Let’s face it, Yahoo’s best days are behind them. They should have jumped at the chance to pay back their much suffering stockholders.
Yahoo’s stock price will continue to suffer, only making them an easier target for other companies. At least with MS they could stand a fighting change against the G-machine.
And, please Jerry, can you you write your sentences with a capital at the beginning. You come off as someone who doesn’t care about details in your email.
If Yahoo merges with AOL I will dump all of my dealings with Yahoo and run screaming into the night.
Dear Yahoo yahoo’s,
Are you nuts. You should fire your president and CEO today. The rejection of the MS bid is nothing more than an arrogant attempt to have Yahoo percieved as a viable cometitor to Google. ASk youself something. How long does it take to recover $45BB on a $7BB annual revenue business? MS should go away and come back when they can aquire Yahoos assets for $45MM in a year or two. Remember Fairmarket? EBAY offered them $2BB. Two years later EBAY bought what was lect of their assets for $6MM. Yes $6 Million. Greed will bite the Yahoo shareholder in the butt if they are to samrt for their own good. Where are all teh alternative white knights?
Yahoo should have accepted MSFT’s offer. How silly of them not to have. There is no way yahoo can compete with Google without a hugh infusion of cash and iteas. Their search engine has never been very good and in this day of social networking sites, their groups and singles offerings are not terribly exciting. Their stock price is going to continue to fall, so sell out to MSFT and let it be their problem.
With all the talk of Yahoo tanking and so on, it is interesting to point out that as of this post time, Yahoo stocks are on the rise. Not that it means anything, of course it could mean something too.
From a financial standpoint, Yahoo is insane. How can they say their value is worth more than the premium that Microsoft offered? The offer was the same as the stock price in November 2007, which means that Yahoo has devalued its own worth in just over three months. Yahoo doesn’t have a flux capacitor and can’t say they are worth what their stock was in the past. If that were the case, I’d still be flying on PanAm.
For Yahoo, it is a very good offer. They should jump on it. Greed will cost them more. If anyone should be concerned about the merger, it should be only Microsoft as they have to absorb a big company and adopt a different culture.
Microsoft should lower it’s bid. Yahoo is a sinking ship so all you’re trying to do is offer it a life preserver.
Yahoo turning down MS offer was a great, strategic move …….. for Microsoft. Give it two months and it will only cost half of that initial offer.
Yahoo! is a great company with a management which can’t get ‘another’ great act together, or is permanently resting on it laurels. Enough already; do the right thing for the company and the shareholders; suck it up and sell!
Yahoo! most definitely should take a offer from MSFT. Fine, they want MSFT to bid more, understandable. They should not buy AOL as a poison pill.
MSFT should NEVER have made this bid in the first place. MSFT shareholders should force Ballmer out. MSFT has not had a new idea in 5 years, and the solution to that very real problem is definitely NOT to buy a company that due to a culture of arrogance has not innovated over the same period. MSFT needs a CEO with vision; that CEO needs management with new, creative ideas that solve problems and increase efficiency and productivity.
No, these companies cannot compete with GOOG alone. But, they most certainly cannot compete with GOOG combined! They each need to pick their space and and make it the best.
AAPL is a great example of a company that lost vision and creativity and almost ceased to exist. Then Jobs came back, saw the “digital lifestyle” and AAPL engineers and programmers made it happen. Did they have to merge to compete with MSFT? No. Did they have to merge to compete with YHOO (the dominant player at the time)? No. The picked something to do well and hit that ball so far out of the ballpark that a few short years later people started accusing them of unfair competition!
YHOO’s share price is down because its revenue is down. Revenue is down because traffic is down. Traffic is down because someone better came along. YHOO arrogantly and incredibly blames GOOG for this. But, these morons had an old Hollywood marketing guy (who probably refers to “the email at the www”) running this company for the past few years. What they heck?
YHOO’s problem is their corporate culture. They hire people and make them fit in. When a company KNOWS they are doing everything right, and it’s everyone else who is wrong, there’s a big problem.
MSFT’s problem is their corporate culture, again, arrogance: “this is the way a computer should be used” and “but, you shouldn’t want to do that” instead of “interesting idea, let us facilitate that.”
Instead of buying a failing company that lacks vision and humility, MSFT should be hiring new management to hire new creative teams and programmers.
Yahoo made a mistake in not taking the offer. As an investor, i am going to take my money from Yahoo.
From purely an internet geek perspective, Microsoft and Yahoo are each woefully mediocre. Joining forces will make them larger, but no less mediocre.
Google will have to stumble before either company (or both together) have a chance. It’s Google’s internet; Microsoft and Yahoo are just living in it.
One product Yahoo has that I love and use is Flickr. (Picasa is more user-friendly, but Flickr is more community-based, which I prefer.)
Selfishly, I worry what will happen to Flickr if Microsoft’s next bid is accepted.
I can’t help but feel bad for Jerry Yang. He is in between a rock and a hard place. It is rare to find a ceo who is so passionate about their company and cares so much for its employees. I don’t see how microsoft could possibly be good for yahoo! but now Yang HAS to do something, whether it be right or wrong. His company is going to be turned upside-down. There aren’t really any good options for the company.
AOL? Seriously? Wait a year and it will be half price. They have nothing left to offer. They too will go the way of Netscape…
YHOO is walking a fine line. The Board better hope Ballmer does not walk – more likely they will up it a few $$$, but not the $40+ that the new YHOO Chairman says he can get – he’s on another planet. If the bid fails, YHOO will be OOB within two years. I love the YHOO product/service line and use it exclusively except search of course – Goog is so much better there. I say the deal with either be done by the EOW or its over. Jerry should get over his ‘hatred’ thing and focus on the biz. If he is as smart as some say – he should negotiate where YHOO usurps MSN ( as it should ) and takes over the Internet space for MSFT and maybe branding as Yahoo by MSFT.
Fellas, the problem here is that YHOO has traded above the offer price for a significant period of time in the past 2 years: during much of early 2006 and some of early 2007, not to mention the takeover-fueled rise this past fall (which I exclude since it was a valuation that wasn’t based on business fundamentals). Given that many investors have bought stock in the past 2 years at prices north of this offer, the BOD would likely get sued if they took this offer. Shareholder activism works in good ways and bad – in this day and age, boards often become paralyzed by the need to show proper fiduciary duty in obtaining the maximum value for shareholders. Therefore, they are very unlikely to accept this bid, as are BODs in similar circumstances (notable exceptions include businesses such as CFC that have had material changes in their operations and finances).
If acquiring Yahoo! is a means-to-an-end for Microsoft, what other comparable acquisition options are there? I believe that is the premium value Yahoo! is looking for. Telling Microsoft to “go fish” is risky but calculated. My $0.02.
MSFT is trying to make WS dream about a future for them whereas, for the best of the worse, tehy really are a company of the past facing a slow death as its only perspective… it’s a fact of live that they stil deny (unless they considerably revamp their core business which is OS and productivity tool)
The sad story behind is that by their desperate move not only they are accelerating the destruction of their own company but also menacing teh future of already battered yahoo…
Only some delusional analyst in Wall Street Can believe that MSFT + YHOO can challenge GOOG dominance of search, in fact they will be much less able to do it combined than they can apart from each other. Users, hence advertiser, are more fickle on internet than anywhere else because no barrier can keep them from changing provider… if they would liek to deal with MSFT they would go to MSN instead of YAHOO or GOOGLE already.
If ever regulator let this franken-takeover happen, user and advertsier alike will flee from both yahoo and msn to google. This would be the first time in corporate history that a company spends billiosn to eventually give more market share to its competitor
As a long time Yahoo user, I’d hate to see Microsoft destroy
this company. After all Microsoft is also clueless about
competing with Google.
On the other hand, the giant sloth may hasten its own irrelevance
in the process of absorbing Yahoo.
So I’m torn what to wish for.
A better alternative may be for Yahoo to team up as an
independent company with Google as was suggested in some of
the trade rags.
msft should take offer off the table, will cause a panic and can purchase at 28 instead of 31. hostile take over doesnt make total sense, suspect culture at yahoo very much anti msft and key people may leave rather than work for msft
As a Microsoft shareholder, I wish Microsoft wold withdraw their bid to Yahoo and spend a portion of that money on enhancing and marketing similar Microsoft assests already in house.
Yahoo blew it. If MSFT is smart it will sit back, let the lawsuits fly and watch Yahoo’s stock reach even lower depths. Then come back and buy it cheaper. Yahoo needs msft more than MSFT needs yahoo.
In the Yahoo case and in all rejections of acquisition proposals the salaries of all officers and board members should be immediately frozen and held to an appropriate small fraction of the amount by which the company trades in excess of the offer at the end of each month. Should the price be lower than the offer salaries would go to zero and corporate officers would incur liability to pay off a proportion of the difference. This modest proposal is in lieu of the harsher take on much current corporate governance which would require slapping corporate officers and board members against a wall and summarily executing them.
Jim Sloan
Registered Investment Adviser, Illinois
If Yahoo does not plan to merge with Microsoft, then they should not consider merging with anyone else. Because Microsoft is the best alliance for Yahoo. Google, AOl etc are not a good option
As a YHOO stock holder, I want the maximum return on my investment and believe YHOO management has failed its investors by rejecting the bid.
Considering Yahoo’s customer service has become worse than Dell’s, I think it folly for them to reject such a bid.
Unless Yahoo decides to reconsider, I think we’ll see them off the landscape by 2010.
I think Yahoo should move away from the their tech business- they will never be able to compete with Google- it will be shot to their pride but they should outsource paid search to Google and focus on their content business, maybe even buy AOL- they are still the kings of display and can solidify that stature with an AOL acquisition-
I don’t own stock in Yahoo, so I can only speak from a consumer’s point of view. I love yahoo and prefer to use it on a daily basis over other sites, including google and msn. I would hate to see it change in any way. I would like to see Yahoo remain independent; although, I don’t know how financially smart this decision would be.
In a micro view of time, Microsoft’s offer is good. But, long term it is not. While Google has become a big player, it’s search engine has lost significant value. That is where Google has a significant weakness. People in the industry call Google the “worthless search engine”. Yahoo is fully capable of tapping into this weakness and remaining a major player. Search engines don’t generate money, but it’s visitors do. A great search engine is the key to long term success.
Why is it “DESPERATE”?? Sounds like yahoo know they have something worth a few nickels. I love it when journalists go for the sensationalist headline…
Yahoo! should not take the MS off and they don’t want to for cultural reasons. Most of the people who work at Y! don’t work at MS for a reason – they don’t like the working atmosphere/corporate philosophy at MS. The merger would be a disaster. Google would be a much better fit, though I think Y! would view the patnership as a bitter pill.
Should Yahoo have accepted the bid? Probably.
Should Microsoft have made it? Absolutely not.
I am familiar with both companies, and worked for one of them (Microsoft), and I believe the integration of Yahoo into Microsoft would be a nightmare and quite possibly a failure. Microsoft’s job one on taking over a company is to break down and extinguish its original corporate culture, which is why so many companies are better *before* Microsoft buys them. Microsoft does not understand that it’s a company’s culture that makes it great and worth buying, to a good extent. Yahoo’s best and brightest are not likely to stick around for that kind of treatment, and above everything else, it’s Yahoo’s best and brightest that Microsoft needs. Where will they go? Well, I rather expect Google would be quite happy to take them on, both for their skills and to tweak Microsoft’s nose.
Every time I think of Microsoft trying to integrate Yahoo, the picture that enters my mind is of that large snake (a python, IIRC), that tried to eat a small crocodile that it had caught. The crocodile wound up sideways in the snake and basically caused it to explode, killing it. Microsoft may be the biggest python in the water, but it shouldn’t try eating a croc.
If Yahoo is looking to bolster invester revenues, a move into emerging markets, video search, one of you tube competitors, the AOL advertising ONLY portion, and a look into web 3.0 is their best bet.
I think Yahoo should have taken it. But moreover, i think MS should not have pursued it and now should drop the bid. Yahoo will tank more anyway and i’d rather put 20B into some other cutting edge startup than buya sinking ship anyway and take on debt for it in the process? No Way!
Microsoft was stupid to offer so much in the first place for a failing business like Yahoo. It would be even dumber for Microsoft to up the bid.
Microsoft should wait a few months, let Yahoo’s stock price drift even lower, and then make a new offer for Yahoo at a more appropriate price. At that point, the Yahoo’s shareholder will be even more desperate to unload their stake for anything that they can get, making it relatively straightforward to win a proxy battle if necessary.
Yahoo is bluffing and not acting in the best interests of their shareholders, what else is new. MSFT should not raise their tender price. In fact Microsoft should lower the offer price and make Yahoo come to them.
Oh yea, I can see Yahoo employees “excited” about working for Microsoft who’s own stock price has languished. These are people who want an exciting and innovative place to work at, Microsoft is anything but creative….Microsoft buys Yahoo and they will be buying a shell after all the good employees leave!
Did Yahoo do the right thing by refusing this offer? Like everything else, it depends.
From the consumer’s point of view, it can only be a bad thing for Yahoo to become part of Microsoft. Refusal was the right course of action for the consumer; a definite yes on this one.
From the Yahoo shareholder’s point of view, the situation isn’t clear. Yes, shareholders would gain financially from a Microsoft takeover. But they could gain even more from a sweeter offer, no matter who it comes from. Therefore it’s still the right approach for Yahoo to refuse the initial offer and try to bid it up, one way or another.
I agree with the pundits that say Yahoo is indulging in some gamesmanship. At the very least they may be in active discussion of a different deal, and buying themselves some more time with this refusal.
Disclaimer: When I buy a new machine, pretty much the very first thing I install is a browser plugin that allows me to filter out online advertising, so I rarely see any such unwanted content from ANY source. Browsing an “ad-enhanced” Internet is slow and annoying; Google is the only company that does it “right” with primarily unobtrusive text advertisements. All these other ad vendors with Flash plugins and animated GIFs and so forth are shooting themselves in the head by making their service unwatchable.
That’s one of the big reasons why Google is a market leader. Yahoo, like Microsoft, is working with a broken business model. Two wrongs merged together just make a bigger wrong.
I think they should take this offer. Yahoo isn’t popular in Europe but I think they got quite good search engine, and much better than MSN- that’s because it’s based on google search engine. Beside Yahoo! contains large amount of different services like Yahoo! TV.
Think that google could offer more for Yahoo! but won’t do that because it’s rather popular than outstanding like google.
—-
Javatech
mobile marketing applications
They both make mistake – Microsoft and Yahoo. Yahoo makes mistake not taking proposal, Microsoft just burns shareholders money paying for dying company.
This was a BIG MISTAKE and what looks to be a move fueled completely by greed. If a more attractive offer was available for Yahoo, it would have been offered a long time ago. This was a better deal for Yahoo than for MS and turning it down will go down as a big a faux pas than all of Pets.com.
Microsoft should move on and consolidate some other smaller search engine/portals and sit back and watch while Yahoo dies on the vine.
Hey Yahoo!, get ready to party like its 1999! Idiots.
LOL! Considering buying AOL?? Are they still in business??
I literally cannot tell you the last time I sent an email (or even saw one) to someone that used AOL as an email provider. While I realize that is not the most statistically significant way to measure the viability of a firm, it sure points to a huge drop in visibility.
This is a great illustration of the day 2 fools met. Microsoft’s intelligence, and focus on shareholder value was questioned after their generous offer and Yahoo is playing a game they cannot win with a sinking value. These 2 companies do not deserve each other.
YHOO has said its underlying value is its employees (the Wheels). Diminishing that value are the current Nuts(Yang et al) above those Wheels. YHOO in one month will be at 19 again. MSFT is holding a pat hand. howzaboutdatformetafors.
Yahoo is crazy not to accept the offer. The only chance they ever have of becoming as big as Google is by getting some good management and that is what Microsoft would bring. Yahoo thinks they are worth more, but without Microsoft they will never be worth anymore than they are now, and they will probably lose value because individually they cannot compete with Google.
Yahoo was lucky to survive the dot com crash. I think this is a clear case of their own over evaluation of the worth of their brand.
The search engine technology itself doesn’t appear to be able to compete with Google. They made a mistake in not accepting the offer.
Yahoo!’s Board of Directors should have definitely taken the Microsoft deal. Yahoo! and Microsoft alone cannot take on Google. Yahoo!’s services are bloated and ad-crazy. Yahoo! seems prone to lose value. At a $44.6 billion deal, a 62% premium, Yahoo! investors would have made a killing. Now that the deal has been rejected, I don’t believe Yahoo! investors would have gained such a return.
They should have accepted the offer. Undervalued at a P/E of 60, with stagnant growth!!!!!! The irony is that on Yahoo’s own finance site, the 1 year est price target is $29.75!!! Yahoo’s stock price has been stagnant for 4 years, all while Google has taken the lead and never looked back. Yahoo’s management has failed them, and is continuing to fail them. I really hope that Microsoft goes for the hostile takeover….even if it fails, Yahoo might grow up.
Definitely not. Microsoft would just ruin Yahoo!, as the company has never produced or maintained a viable Web portal. I’d rather see Yahoo! merge with a young innovative company, such as Google.
Yahoo should take the money & run. Microsoft could pull their offer, let the stock tank & offer much less in six months.
Y! board must be made up of fools. They should have atleast named a counter or been very deliberate what it would take.
MSFT has been the white knight – the only company that could save Y! from itself. Now, I think MSFT should pull its offer and let Y! continue its lingering spiral downward. Let the Y! shareholders file a class action suit against the board for incompetance.
Absolutely not. Enough w BIll Gates attempt to dominate cyberspace. Their Ms Dewey was a flop and although they’re drooling to acquire Yahoo, Jerry Yang is right to steer away unless they want to seriously pay over value.
I’d rather see them merge w Google!!!!!
Yahoo is gambling that they will be worth considerably more in the relative near future or that Microsoft will simply roll over and offer more. This is a sizable gamble as Yahoo’s stock has been trending negative for some time. If I were a large shareholder, I’d be voting to take the deal.
Its a very good offer from MSFT, Yhoo is making a BIG mistake rejecting and now facing its stock to go down.
Yhoo should have taken the offer. the board obviously doesn’t see a good and fair value when presented with one, completely reflecting their own ineffectiveness within the Organization. I hope Microsoft makes and attempt at a hostile takeover. yhoo is “google-eyed over google” and without Microsoft will never be a true competitor with Google, they will remain a “small-time” guy.
I would let Yahoo sit for awhile until they see no other offers are out there, then Microsoft should come back with a $25 offer, take it or leave it. Yahoo is no Google, but with Microsoft’s clout (money) maybe they could give them a run for it.
Just to point out… the only reason Yahoo traded to $31 “as recently as november” was on the NY Post rumor that Microsoft was gong to buy Yahoo… not because of any investors willing to assign a $31 fundamental price to the underlying business….
They should except microsoft offer.
It is good offer. Yahoo is still having hard time get going with their
website.
At one time, not too long ago, Microsoft was the monpolizing beast. In this Internet age, it is Google. They (Google) has such a lock on the online advertising segment, that other players need to join forces or give up that lucrative business.
YHOO and MS are a good fit to balance out Google’s supremacy.
Yes, I certainly think Microsoft should up their offer for YHOO. YHOO has a MUCH friendlier site than Msft and everyone I talk to, says so and used YHOO, including me. It’s just a fun & very pleasant page to go to, w/ ALL sorts of medical news, alternative being the biggest subject I love to read about & learn. YHOO is NOT going away and they have very, very talented, younger people that know how to attract people to their site. The dumb Google site is NOT half as friendly; I tried it to just see and cannot even sign on; it keeps saying I already have an account, which I don’t. I love the YHOO site. Msft is just trying to flex it’s big muscle, but they will have to pay more to get YHOO’s talent.
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I think everyone is missing the point here – if the deal had gone through (or does so in the future), this would have been an acquisition, not a merger – the only changes would be minor personnel changes (i.e. Yahoo-ers fleeing the evil empire) and a ton of cross-selling on either brand. Other than that, it’s business as usual for Yahoo! and MS.
Was it a smart decision for Microsoft?
Yes, but the offer was too big. Microsoft was really late to the online game, MSN is terrible and they need another online property to compete effectively w/ Google. Yahoo! is hurting badly, Microsoft simply smelled blood and pounced.
Was the deal worth it for Yahoo!?
Yes, based on Yahoo!s stock price the day before the offer. No, if Yahoo! actually innovates in the next year or 2 and moves forward to reclaim a dominant position in several areas they’ve been slacking in, which is just about everything due to Terry Semel. This is attainable… well, if demand still exists, and that is the $45 billion dollar question. If they innovate and people don’t show up, then Yang will be eating his hat.
Spoil alert!
Future scenarios for AOL and Yahoo! could involve being acquired by telecommunications companies like AT&T or Verizon who are trying to get into the content business, seeing as how mobile will rule everything in the near future and they have no, uh, content.
And for Steve in Colombus, OH… AOL is still around and doing quite well, thanks. Maybe you should actually learn about something before you start preaching about it. So get on the bus, I’m taking your ignorance to school…
As of Dec 07, AOL has the…
Top 3 Web network (113 million domestic monthly unique visitors, 230 million global monthly unique visitors, 48 billion quarterly domestic page views)
Largest Display Network (168.1MM Monthly Uvs) w/ 91% reach
No. 1 IM platform (AIM)
No. 1 Mapping site (Mapquest)
No. 1 Money & Finance site (yep, we passed Yahoo! Finance)
No. 1 Celebrity site (TMZ)
No. 1 African American site (Black Voices)
Leading video search product (Truveo)
Top 3 in e-mail, movies, and others
Hopefully you learned something here kid… please leave your ignorance at home next time, thanks.