used the discs for fuel for my fire during the Winter time.
well, the CDs sucks buy you can't complain about free floppies
I like the cases that came with the discs. The disks were also great for releasing my anger onto with a key.
oh ha I forgot I couldn't live without engadget and TUAW
Can't WAIT to see the crazy IE toolbars that'll come out of this.
And by "see" I mean "uninstall from all of my relatives computers"
Seriously, what is with that? Why does everyone have all these ridiculous toolbars littered across their web browser? Are they really that lazy that during an installation of GrannyLovesYourCock.exe, the go ahead and leave the [ ] box checked?
now they are going to suck even more!
Anyone besides Microsoft is fine with me
Why? How does it hurt you as a consumer for Microsoft (a fiscally healthy and well-managed company) to absorb Yahoo (a useful but financially floundering company). Are you worried they'll can your favorite newsfeed? If there's one thing we've seen from Microsoft's purchases of late, they've gotten past the "gut for technology and discard" mentality. At this point they purchase people and users - both of which would go away if they made significant changes to the Yahoo platform. No, they'll probably just take over the advertising portion and cut a lot of internal waste out. I doubt you as the user will notice all that much different.
Unless you're one of those kids that has the irrational hate of Microsoft because you heard from the older, cooler kids that Microsoft was "evil" back in the early-to-mid 90s. At this point they're to big to be generally evil, it'd be costly and hurt the stock price too much.
Is Yahoo is a good position to spend 10 billion on a company that doesnt have a bright outlook? AOL is backing out of the ISP market. AIM isnt what it used to be. Netscape is gone now. AOL has only its ads to fall back on. "Revenue at AOL was down 33 percent for 2007 and 32 percent for the fourth quarter. " If Yahoo buys AOL then I can see why Yahoo is going in the hole!
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7899
AOL is buying Yahoo, Time Warner definitely has the scratch. Yahoo probably doesn't have enough to buy NetZero at this point.
So if AOL is sold to Yahoo...And if Microsoft still wants Yahoo, and they managed to buy it....Microsoft would own AOL. Which means they'd own Engadget. Heh, I wonder what they'd do with TUAW?
I can guarantee you that the comment system would never, ever be fixed.
We might get a few less iPhone stories here on Engadget. That would be a welcome change.
Whoops, I read that wrong and it sent my reply to the wrong person. Awesome, I'll leave now.
Where is ATT/SBC in all of this? I had SBC DSL, then it changed to SBC yahoo, now it is ATT.......I DON'T WANT AOL DSL!!!
The Time Warner stock lost a lot of its value thanks to the merger with AOL. Now, they're going after Yahoo. AOL is like cancer. If this merger goes through, I can foresee Yahoo's stock in the teens in a few months.
I'm sure that skullphone would save the day should this scenario come to pass.
@Rollins
It couldn't be much worse than it is now.
@9bit
Oh, the irony.
YOL = Yahoo Online....and where the hell did this come up?
P.S. I'd buy Yahoo in a second if they would sell themselves for *checks bank account* 48.76USD and maybe with a small loan...
Ultimate is awesome.
this "merger" would problably get approved in the following days after they agree tto merge unlike the sirius xm deal eventhough this would be more or a monopoly than the sirius deal
I dunno, there are more than two search engines, but there really are no other viable satellite radio companies.
Yahoo! is just acting like a typical girlfriend. You know, the part where they start dating random guys from the office to make their boyfriends jealous. The BF rolls over in no time.
I see Steve "Wild A$$" Balmer jacking up the offer by couple of dollars per share just to make Yahoo! happy.
sounds like Yahoo! could catch a disease dating all these random guys before getting with MS.
Bankruptcy is a disease now?
Whoa there, now. I hold the copyright and trademark to use "Steve 'Wild @SS' Ballmer" here on Engdaget. Sure, you changed it to "Wild A$$", but I maintain you are still infringing on my rights.
Where's Nilay Patel?
Nilay is busy writing disclosures... :P
I guess Yahoo might be right, Microsoft needs yahoo badly and yahoo knows it, if not why are they going throw all this mess. Microsoft will buy yahoo at the end i think but it's goin to cost them
Wait if Engadget is partially owned by Apple what will happen to the "daily Apple articles" when MS takes over Yahoo!
@Nilay...
Dude, you do write really funky disclosures. Have you ever considered writing disclosures for living? I heard the pay is good.
why does yahoo hate microsft so much. oh well this is like watching a day time soap opera.
Yahoo does not hate microsoft, is just that you will not like if someone comes to your house and tell you your house is worth a certain price and that you have to move out & give it up, not cool at all.
who cares? seriously, who still uses yahoo besides people over 45? there's this other company called google...they're way better.
I'm glad someone said it^
who uses yahoo about everybody that was 13 to 60 when the internet started IN THE WORLD
Lots of people use yahoo i'd like to know where you get the notion that no one but people over 45 use it.
Yahoo answers, yahoo mail, flickr, yahoo messenger etc. they may not use it for search but they use the other features ask say 100 people of all ages about yahoo and google products i bet you everbody will name yahoo products before google's as a whole.
ask anyone under 30 to name 5 of there email addresses that arent school or worked related i bet one will be an yahoo address.
The plain fact is google doesnt have eveything that yahoo has, what google has may be better but that doesnt support not having other features.
How many people use google talk compared to aim/ichat/yahoo/or windows live not many
This is the ultimate Microsoft Cock-Block.
MS is having a difficult enough time trying to acquire Yahoo, needing a loan to do so, now with Yahoo owning Yahoo, that makes it just that much tougher for MS to roll them into their Katamari.
oh well. Next year Microsoft will be able to buy Yahoo+AOL for the same 44billion.
Just like by next year people will still use Windows Xp and Windows mobile will die.
Why'd you decide not to mention that Microsoft and News Corp are talking about a joint bid for Yahoo, despite tagging the story NewsCorp? That's kind of a big deal. Yeah, disclosure AOL and Engadget are in the sack together but you completely ommitted half of the story...and its pretty damn pertinent.
It was already a threesome with MSFT, YHOO and AOL. Now add News Corp to it and we have a full fledged orgy...
Sounds interesting... Let me get my popcorn...
@IndiaTech:
I do not understand the type of thing that you are saying - Windows Mobile will die? How will the second most widely distributed mobile OS "die" in a year?
I feel you do not know what you are talking about.
@Brad...
I think you mean't to reply to someone else since I do not recall saying anything about Win Mobile...
Wait, the picture on the second page of comments is different from the first - I am laughing my ass off, the pic on the second page is hilarious!
oh wait, it's changed on the first page too. Must've caught it in mid-change...
The graphic is indeed hilarious. I'm always pleased when the pictures that headline articles get upgraded.
I think a Y! + AOL combo is far worse than what M$ haters can dream up of Y! + WinLive/MSN.
At least with with Y! + WinLive/MSN, there was a good chance of something successful coming out by pairing the best of the two together. WinLive has the overall better search, better ID, and some of the MS Research concepts have been making their debut into new Live products.
But what does AOL have that's really worth it to Y!? The only thing that I get from AOL is just AIM (which there are way better clients than this!) and some of their Weblogs Inc. blogs. Honestly. But most of the "new" redone AOL services/content is a mere copy of Y!.
I really don't see any benefits that Y! hopes to gain with AOL. With MS, you get the very large sum of money, and the hopes that the best of both worlds can become one. With AOL, there really isn't a future, and that's it.
(Sorry, Engadget. I still like this blog though, just not AOL)
@ Quikboy
It's getting the users that will benefit Yahoo. Surprisingly, AOL still does have users. It's the same thing M$ wants to do. There is nothing Yahoo has that M$ "needs", besides advertisers, users and content. Although a smart move would be to use Yahoo's infrastructure, M$ doesn't care about that. They have their own. Nothing good will come out of this for anything Yahoo! or it's users. Yahoo will be raped and pillaged and left for dead. Yahoo.com will point to MSN, and you will have to fend for yourselves. Of course this won't happen like the flick of a switch. M$ has to try to make it look like they care for a little while.
Do you really believe M$ will waste more money on something they don't need. Look at how their integration of hotmail into their services went. They don't want to suffer another embarrassment. It's far easier to say they tried to integrate, but the different systems wouldn't play together, so we decided to use ours and toss the other.
It's all about trying to catch up to Googles rather large base. This is a typical M$ move. When they are not in the lead, they buy their way into the lead. It's a good business move, but very lame. They will take all the advertisers, users and content from Yahoo and force them into the M$ world.
@ Scott Miller :Well you're use of $ obviously indicates some sort of unreliability in your comment, don't you think?
So you're saying that MS is going to buy Y! ONLY just to gain control of these users and some hot-shot advertisers? But then only to completely dissolve anything left from Y! and just force all these users to take what's already exists for MS?
Wow, you seem to be a pro at analyzing. I mean what company wouldn't spend $42 billion just to piss off users into switching to some other alternative? A dumb one would, though I doubt that would be MS who's probably more concerned at trying to be more of a leader on the internet. Though not by means of making people angry.
What do you mean by their failure to integrate Hotmail into "their services"? Are you saying that every internet property from MS is all about their e-mail service? I guess you haven't been looking at it lately...
Google's large userbase isn't really a userbase. Lots of people utilize Google, but not necessarily through an account or anything. Most of what anybody uses Google for is just plain search. There's Gmail, but even that userbase is very small. MS wants to get deeper into the internet market faster, and buying a company like Y! makes absolute sense. Have you never heard of Google acquiring internet companies also? I mean most of Google's popular stuff was acquired, rather than just "innovation" from Google. So MS can't make a good business move either?
You're lack of true understanding of both sides of the equation just makes me laugh. You're just trying to find anything bad to incriminate "M$" without even trying to see if anything good can come out. Assuming the worst out of every situation is a great way to live, isn't it?
gawd-damn aol lam0rz !!! :-D
Oh please, Yahoo, any company but AOL! AOL kills every company directly involved in technology business! Nullsoft Winamp, Mirabilis ICQ, Netscape... Now I'd really rather want Microsoft to buy Yahoo instead, maybe they can get their Ajax programmers to improve the responsiveness of Windows Live Mail.
"Look up to the right. See that?"
Yeah. I saw that and I knew AOL owned Weblogs, but was anything else said about the slightly different layout and the AOL Tech link in the top right?
Ok, Engadget is owned by AOL.... Can we take a step back please and review the comparison chart between T-Mobile and Engadget Mobile?
What was it? There is no overlap in interests between Engadget and T-Mobile?
Could it just be that you aren't so independent and that there might be a bit of competition between T-Mobile and AOL?
Just a thought...
AOL + TIMEWARNER = Biggest Failure ever.
AOL = DYING entity (sorry engadget)
Yahoo = Slowing Dying
AOL + YAHOO = What could possibly go wrong?
That picture has to be the best ever lol....
.... Well apart from the Ballmer one :D
Great.
That way they can both go out of business at once. I think that this recession will teach everyone that ad revenues only keep coming in as long as people keep buying things. And they wont.
Am I the only one that thought the perfect name for a Yahoo + AOL merger would be "Yay-hole"? (YAHOL)
What's going to happen to my stock now? I used to own AOL which converted into Time Warner when they merged. I'll be pissed if I'm stuck with Time Warner after this deal is through.
Is it just me, or is the AIM logo giving a handy to the Yahoo! smiley in the pic?
Blackstar; I agree, great picture. I loved the Alien one as well.
However, the Sputnik aiming down on earth on it's way to SF for Engadget's coverage of MWSF08, was one of the best as well.
Check it. ( Ryan, ya gotta to put it back up,please)
Who ever is doing this stuff is really creative. I told Ryan to make t shirts out of the Sputnik...but that is such a pain in the ass.
These are just so damn good.
( Alien (1st one) is my second favorite movie behind Blade Runner )
lol like the image of aol and yahoo in the bed. A O hoo
That picture is awesome.
AOL has good content, like this site, Asylum.com, Joystiq, Maquest, TMZ, etc.
Check out the AOL Desktop and Bluestring too.
People need to remove their thought of AOL the ISP and AOL the content provider. They have always been different from each other even though the ISP made the most money at one time.
If Yahoo! merges with either AOL or Microsoft ( or bought out ) I will switch to G-Mail and make my news page either CNN.com, Reuters or the Associated Press.
I. Hate. AOL. I. Hate. Microsoft (sans Xbox-360).
Hell, I might even go buy a PS3 if Microsoft gets Yahoo!. Yahoo! is my one and only true homepage.
Wow. That's a lot of hating.
So why not use Gmail now then? Why not change your news page now?
I mean it's not like if MS acquires Y!, that anything will completely vanish. It's going to take time, and I'm guessing they'll take the best out of Y! and combine them with the best of WinLive/MSN (and there are things).
So why not be rational, and at least wait and see what comes out before automatically switching just because of your hatred?
What an amazing picture.
Hasn't TW learned their lesson? They dumped a ton of cash on AOL, and practically lost their shirts in the process. Are they now going to dump a bunch more money on yahoo? wtf?
stick to what you know.
and make some better F&%$ DC comics movies. Marvel is kicking your ass.
Sorry but I would much rather see Yahoo join with Microsoft over AOL. AOL sucks.