I agree with most of what you said, but not the last point. YHOO shareholders may not like the idea of MS running the show, but they will LOVE the idea of a 60% premium on their stock price, and will HATE the idea of losing it in a flash if the deal is voted down. The few shareholder who have genuine loyalty to the brand probably don't have enough power to prevent a "yes" vote.
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Apple and Others Considering Bids for Yahoo?
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I agree with most of what you said, but not the last point. YHOO shareholders may not like the idea of MS running the show, but they will LOVE the idea of a 60% premium on their stock price, and will HATE the idea of losing it in a flash if the deal is voted down. The few shareholder who have genuine loyalty to the brand probably don't have enough power to prevent a "yes" vote.
I call BS on this story. There is no reason Apple would jeopardize its good relations with Google in order TRY save a failing Yahoo, and possibly be taken down by it.
I think it is a mistake for Microsoft as well, but Microsoft may be able to use some of their vast resources to make a go of it.
I think it is a mistake for Microsoft as well, but Microsoft may be able to use some of their vast resources to make a go of it.
wrong wrong wrong
Yahoo offers absolutely nothing that Apple wants, need, or doesn't already have in the .Mac service. How much "tighter integration" to OS-X can there be? .Mac already has it's own preference panel, is central to some of the Mac's basic services, integrates tightly with all the iLife applications and some of the iWork ones as well.
This whole thread is a waste of time if you think about it even for a second. One of the primary rules of acquisitions is that you don't buy a company unless it has something you need. Buying Yahoo just to "stop Microsoft" would be foolhardy in the extreme and the board would reject it (and possibly fire whomever suggested it.)
This is just Yahoo simultaneously pumping up the price and desperately seeking anyone but Microsoft to buy them.
At the very least, if Apple decided it *did* want something that Yahoo had that they did not (online advertising clout?, Yahoo Maps?), they would have to pare off all the duplicate services and thus gut or throw away three quarters (or more), of Yahoo. I can't see this as anything but dumb.
I don't think you are thinking straight here. Or perhaps you have never used .Mac?
Yahoo offers absolutely nothing that Apple wants, need, or doesn't already have in the .Mac service. How much "tighter integration" to OS-X can there be? .Mac already has it's own preference panel, is central to some of the Mac's basic services, integrates tightly with all the iLife applications and some of the iWork ones as well.
This whole thread is a waste of time if you think about it even for a second. One of the primary rules of acquisitions is that you don't buy a company unless it has something you need. Buying Yahoo just to "stop Microsoft" would be foolhardy in the extreme and the board would reject it (and possibly fire whomever suggested it.)
This is just Yahoo simultaneously pumping up the price and desperately seeking anyone but Microsoft to buy them.
At the very least, if Apple decided it *did* want something that Yahoo had that they did not (online advertising clout?, Yahoo Maps?), they would have to pare off all the duplicate services and thus gut or throw away three quarters (or more), of Yahoo. I can't see this as anything but dumb.
And yet, they ship every copy of Windows with a Microsoft-owned MSN search engine as default...
GOOGLE has a ....'classier' and feel and template to it than.....
YAHOO-i mean-
I get a mental image of 'Ma get the fritters a'cookin while me and Jethro and pappy go brew us up a batch of corn whisky...'
YAHOO-i mean-
I get a mental image of 'Ma get the fritters a'cookin while me and Jethro and pappy go brew us up a batch of corn whisky...'
Doesn't seem like that impossible an idea.
Steve Jobs like integration. Thats one of the reasons why Apple products are successful. Apple writes the software and makes the hardware. They already extended into content business with iTunes. Why not extend Apple onto the web itself. Replace .Mac with Yahoo for Mac.
Remember Google is talking to Yahoo about how to fend off an attack. One approach might be to break Yahoo up into pieces. Apple could buy or get into an agreement with one of the pieces. Search is a dead business. Google has it covered. But what about online email, IM?
Steve Jobs like integration. Thats one of the reasons why Apple products are successful. Apple writes the software and makes the hardware. They already extended into content business with iTunes. Why not extend Apple onto the web itself. Replace .Mac with Yahoo for Mac.
Remember Google is talking to Yahoo about how to fend off an attack. One approach might be to break Yahoo up into pieces. Apple could buy or get into an agreement with one of the pieces. Search is a dead business. Google has it covered. But what about online email, IM?
I think it would be actually. Unlike companies like Apple and MS, most of Google's value is tied to it's stock. I'm not positive of this, but many of their services are free and the Internet Ad business, although very lucrative, is not making Google billions of dollars a year. So a lot of their value maybe on paper only. With over three times the net revenue of Google, MS could buy them.
Google's revenue last year was a shade under $12bn.
While their market cap may be a little skewed compared to revenues, they most certainly do generate billions of dollars per year.
This is very important. Conventional wisdom holds that what Microsoft is buying is 100% user-eyeballs and habits. The engineers at Yahoo, what few good ones are left, will leave for greener pastures. There's absolutely no sense in being stuck on a likely-sinking ship, even if you are optimistic that five years from now they might be able to pull it out. MS will kill Yahoo culture, and it will take at least five years for a new culture to take hold and the level of innovation regain its previous levels.
As a counter to that, though, I offer this: I've been seeing a lot of really good candidates coming in the door looking for a new job, who are leaving Yahoo because they're sick of the place. That seemed to peak last fall, and has descended to a slow trickle in the last month or so. From speaking with the guys leaving Yahoo, almost all of the "real" talent has already left the ship. And, yes, a lot of them apparently went to Apple or Google. Go figure.
Which is important as a counter because what is left there are the folks who have a high tendency towards "hunkering down" and riding out storms, even when they appear interminable.
All that being said, there are a few bright stars in the user-community bits of Yahoo, most notably Flickr. The community there has only fairly recently recovered from the Yahoo buy-out. I'm not sure how it will fare once Microsoft gets its grubby hands on it. For my pictures, I'm moving to Google's Picassa site instead. I just hope Apple TV "Take 3" will allow streaming from that site instead of deep inside the Borg mother ship!
For those wondering is Microsoft-ownership is really that bad, take the poster child of "successful" Microsoft integration: hotmail. Even setting aside the years of turmoil and strife and looking at it today, it is an abomination of a service. The editor sucks. The interface has more bugs than features. It doesn't play well with local mail clients (without upgrading to "Windows Live Mail Plus!" ... what is Microsoft's fascination with "Plus" and the exclamation point?) My wife needed to send an email out to a large group of people (she volunteers in the local girls' softball league and needed to email all the parents in one division); Hotmail wouldn't do more than a handful of addresses at a time (requiring eight separate emails to be sent out), and also wouldn't allow a particular email to be resent (the "back" button, for instance, clears out the composed email), so she ended up composing the email twice (the second time in a separate application so she could just paste it into the Hotmail window the next seven times). So, we moved her over to a GMail account, in the hopes of using the "forwarding" feature of Hotmail (which is right there under "Options") to send all the replies that way instead. Except, oops, "forwarding" only allows you to forward to now-defunct Microsoft-operated mail domains (hotmail.com, msn.com, live.com)! How useless!
Anyway, I for one am not hoping for Apple to swoop in here on a white horse. The real assets have already left the building, or will leave the building once the mother ship descends (meaning, six months afterwards, as there are likely to be retention bonuses for anyone willing to stick it out 6 months). It is possible that the useful bits will end up being jettisoned out in any case (I've read a few times opinions stating that Flickr would get sold off or spun out). The current stock is already overvalued, and Microsoft's preemptive hostile bid has sent it soaring far beyond any conceivably rationalizable value. Apple jumping in now would be a waste of their money.
Sorry, Yahoo. The company has been sorely mismanaged over the past several years, and I am afraid it is terminal. No sense throwing good money down after bad.
Apple would be stupid to acquire Yahoo. In 2008 Yahoo is all but irrelevant. I can't think of one thing Yahoo does, that isn't being done much better by somebody else. Apple has done so many things right up until now, it would be a real shame to see them throw it all away on a 90's-era search engine. Stay the course, Steve. Keep producing the best hardware coupled with the best software and eventually you'll kick Microsoft in the a$$. 
Smart
Actually, I think it's a smart move for Microsoft, a company I detest for their complete lack of innovation in the computer industry and technology. If the world really relied on Microsoft (as some believe), we'd be using DOS still today. The only way Microsoft can stay relevent into the future is to acquire a company that will always be relevent and innovative. Thus, the takeover of Yahoo. Nobody else really needs Yahoo. Apple certainly doesn't need Yahoo to stay relevent, Apple creates innovations. Since Microsoft apparently is unable to do so it is smart on their part to acquire something that will enable them to. Yahoo will always be relevent and it's a safe smart choice. Very Microsoft-like choice. Let's hope they buy it turn it into garbage like everything else they touch and leave Google and Apple alone. It's weird too... Microsoft hasn't stolen anything from Apple in a long time. They may not be losing ground in terms of cash, but they most definitely are not thought of by ANYONE to be innovative or relevent anymore. In 5 years they could be completely irrelevent at the speed technology moves.
Actually, I think it's a smart move for Microsoft, a company I detest for their complete lack of innovation in the computer industry and technology. If the world really relied on Microsoft (as some believe), we'd be using DOS still today. The only way Microsoft can stay relevent into the future is to acquire a company that will always be relevent and innovative. Thus, the takeover of Yahoo. Nobody else really needs Yahoo. Apple certainly doesn't need Yahoo to stay relevent, Apple creates innovations. Since Microsoft apparently is unable to do so it is smart on their part to acquire something that will enable them to. Yahoo will always be relevent and it's a safe smart choice. Very Microsoft-like choice. Let's hope they buy it turn it into garbage like everything else they touch and leave Google and Apple alone. It's weird too... Microsoft hasn't stolen anything from Apple in a long time. They may not be losing ground in terms of cash, but they most definitely are not thought of by ANYONE to be innovative or relevent anymore. In 5 years they could be completely irrelevent at the speed technology moves.
Um, I'm not sure if you were directing this to someone else, but I never said anything along the lines of "Apple should buy Yahoo!"...
There net income was around 4.2 billion, compared to MS which were around 14.02 billion.
That's a strange way of thinking about it, considering 's older than MS, Y! and Google.
That'd be amazing. MS shareholders would demand Ballmer's head.
This article is bogus. Apple doesn't have close to the money to outbid Microsoft for Yahoo. Dream on guys, it's business 101!
It is perfectly reasonable to think that Apple could expand is innovation into a web portal. Think of .Mac, but with tighter integration to OS X and the iPhone. I can imagine some slick features. Apple could simplify a whole lot of aspects of my life taking on a bigger Internet presence...
Remember, there were MP3 players before the iPod!
It's possible Apple has considered this, but as another person already mentioned, the cost to hire away Yahoo! employees and create a new division is much cheaper.
If Apple were to do it and upset Google, they better hurry up and find an alternative for YouTube and Maps on the iPhone!
I get that. However...
Exactly. I am sure that Steve Jobs and people at Apple have thought of jumping into it more than we can imagine. However, when the working relationship with others, such as Google for one with iPhone, pays off both ways, why would we think that Steve Jobs wants to throw the balance...? Even though .Mac is not as appealing as they hope, I am sure, if they knew how, they would've acted more aggressively. But who knows? They might in the near future. That's my 2 cents.
Cheers!
Agree, Apple doesn't have the cash to buy Yahoo.
In fact if Apple designed a portal/yahoo like service it would immediately be the best online and cost a fraction of it would be to buy Yahoo.
Plus Safari web browser and games would work correctly on a Mac for a change.
In fact if Apple designed a portal/yahoo like service it would immediately be the best online and cost a fraction of it would be to buy Yahoo.
Plus Safari web browser and games would work correctly on a Mac for a change.
No. Google's advertising business is a cash machine. For FY 2007, they net'ed $4.2B on $16.6B in sales with $14.2B in cash on hand. Those are B's as in billions.
This is hilarious, I love it. Instead of fixing, start a new one ground up. Wonder about those non-compete clauses tho. If GOOG did this, it would be antitrust.
Apple would be stupid to acquire Yahoo. In 2008 Yahoo is all but irrelevant. I can't think of one thing Yahoo does, that isn't being done much better by somebody else. Apple has done so many things right up until now, it would be a real shame to see them throw it all away on a 90's-era search engine. Stay the course, Steve. Keep producing the best hardware coupled with the best software and eventually you'll kick Microsoft in the a$$.
Exactly.
Ya--WHHHOOOOOOO!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Non-compete clauses are illegal in the state of California*. Not an issue.
BTW, what do you think happens to people with massive experience in an industry like, say, web services, who decide to leave their jobs? Are they supposed to move to Montana and get in on the ground floor of Alpaca raising?
[Edit: * There are exceptions, but they deal with substantial owners of privately-held companies and partnerships, not standard employees.]