maximillianos - 3:49 pm on Nov 18, 2008 (gmt 0)

When Microsoft came knocking Jerry Yang wasn't telling shareholders to "be irrational", i.e. greedy. He was telling shareholders that there was greater value tied up in the Yahoo brand than Microsoft was offering.

You are correct, and the same may be true today in the long run. Their stock price is really irrelevant. Every company's stock has tanked regardless of performance.

Would we agree that Google is doing very well in this economy and has a healthy business model, dominating its market with growing revenues? Well look at their stock price compared to Yahoo:

link to stock price [finance.yahoo.com]

You can see they have pretty much fallen together equally over the last year. The stock prices across this country are irrelevant to company potential and performance right... it is based on fear and control by the masses of day traders.

So to me, it comes down to branding. And I don't think Yang is wrong about the Yahoo brand over the Microsoft brand. I think Yahoo is a better internet brand, and has more potential than if they were to be swallowed up and eventually 301 redirected to Live.com and MSN.com.

That is from a long term brand perspective. The easy argument that anyone can make is that the investors would have made more money if they sold to Microsoft. This is true, as is the statement that they would have made more money if they sold their stock regardless of the sale to Microsoft before the markets tanked.

So let's say the stock never tanked just like every other stock in the US right now. Let's say it held its value while all other stocks tanked. The investors would not be complaining right now, because they would not have lost their money (potentially).

So it does boil down to greed, money and a ticked off market of investors losing their pants in every investment right now... and someone wants to see a head roll for accountability beyond themselves...;-)

[edited by: encyclo at 11:08 am (utc) on Nov. 19, 2008]
[edit reason] fixed side-scroll [/edit]