"The Yahoo Board is undertaking a deliberate review process," the Sunnyvale, California, company said on its website.<\/p>\n
"This will include evaluating all of the company's strategic alternatives — including maintaining Yahoo as an independent company. A review process like this is fluid, and it can take quite a bit of time."<\/p>\n
Yahoo is a "complex company" with promising stakes in search engine Alibaba in China and Yahoo Japan that would have to be valued into an acquisition price, according to financial analysts.<\/p>\n
Yahoo boasts more than 500 million users worldwide and launched a new advertising platform last year.<\/p>\n
Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang said last week that the company is facing a "headwind" this year but that he expects it to start making more money in 2009.<\/p>\n
Software giant Microsoft urged Yahoo to accept the offer it announced on Friday, adding it hopes to get a quick response from the major Internet player.<\/p>\n
"We think it's a generous one," Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said on Monday at the US firm's annual conference with analysts in New York.<\/p>\n
The offer represents a tempting 62 percent premium on Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday.<\/p>\n
"We trust the Yahoo board and the Yahoo shareholders will join with us quickly in deciding to move down an integrated path," Ballmer said.<\/p>\n
Google on Sunday condemned Microsoft's effort as an attack on the very independence of the Internet.<\/p>\n
"Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions," said David Drummond, Google's senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer.<\/p>\n
"This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation."<\/p>\n
By Monday, unconfirmed reports surfaced that Google's chief executive had called Yang to offer to help the company resist any hostile takeover campaign by Microsoft.<\/p>\n
Yahoo would not confirm whether Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has contacted Yang.<\/p>\n
Yahoo has received calls from "a number of interested parties" and has a wide range of strategic options, a source close to Yahoo told AFP.<\/p>\n
Those options could include outsourcing online advertising to arch-rival Google, a proven master at pumping revenues from that well.<\/p>\n
If it spurns Microsoft's offer, Yahoo's board of directors will be under pressure to give stockholders a soothing cash payout or even borrow money to buy back shares and turn the firm private.<\/p>\n
Analysts at Briefing.com contend Yahoo executives believe Microsoft is undervaluing the firm and are considering revisiting failed alliance talks it had with California rival Google last year.<\/p>\n
Yahoo remains tight-lipped, only going so far as to repeat that its board "is carefully and thoroughly evaluating the Microsoft proposal in the context of all of the company's strategic alternatives."<\/p>\n
Talk of a potentially Internet-altering merger between Yahoo and Microsoft has ricocheted online since the world's leading software maker announced a bid for the Internet portal in a strategy aimed at competing with Google.<\/p>\n
"We wanted this offer to be attractive to Yahoo shareholders," said Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer.<\/p>\n
The move comes as Yahoo is losing ground rapidly in the Internet space to Google, the search leader which has cashed in on the market for online advertising.<\/p>\n
Yahoo announced plans last week to layoff 1,000 workers, seven percent of its employees, as part of an effort to reallocate resources and bolster its bottom line.<\/p>\n