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Microsoft Walking Away from Yahoo Acquisition
- Thread starter HiRez
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The Borg are who they were. Now, thanks to the Apple ads, they are the fat doofus that no one is afraid of.
It was a no-win situation. Having backed down from a fight they look too weak to follow through on their threats. Had it gone through, it would have left them in debt and trying to digest a large, hostile organization (unless, of course, you thought they would have made a brilliant success of it). The whole affair seemed desperate to me.
This is the hostile takeover Microsoft-style. Yahoo stock will plunge, there will be possible stockholder lawsuits, Yahoo will be knocked down.
Maybe MS buys, or just attempts to stab the weakened in the back. That is their MO after all.
Maybe MS buys, or just attempts to stab the weakened in the back. That is their MO after all.
Two questions:
How will we be able to tell?
Who cares?
I would have enjoyed the schardenfreude aspects of these two lame ducks getting into bed together, and then watching them be insignificant together, but otherwise this is a non story of epic proportions.
How will we be able to tell?
Who cares?
I would have enjoyed the schardenfreude aspects of these two lame ducks getting into bed together, and then watching them be insignificant together, but otherwise this is a non story of epic proportions.
oh thank the Jesus
Microsoft taking over my Flickr, my Yahoo IM and yahoo mail and the like, was just too much to take.
It's not like Yahoo makes stuff that works particularly well - their videos and their mobile services are a stew of excuses and fails - but MS? Frak that!
Microsoft taking over my Flickr, my Yahoo IM and yahoo mail and the like, was just too much to take.
It's not like Yahoo makes stuff that works particularly well - their videos and their mobile services are a stew of excuses and fails - but MS? Frak that!
Well, let's be fair. Google's search and advertising service were and still are heads and shoulders above Yahoo and MSN. Practically everything else Google has launched has been irrelevant.
There has been tons of hype around Google's other services—Gmail, Gtalk, Orchid, Orkut, Picasa, etc and yet none of these additional services have managed to overtake Yahoo and Microsoft's competing services (Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, MSN Messanger, Flickr, etc).
Yahoo has some great intellectual property including a successful homepage that still ranks as one of the highest viewed pages on the Internet. They just don't have a long-term strategy as to what to do with all their eyeballs.
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)
The new Yahoo chat has video conferencing for the Mac now. MS messenger doesnt . Could be Yahoo has something up it's sleeve . Microsoft doesnt back down normally. I don't think this is over yet.
njudah said:
The new Yahoo chat has video conferencing for the Mac now. MS messenger doesnt . Could be Yahoo has something up it's sleeve . Microsoft doesnt back down normally. I don't think this is over yet.
This is good, but I think that this is only the start. I think that Microsoft will try again, once Yahoo!'s stock plunges even further. My bet is that it, unfortunately, will happen.
When they do take over, then we will all be saying, "they are who we thought they were!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzpA4cWjhgs
(watch the clip, and substitute Yahoo! for coors light...)
When they do take over, then we will all be saying, "they are who we thought they were!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzpA4cWjhgs
(watch the clip, and substitute Yahoo! for coors light...)
There was no pragmatism involved and no-one looks like a leader. It was always a bad deal for both of them, but neither had the sense to realise it. Yahoo was for sale, but at $53 billion - a price M$ couldn't afford or justify.
Both shares are flatlining: Yahoo are where they were a year ago and only three times higher than where they were five years ago: hovering below $30! M$ are equally unexciting.
And Yahoo needs a loss making albatross like it needs a hole in the head. M$ needs Yahoo to make a news story about ad revenue. But Yahoo is already outsourcing advertising services to Google, so it wouldn't work. M$ hates and fears Google, because Google knows what it's doing. It's a demonstration of M$'s desperation that they've declared themselves in need of this deal. But does anyone really think Google would have not pulled the plug if it had gone ahead? And there was no way either of them has a clue how to produce products anyone wants. Pathetic really.
In five years time there will be no Yahoo, Ask or AOL and M$ will be worth 1/4 of what it is today and falling. Bet against any of these outcomes and you're backing losers. And hopefully someone will have killed Facebook and put Zuckerberg in jail for bad taste by then too.
Both shares are flatlining: Yahoo are where they were a year ago and only three times higher than where they were five years ago: hovering below $30! M$ are equally unexciting.
And Yahoo needs a loss making albatross like it needs a hole in the head. M$ needs Yahoo to make a news story about ad revenue. But Yahoo is already outsourcing advertising services to Google, so it wouldn't work. M$ hates and fears Google, because Google knows what it's doing. It's a demonstration of M$'s desperation that they've declared themselves in need of this deal. But does anyone really think Google would have not pulled the plug if it had gone ahead? And there was no way either of them has a clue how to produce products anyone wants. Pathetic really.
In five years time there will be no Yahoo, Ask or AOL and M$ will be worth 1/4 of what it is today and falling. Bet against any of these outcomes and you're backing losers. And hopefully someone will have killed Facebook and put Zuckerberg in jail for bad taste by then too.
As far as I see it the good guys won.
Well done to Jerry Yang for playing this one smartly. Who looks like the better leader now? I guess Ballmer was pragmatic, which is something I didn't think we'd see, but Yahoo definitely can score this a win. They never wanted to be taken over, least of all by Microsoft and now they have their wishes.
Microsoft should try buy AOL I reckon next. The “corporate cultures” the analysts like to talk about couldn't be better matched.
Except for GMail. Who heard of gigabytes of free email, from the major services, before GMail?
This is a business model/internet real estate issue. Which one works, which one people like and which one makes money?
M$ have MSN. If they knew what they were doing, they would make MSN better and make more money from it. They don't, they can't. Buying Yahoo is just desperate. If I were M$ [I'd shoot myself but...] I'd greenmail Yahoo down to half their current value, buy them in the yard sale and kill the brand.
That's the only way to compete with the superiority of Google and stay a player in the game. They may yet do this. But in the absence of any credible innovation in either company, Google will still win.
M$ have MSN. If they knew what they were doing, they would make MSN better and make more money from it. They don't, they can't. Buying Yahoo is just desperate. If I were M$ [I'd shoot myself but...] I'd greenmail Yahoo down to half their current value, buy them in the yard sale and kill the brand.
That's the only way to compete with the superiority of Google and stay a player in the game. They may yet do this. But in the absence of any credible innovation in either company, Google will still win.
I wouldn't say irrelevant, but last time I saw it only had roughly one third the users of either MS Mail or Yahoo! Mail (separately, not combined). So if those three were the only ones (of course they are not) that would be something like a 15% market share. Which is much lower than Yahoo!'s search marketshare, which people are calling irrelevant.
I see a lot of people saying that Yahoo!'s stock price is going to suffer because of this, which actually isn't true.
Before the announcement of the intended purchase, YHOO was trading at $19 per share. Since Microsoft was essentially offering $29 per share, a lot of people started buying YHOO at $29. Now that there is no impending purchase, YHOO will go back to $19.
What's changed is the rationale for the perception of the company's value. During the time of the proposed merger, the value was perceived as $29 per share because that was what YHOO shareholders could expect to get from Microsoft (about 0.95 MSFT shares per share of YHOO, plus $15 per share of YHOO). Now that the merger is off, purchasers will once again be basing their value expectation on Yahoo!'s revenue, price-to-earnings ratio, etc.
I will be VERY surprised if YHOO trades much below $19 on Monday. If you can do any after-hours trading this weekend, it would be a good move to sell some YHOO short.
Before the announcement of the intended purchase, YHOO was trading at $19 per share. Since Microsoft was essentially offering $29 per share, a lot of people started buying YHOO at $29. Now that there is no impending purchase, YHOO will go back to $19.
What's changed is the rationale for the perception of the company's value. During the time of the proposed merger, the value was perceived as $29 per share because that was what YHOO shareholders could expect to get from Microsoft (about 0.95 MSFT shares per share of YHOO, plus $15 per share of YHOO). Now that the merger is off, purchasers will once again be basing their value expectation on Yahoo!'s revenue, price-to-earnings ratio, etc.
I will be VERY surprised if YHOO trades much below $19 on Monday. If you can do any after-hours trading this weekend, it would be a good move to sell some YHOO short.
Oracle should be deemed the Borg over Microsoft. Oracle didn't give-up as easily as Microsoft with their most historic purchase of Peoplesoft.
Microsoft has lost it's edge. The Microsoft of the past would have kept improving their search product at a break-neck pace that would eventually surpass the competition. They did that at any cost.
Currently their search is inferior to Googles and it should have been up-to-par by now. Microsoft would be better served buying Facebook and weaving MSN search into it.
But how much does Google make from GMail? And how much do its ad partners make? That's the true relevance of GMail.
Two bits of advice:
1. There are five days in a week and thirty or so in a month. Everything won't happen on Monday.
2. Take your crystal ball back to Walmart, it's faulty.
Yahoo is damaged goods and M$ is impotent. Yahoo will fall enough to make it worth M$ having another go.
1. There are five days in a week and thirty or so in a month. Everything won't happen on Monday.
2. Take your crystal ball back to Walmart, it's faulty.
Yahoo is damaged goods and M$ is impotent. Yahoo will fall enough to make it worth M$ having another go.
Because it's extremely interesting, and many of us enjoy watching msft's pitiful demise.
I frankly hate msft with a passion, and could read about their despair all day long.
The sound of the "Day Traders" popping their brains out, because they bought YHOO at $29 and hoped to make a quick buck, is worth Microsoft walking away.
I forget the financial forum I was on, but man oh man, the daysies are hopping mad Nothing would tickle me more than to see these guys get trapped in YHOO and lose their shirts at $19 a share.
They are leeches and a real detriment to companies. They have no emotional attachment to the stocks they own, it might as well be cattle. They don't care for the industry, the user, or even if the employees keep their jobs. It's all about the fast buck.
Did I say I hope they get burned? (The ones who bought at $29 and just knew that they were going to make $4 a share).
I forget the financial forum I was on, but man oh man, the daysies are hopping mad
Nothing would tickle me more than to see these guys get trapped in YHOO and lose their shirts at $19 a share.They are leeches and a real detriment to companies. They have no emotional attachment to the stocks they own, it might as well be cattle. They don't care for the industry, the user, or even if the employees keep their jobs. It's all about the fast buck.
Did I say I hope they get burned?
(The ones who bought at $29 and just knew that they were going to make $4 a share).
Yahoo stock holders are the losers
If I was a Yahoo stockholder, I would vote negative on this story.
Yahoo stock will continue to fall and Microsoft will still end up with Yahoo at bargain basement prices. The Yahoo directors will still get their big money but the stockholders will get screwed over.
If I was a Yahoo stockholder, I would vote negative on this story.
Yahoo stock will continue to fall and Microsoft will still end up with Yahoo at bargain basement prices. The Yahoo directors will still get their big money but the stockholders will get screwed over.