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SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp has withdrawn its offer for Yahoo Inc. and does not plan to go hostile, a person familiar with Microsoft's thinking said Saturday.
[reportonbusiness.com...]
SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp. has withdrawn its $42.3-billion (U.S.) bid to buy Yahoo Inc., scrapping an attempt to snap up the tarnished Internet icon in hopes of toppling online search and advertising leader Google Inc.The decision to walk away from the deal came Saturday after last-ditch efforts to negotiate a mutually acceptable sale price proved unsuccessful.
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MS, Yahoo ( and Google ) should have a workable plan for China - instead of squeezing every last bit of breath out of each other in the US market.
I felt the letter is nicely worded, not just to convey the message to Yahoo's leaders, but also to implicitly address the stockholders of the opportunity lost.
This link on CNN has the full text of this letter:
[money.cnn.com...]
Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.
ROFL. Look who is talking.
While this is true, and it's bad when one company controls the market, it makes me laugh that MS of all companies would ever bring this up.
Everyone thought this was a done deal, well Yang you gambled with your shareholders money which btw includes me and you lost. Im picking up a very big bottle of rum for monday because I will need to be completely plastered to laugh at our stock cratering like a russian expo jet.
So stupid.
Yang was attempting to force MS into the corner of a higher cash bid. Ballmer called, Yahoo folded and lost. Next stop is $5.00 a share in less then 2 years.
Ballmer called, Yahoo folded and lost
You may want to check with how Ballmer is doing against Google a year from now before deciding who really lost.
Chairs are probably flying, again.
WOOT!
Y & MS should work out personal differences and focus on more broader goal. ... and that is Google.
Fight each other and you don't have strength left to fight the real competitor (killer) when it comes.
I think Google are very ready to push All In!
Sure, google wants to "index the worlds information" in a way - but mostly they're concerned with monetizing the worlds information at a cost i'm not sure advertisers will forever be willing to spend and publishers will forever accept a pittance for.
p/g
I think he was too emotionally attached because he was the founder. It's his baby.
Having said that I'm not yet convinced it's all over. Ballmer made a very quick, neat exit. There was a meeting with Yang, it ended, they departed. He issued a release. Done. But...
There's nothing to stop picking this up (after seeing Yahoo shareholders freak out). It could be more posturing to pressure Yang (esp. after trading on Monday) to reconsider.
Winners: Any one who benefits from competition rather then monopolies and market consolidation. This also includes Yahoo with it's refreshed strategies including consolidating all their services.
...it's good to see not all people in the position of power are willing to sellout to greed.
- John
Now the chance for a convincing alternative to GOOG is gone. Sad.)
The two are too blind to see how Google attracts customers. But putting these two blind lots together is unlikely to create eyesight for any of them. Not to mention competition for Google :-)
Lets hope for new stuff to challenge Google!
Remember that Y was the very first to enter the Paid Search Market. Bought out Overture when Overture was a dominance player. I remembered at that time Overture had 100,000 advertisers nearly double size Google. They controled 75% of the distributed partners in AOL, MSN, ... InfoSpace.
After 2 years Y allow Google to catched up. Totally unacceptable. The rebrand Overture to Y Marketing is very stupid, slowness in rolling out products 5 years in YPN beta (what the heck), and their in ability to keep innovating are good reasons to explain why Yahoo was to buried. (If Y keep talking about innovation, they should have done better.)
MS are not in many way difference. They wasted years and billions in development of search where they could have bought Google, Inktomi or Ask and develop AdCenter from ground up and wasted couple years more. (... not so wise). (They should have bought LookSmart, FindWhat ... Overture). (Totally mis-strategic move with a company that have plenty of capital. Why scramble now to buy Aquantive & Yahoo. (6B+42B) can be more s...p than that.)
If they are walking away now, they are very much close their own exit. (It is a must done deal for both of them.)
because even if these 2 companies combine won't be able to do much for Google. I think as temporary solutions it is ok but in the long run they will slide again.
The more potential players could be FaceBook and new start up. But then it will be millions light years from now.
It is tough to get a real competitor as Google's Size and the one could match its capability. I think it is very much the end of the search game.
Ballmer was being honest. He offered a fair price for Yahoo.
Yahoo showed that it continues to be a poorly run company. For those that said MS should have offered $40 / share, let's see how the market values it on Monday. My guess it will lose $10 per share.
it will lose $10 per share.
And then rebound yet again. While it's true that Yahoo isn't at the top of search, they still have lots of valuable eyeballs using their other services daily. Plenty of potential there.
All this talk of Yahoo being dead seems premature and maybe a bit melodramatic?
Isn't it just vaguely possible that they are not, as posters in this thread seem to feel, the stupidest people on the planet? Worth considering. ;-)
Gives us all a bit more time before MSFT gets the cards in place to play their (illegal) game of expand into a monopoly from our exiting monopoly.
Thos etinking GOOG has a monopoly here: yep, probably, but MSFT broke other monopolies before by illegally abusing their other monopoly, they got tried and convicted to pay record breakign fines for doing so.
It's about time the MSFT stockholders take a look at their CEO "monkey boy" and oust him.
YAHOO! is the clear winner (their shareholders think only short term so they just gambled wrong, but they should know MSFT (Ballmer) has a bad track record at closing deals).
Anyway, a good day IMHO.
it will lose $10 per share.
good estimate. 15 Euros in Frankfurt (23 US-$)
Yahoo! comes in for a lot of stick because it doesn't have the marketing machine that Google has - but it has made a lot of exceptional contributions to the web (some of them relatively recently) including Y! Answers, YSlow, Y! Mail (personally, I still prefer it to Gmail) etc.
I think we expected greater things from Y! Search a few years back when they bought FAST and Altavista and Overture and these haven't materialised yet. But that doesn't mean that Y! doesn't have something to say as an original ideas engine on the web.
This last episode has shown that Yahoo! values its own originality and independence as well as its share price and it is right to do so. Let's see if not selling out to MS still looks like a mistake 2 years from now when web-based computing holds more sway over OS-based computing than ever and MS (historically not a company with large supplies of originality) is desperately clutching at straws to hold on to its userbase.
While this is true, and it's bad when one company controls the market, it makes me laugh that MS of all companies would ever bring this up.
Not really, if I were Microsoft I'd be complaining a lot too. They get slapped with anti-trust lawsuits all the time but no-one seems to bother about "good-old Google".
Losers: People who buy/sell/trade stock, and have no care or clue of why a successful Microsoft buyout of Yahoo would be one of the worst things to happen to the internet.Winners: Any one who benefits from competition rather then monopolies and market consolidation. This also includes Yahoo with it's refreshed strategies including consolidating all their services.
...it's good to see not all people in the position of power are willing to sellout to greed.
Agreed 100%
