Microsoft offers to acquire Yahoo

I just think this is a really bad idea. Competition is a good thing! Yahoo, MS and Google were giving each other a good go. Now it'll only be MS and Google.

I don't like it.
 
EtienneK said:
I just think this is a really bad idea. Competition is a good thing! Yahoo, MS and Google were giving each other a good go. Now it'll only be MS and Google.

I don't like it.
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Yep - in the online world as with everything else, others innovate, Microsoft aquires...
 
lol. Moogle.

Seriously, I would rather rub glass into my eyes than use an "advertising powerhouse" created by M$.
 
Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine:

Yahoo, I’ve long argued, is the last old media company, for it operates on the old-media model: It owns or controls content, markets to bring audience in, then bombards us with ads until we leave. Contrast that with Google, which comes to us with its ads and content and tools, all of which I can distribute on my blog. Yahoo, like media before it, is centralized. Google is distributed.

It’s appropriate, then, that Yahoo is being bought by what one could say is the last old technology company, Microsoft. For Microsoft still operates on a model of control: closed in an open era. They will get along well together.

This is not a deal about content. At an entrepreneurial conference in New York this week, OnMedia, a venture capitalist said that the “perceived value of content is approaching zero.” That’s a kick in the kidneys to us content people.

No, this is a deal about audience and advertising. After the big guys consolidated all the ad networks they could — aQuantive to Microsoft, Tacoda to AOL, Doubleclick to Google (the EU willing) — next they’re buying up audience in bulk. That’s what Yahoo is, really. They call it a firehose: people in bulk, us as masses.

The reason this is happening is that advertisers and their agencies are still stupidly treating and buying us as masses — they want everything to operate like the one medium they understand: TV. (This is why, in the U.S., even as television’s audience shrinks, the rates paid for advertising continue to increase — because, oddly, the decrease in audience is creating a market scarcity in commercials’ reach).

This is just as well for Yahoo, which had no strategy, really. They’d gone as far as they could with the old-media model, as exploited by the last CEO, former movie-studio head Terry Semel. Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang started saying the right things about turning Yahoo into a platform, but it probably would have taken years to turn his culture around. They were too used to operating like a movie studio or publishing house.

Will this be big enough to beat Google? No, because big won’t win in the end. Open will.
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link
 
omfs

i would sell if i was yahooooooooooooooooooo

then i would go and buy a few hundred islands and retire
 
killadoob said:
omfs

i would sell if i was yahooooooooooooooooooo

then i would go and buy a few hundred islands and retire
Click to expand...

Rather buy a country, islands will disappear with global warming. Any offers for SA? Great potential and pretty powerless to prevent a sale.
 
Ha, I was just waiting for Yahoo and MS to try get together in some way, it seemed inevitable to me as MS's only possible hope of competing with Google. After years of trying, neither can even come close to making a search engine as good as Google's or make significant headway in online advertising (and who uses Hotmail), so it would make sense.

It sounds like desperation though. That's quite a lot of dough, even for MS. To further the "marriage" analogy used in the article, it sounds like two desperate, lonely ugly people who've reached middle age and decide to 'settle' because they're afraid to get old alone :) OK, stupid analogy.

It might be good for us for Google to have better competition, but I wish MS would just compete by making a goddamn better mousetrap already. This just reeks of their tired old strategy of attempting to leverage size/dominance etc. (Yahoo's in terms of online presence/activities).
 
Microsoft BUYS Yahoo!

As rumored in our recent newsletter “Is Yahoo a Buying Opportunity” Microsoft this morning has made a bid to acquire Yahoo at a 64% premium to Thursday’s closing stock price to represent a $44.6 BILLION value, which is projected to be over a 30X EBITA multiple offer on projected 2008 earnings. Microsoft will allow Yahoo investors to accept stock or cash. Many expected that with the stock price now so low and recent layoffs that Microsoft would not be interested in the company, but as rumored by sources deep inside Yahoo, there is significant history between Yahoo and Microsoft.

Terry Semel, former CEO of Yahoo, and Microsoft entered talks in late 2006 and continued to discuss an acquisition until Feb 2nd, 2007 when a letter was sent by Semel to Microsoft explaining that Yahoo didn’t feel it was the right move at this time. Analysts speculate that Yahoo saw more potential value than was being offered at that time. With Semel out and Jerry Yang in things changed. With the current battering of the price to as low as $18 a share, Microsoft has aggressively moved in an pulled a Murdoch by offering a premium price that is unlikely to be challenged by another. Some sources say that the bid could go as high as $40 a share.

Yahoo has had a tough year in 2007 with slipping search share, drastic loss of senior management, declining profits, and media attention focused on praising Google. It has made some bold moves in paying high acquisition premiums such as Right Media in order to stimulate change and growth inside the organization. However the stock price continued to slide and broke the $20 barrier last week.

Adotas will keep you updated on the unfolding events related to the acquisition as the day moves on.

$44.6B
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http://www.adotas.com/2008/02/microsoft-buys-yahoo/
 
That "Microsoft BUYS Yahoo" headline is patently false, WTF - they've merely put in a bid.
 
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