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]
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.