Microsoft and Yahoo! restart talks
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted May 18th 2008 6:02PM
posted May 18th 2008 6:02PM
"In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo!"
[Via Emiliano]
"Shit or get off the pot" as they say.
Hey! What's! So! Damn! Funny! About! Yahoo!'s! Name! Anyway?!
Should I restart caring?
@ Blackstar:
:~$ /etc/init.d/caring-about-yahoo-microsoft start
Starting caring-about-yahoo-microsoft.../etc/init.d/caring-about-yahoo-microsoft: line 78: start: (2507) - Operation not permitted
failed!
Guess I can't care anymore myself.
Wow-wee! Didn't see THIS coming! >.>
Either did John C. Dvorak. That man obviously has no clue what he's talking about.
I really want this. Benefits microsoft and users
When all this is said and done Google will own Apple and Facebook will have bought Yahoo! and Microsoft will have purchased NASA.
@applefan
That is my dream future...
*Neither. Dvorak should STFU about technology. John hasn't been right since... OK, well never. The fact that he still gets paid for his opinion is testimony to the stupidity of his readers and/or his publishers...
Does anyone really give a shit?
Yahoo employees....
Shareholders...
Microsoft execs...
Everyone except Zim.
Bill O'reilly
Traders
...anyone important?
to El's question, not really.
MS fanboys...
I just took one. Does that count?
and the MAN : BALLMER really cares
In the words of a mentor of mine: "STOP FLIRTING WITH EACH OTHER"
MicroHoo or Microsoft! is imminent!
Yahoocrosoft!
How about:
Microsoft
Yahoo! nearly isn't important enough to consider a name change.
Japan begs to differ. It isn't eBay dominating the auction market over there.
Does anyone REALLY think Icahn's involvement with this was just because Icahn himself thought it was a good idea?
Billionaires talk to one another, especially when one billionaire has gotten himself into a bad position and needs an external party to help him out of it.
And I'm not talking Yang.
Instead of out innovating the compoetition, the Microsoft parasite is looking for any alternate way to lock us in.
@BluRayisDead
I didn't say they'll be successful. Maybe they are running out of things to try out.
@JohanS : "compoetition"? Microsoft buys has bought lot of companies. Google buys lots of companies. Does that mean both of them lock in users? If you don't like Microsoft, go ahead and avoid it. Many people don't, and they use it. It's NOT impossible to avoid Microsoft's services. There many other companies hoping you'd use their services and get some money off of you as well.
If you haven't seen WWT, Mediaroom, Surface, Photosynth, Silverlight, and some other upcoming technology, then I don't see how you can be saying they're not trying to out-innovate their competitors. I know for sure that Live Maps and Live Search (both from MS), are far better than the maps and search engine Yahoo! uses. Maybe Yahoo! users should be happy that they'll get the best out of both companies if the Yahoo! gets bought.
Microsoft:
I want to buy you
I want to acquire you
I want to show you, Yahoo
that I own you
I want your offices
'till the very last door
I want you to drop of
when you want me to stop
And who can annoy you like me ~~ Nobody
Who can share you like me ~~ Nobody
Who can build you like me now, baby ~~ Nobody
Nobody, baby ~~ Nobody
And who can buy it like me ~~ Nobody
And who can develop what you need ~~ Nobody
Who can do you all year long ~~ Nobody
Nobody, baby ~~ Nobody
And the band keeps playing on.
You can better whatever deal is made now is gonna be a lot less attractive for yahoo shareholders, and they can thank their good friend Jerry Yang for that.
no means no!
That's what she said.
MICROHOO!
one more restart, huh?
i see dead people...
stuttering stanley!
locked windows
system failure
blue screen of death
oh wait, let's restart.
:)
What's with all the goddamn poems?
Roses are Rred,
Violets are blue,
They wrote those poems
a. Because they love Yahoo!
b. To annoy you.
c. To help them have a poo.
Played some yahoo stock on the last dip after MS walked away...made a cool sum...
when writing yahoo! in a sentence it just makes it seem like everyone is excited! because of the exclamation! mark.
Both of your comments are typical short-sighted Wall St. stupidity. Make a buck now and lose a company tomorrow.
Yahoo and it's corporate culture is a TERRIBLE fit with Microsoft. THey have two completely different and clashing cultures. A buyout will result in Yahoo employees fleeing for the exits. The merger will be difficult and costly. All that will probably occur is what happened with Hotmail, running a once popular service into irrelevance. You'll just get an unsupported Yahoo with proprietary MSN crap grafted onto it.
Microsoft has proven time and time again that it does NOT know how to be either creative or innovative. Those qualities are simply nonexistent in its culture. Think of what would happen if Microsoft bought a company like Apple(not that it would ever happen). You'd get a little short term boost in products and creativity. But eventually all the best people from Apple would leave for other companies or startups.
The only people that want this are short term stock traders and Ballmer. And Ballmer wants this just because he is trying to do something to save his abysmal record as CEO. As usual, he's done the wrong thing in the wrong way.
Yes, Yahoo stockholders might make a quick buck. But in the long term it will be a money losing situation for Microsoft.
Isn't this why MS has been involved in all those anti-trust lawsuits? Because they buy "pieces" of a company, slump on it's development, which leads to eventually running said company into the ground. The remaining pieces they pick up for next to nothing, keep what they want, and wipe out all traces of the business...
The absorption of Yahoo! into MS may take a while, but here is their foot in the door... again.
@Rip
Selling up at 60% above market value is a fairly sound decision short, medium & long term. Yahoo! have been bleeding market share for a long time, so unless you think that yahoo! is grossly undervalue, you sell. Are you seriously telling me that in the face of an offer 62% above market value, a good investor would hold?
Microsoft on the other hand... fair ranting.
More stock manipulation. I'll bet a lot of insiders are making good money by moving the stock up and down by starting and stopping talks, then starting again. Yahoo's stock isn't worth what MS is paying for it so I'm sure the owners of Yahoo don't have much leverage. I'm sure their investors are totally pissed and now Yahoo is going to have to probably take less than what was offered the first time around. Guaranteed the stock will be up by about $3 - $5 tomorrow.
My MicroHoo dream lives again!!
Still not getting why I should give a crap.
To "Rip",
Not to pop your ballon, but a public company does not exist to:
a. To make it's employees happy.
b. Provide income for anybody, but the stock holder.
c. Make the consumer, user, or fan happy.
Also, so what if 50% or more of the current yahoo employees leave. Just like all employees the vast majority ARE replaceable. You are, I am, the idiot screaming at this post saying "he isn't" is. The US percieves itself going into a recession, so just like all the other sheep the Yahoo staff will say they are leaving, but only a few will. They have to make the mortgage payment too.
So simply, Ichan is right. Jerry Yang is a putz... I
stu
WHAT BILL WANT, BILL GET!
Bill doesn't live there any more!
To Mr Stu(PID):
You are the reason corporate America sucks so bad (and I work in it)
"Not to pop your ballon, but a public company does not exist to:
a. To make it's employees happy."
You don't make your employees happy, they leave. Your expense to acquire new employees goes up. Profit goes down. If they don't leave, productivity goes down. Happy employees stay and are productive. All drive up costs and down profits.
"b. Provide income for anybody, but the stock holder."
And what income would that be? Dividends? Few companies pay 'em. About the only thing that you have a "responsibility" to do is run the company right - good solid financials, decent growth, controlled costs, etc. Sadly few any more look at the long term and focus on the short term which is good for nobody.
"c. Make the consumer, user, or fan happy."
Upset your consumers, users, or fans and guess what? Sales dry up and your company closes up. See Dell, Microsoft, GM, etc. for prime examples of this. See Apple, Google, Bose, etc. to see how to do it right. It's no wonder that the companies that keep the fans, consumers, and users happy have better performance than those that don't. You can ignore your customers for so long before they just go elsewhere. Then they tell anyone that will listen and pretty soon you will see lower sales. Continue not making people happy and you will go out of business.
Might I suggest you go back to school and learn about business before you spout your pie hole?
"Sales dry up and your company closes up. See Dell, Microsoft, GM, etc. for prime examples of this"
huh, I'm pretty sure none of these companies dried up, in fact check Microsoft's profits from last quarter. They're all still in business and Dell and GM are making necessary steps to right themselves.
"Might I suggest you go back to school and learn about business before you spout your pie hole?"
wise words you should try to follow
Corporations have one reason to exist: to make money. They aren't here to make you feel happy in your pants, or satisfy every die-hard fan that would go down on them if they were a person, they exist to turn a profit. Period.
It makes good business sense to keep morale up, and it makes sense to satisfy your consumer base, as these will help increase growth and profit margins, but it is by no means an obligation.
If they are public, they have an obligation to pay their stockholder, either through dividends OR just through increased value of their stock. They have an obligation to pay their loans off. They have an obligation to satisfy the moral minimum (not operate outside the boundaries of the law) and that is it.
If I had to appoint someone to run MY business, between you and Stu, I would choose Stu hands down.
As a Google shareholder this whole thing makes me happy... Microsoft will kill Yahoo! because they will not be able to leave the culture or the technology alone, Yahoo's best people will end up at Google, and a significant potion of Yahoo's customers will end up on Google.
What does Yahoo.com do that MSN.com doesn't do? They offer essentially the same services, except one is Microsoft and the other isn't, and Yahoo is #2, while MSN is #3. If this buyout actually goes down I think that the integration of Yahoo into Microsoft will be extremely difficult, and when push comes to shove Microsoft will still be behind Google in 5 years.
IMO Microsoft should fix their core business before trying to conquer another, and if I was a Microsoft shareholder I would not be happy with this acquisition.
OMG!!! Do we really want Microsoft doing to Yahoo what it did to Vista?
Tired of google...cant wait to see what this msyahoo brings good or bad.
Jerry Yang can suck a wang
to "MrStu:"
Technically, you are right that a company's ultimate goal is to provide returns to the owners (shareholders).
But heaven help us if you ever ran a company with your thinking. Then again, I'm guessing that you are far far away from a senior management position.
A. While a company has no direct reason to make employees happy, it does so in order to make money for the shareholders. It is in the best interests of the company to attract and keep talented people. You seem to think people are fungible items. You could not be more wrong. While a low level grunt working a cash register might be easily replaced, other highly skilled people are not. Companies invest time and resources on employees. They have absolutely no desire to see a good employee leave, requiring them to hire and retrain another. Management and senior positions often take quite a long time to get filled, wasting money and resources in the meantime. Any good manager will tell you that hiring and keeping talent is critical to success.
B. I already answered that.
C. How in the world do you think a company makes money? How do you think it stays in business? It creates a product or provides a service that makes its customer "happy." Unless of course you are a monopoly. Then again, that is one reason the US, in general, despises monopolies and otherwise regulates them.
In order for a company to, as you said "only make money for stockholders" it must generate revenue. If it goes around telling customers to piss off and pays all of its employees minimum wage with no benefits and makes them work in a sweat shop, which seems to be what you think companies should do in order to maximize shareholder return, tell me, how long would they be in business?
And sorry to burst your bubble, but many of the top talent at Yahoo have absolutely no financial reason to stay at a new Microhoo.They are either already extremely wealthy(from years of stock options or high pay or both) or are talented enough to find work anywhere. They are at Yahoo because they either enjoy what they or doing or enjoy working at the company. And again, sorry to burst your bubble, but those are the some of the people Microsoft wants as part of the deal. Those are the people that are considered a resource, not a cost. And those are the people I am saying will leave when faced with Microsoft's culture. Of course, some or even a lot will stay, but there will be a talent drain and a decrease in productivity. Probably to Google.
And fyi, I am a Yahoo shareholder. And I think it is a spectacularly bad move. Then again, I'm an investor, not a trader. I buy companies with the intent of holding them for years. I have no interest in a quick 20% one time pop. I'm more interested in a 500% return over time. And I have no desire to own a badly run company like Microsoft, that is currently succeeding through inertia rather than quality product or quality management. And I happen to think that the biggest mistake Yahoo made in the past 10 years was to hire Terry Semel. He literally didn't even know how to use a computer when they hired him. Yahoo should return to it's core competency and slash everything else. It basically needs focus. Yahoo has the brand and user base to succeed. It just needs to execute. Getting bought by Microsoft is a death sentence. Or banishment to purgatory. I can't think of a single acquisition by Microsoft that succeeded more after the acquisition (that's just my recollection, I could be wrong). They all just seem to wither away.
MicroHoo?
51%
Rip,
Microsoft doesn't buy companies and just keep them in tact, they most often assimilate them. Of course they (their identities) whither away, because they cease to exist as a single entity, instead the become a PART of Microsoft.
While not every business that Microsoft has purchased has been a boon for their bottom line they haven't been exactly losing money hand over fist, before or after any of their acquisitions.
It's super that you want to make 500% on your investment with Yahoo, you should have gotten in at their IPO and sold around Dec 24, 1999. The only time Yahoo's stock has done anything but stagnate or decline (long run) since January 2006 was when Microsoft made their offer to buy them out. If I were you I would hope for an MS buyout so you could sell off your new MS stock (since you don't seem too keen on investing in them) and re-invest in something that's actually performing.
@ Draaaainage! :
Of course you are right, the companies are absorbed. I was talking about the product.
And I'm fairly certain that WebTV never made any money. Neither has Hotmail, afaik. That Windows/Office cash cow can mask a lot of stupid/failed business decisions.
I did in fact sell Yahoo back then. However, I kept some because I believed in the fundamental business of Yahoo. So I locked in some massive gains and what shares I have left are still showing nice gains. And by 500%, I meant that my time horizon is 15-20 years on a stock.
And yes, Yahoo hasn't been the greatest investment. Then again, Microsoft stock has been just as bad as Yahoo since 2001. There was a slight bump in value when they paid out a dividend. Otherwise it's been dead money.