“Microsoft Corp. has pounced on slumping Internet icon Yahoo Inc. with an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion in its boldest bid yet to challenge Google Inc.’s dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets,” Michael Liedtke reports for The Associated Press.
“The surprise offer of $31 per share, made late Thursday and announced Friday, comes with Sunnyvale-based Yahoo in a vulnerable position,” Liedtke reports.
“With its profits steadily sliding, Yahoo’s stock slipped to a four-year low earlier this week and a new management team has been trying to steer a turnaround sees more turbulence through 2008,” Liedtke reports.
“In a letter to Yahoo’s board of directors, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer… revealed in the letter that Yahoo had rebuffed a previous overture a year ago, saying it had a turnaround in the works. But he pointedly noted Yahoo has instead deteriorated significantly. ‘A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,’ Ballmer added,” Liedtke reports.
MacDailyNews Take: But, Microsoft can fix it — they’re doing so well with search on their own. In November 2007, Google Sites share of core searches stood at 58.6%. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 22.4%, followed distantly by Microsoft Sites with 9.8%, Ask Network (4.6 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.5 percent). Source: comScore.
Liedtke continues, “Ballmer said Microsoft expects Yahoo’s board will review its proposal, but ‘reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.'”
Full article here.
Microsoft’s press release and the text of the letter that Microsoft sent to Yahoo!’s Board of Directors can be seen via InformationWeek here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “John” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch currently utilize Yahoo’s search (along with Google), push email, weather services, and stocks. All of which, one would imagine, would easily replaced by Google and/or Apple (free .Mac email?) if need be.
$44.6 billion in Ballmerese translates to one month of parking fines, lunch money and tongue wax.
I predict Yahoo!’s portal will be renamed Microsoft OneRichLiveSearch360.
Hidden in the terms of this hostile bid, Ballmer is also demanding that Jerry Yang must wear a leotard and butterfly wings for a private dance recital for the Microsoft Board of Directors.
No wonder Wall Street stuck it to the tech firms. The world is taking a beating outside our walled garden!
Time to move my Spambait email account from Yahoo to …
And the crap consolidation continues. Long live Dellorola and Yakrosoft.
Great way for M$ to blow a huge wad of cash and fragment its desperate efforts to grow beyond Windows and Office. The Xbox is one of M$’s few ‘successes,’ and that was achieved at the cost of years and billions in losses.
If M$ wants to assist Apple/SJ, then this is one of the best ways that I can imagine to do so. Go merger!
I think it should be called Micropoo, with or without the acquisition.
Microshoo — that’s how I feel about it.
Let MSFT spend the cash, and also inherit the mess. It will be excellent for AAPL.
A perfect strategy and we don’t even need to do anything.
If Microsoft buys Yahoo!, I switch to Picasa.
MiWhere?
Sorry guys but shit+shit= twice as much shit, so there IS a_gain_ in this brilliant plan… (shaking head)
Ferf: Maybe Macropoo? I agree with MacBliss about poo doubling.
A sad day for one of the first real Internet brands. I think a moment of silence would be appropriate…
Ok. Now we can let the party begin. The obvious predictions: Microsoft will run Yahoo into the ground, pretty much destroying any value it purchased. In the meantime, it has used up a sizable part of its cash reserves. We can also expect that its services will become less and less Mac-friendly, but that is ok because Google’s are going to become more Mac-friendly. This is going to be a disaster that will be great fun to watch.
AAaahhhhhh Crap. I like my Yahoo e-mail account just fine. Now they will go and screw it up, just to try and topple Apple and Google. MicroBlow, If we cannot kill it, we will buy it and kill it.
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I wonder if it will be approved. Afterall, they are the top two searches.
?????
en
The merged company’s tagline,
“Yahoosoft, for yahoos everywhere…”
or
“Our continued indifference, your pain just under a different name…”
“A sad day for one of the first real Internet brands.”
They’ve come a long way in twelve years:
http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/
What a great way to spend your 80% profit margin on Windows and Office.
Aquistion not Innovation
@ Ralph M
++
Bu-bye Yahoo!
Ampar,
“tongue wax”?
For hairy tongues?
44.6 billion is nothing. If you have a monopoly that is allowed to continue to operate, its no big deal. Piss away all they want, its no loss, they have guaranteed revenue year after year after year.
I don’t know why they cough up 44 billion. They have lots of yahoos already at MS.
AH, there they go again, “innovating.” Those folks at MS just don’t stop do they?