Forum Moderators: phranque
"The approach follows an offer Microsoft made to buy Yahoo a few months ago, the Post reported, but Yahoo spurned the advances. The Post said Wall Street sources put a roughly $50 billion price tag on Yahoo."
Yes, I know they can afford yahoo, but can they really afford yahoo?
So the space gets trimmed to two major players? Something doesn't feel right to me.
In terms of search...there are only two major players now. MSN at the moment really cannot be considered a major player, that's why they are hoping to buy their way there.
It's one of those 'if you can't beat 'em... buy 'em' situations.
However if it did happen, why would MSN adapt Yahoo! search technology? That would be like admitting they are inferior...unlikely for such a big ego like MSN.
Why now 2 rivals merge?! it kinda kill the compitation.
they dont have any chance now to beat google anymore...
Is it a given that such a deal would be granted regulator approval? Surely the govenment knows that Google already dominates the market to an unhealthy extent -- would they really allow G's competition to drop by 50% in one fell swoop?
Or, would they see the merger of the "B" and "C" level players as the only hope for real competition?
.................................
I grew up in New York, the Post is not a newspaper, it's a gossip rag.
Marcia nailed it. I thought the same thing as soon as I saw the "ny Post" subtitle on the thread. This is just noise to sell newspapers.
Would you take the best technologies of both, merge them into a single backend and continue to run Yahoo and MSN as branded sites?
Historically have two portals ever successfully merged? (Lycos, Excite, et al.. where are you now?)
The only manageable short to medium term thing I see in this deal is pooling ad space between the two companies.
Something is up...yahoo shares are up significantly at the moment
ROFL.... Wonder if the NY Post writer and publisher are cashing in. ;)
desperation by MSFT
Or trying to see whether Goog gets interested. Goog may see benefit in buying to stop MS, but at a HUGE HUGE premium if they did.
Didn't MS recently annouce they were buying a whole heap of shares back (enhancing shareholder value etc etc)?
I presume they can't do it by leaking this and so damping their shares ...?
IMHO they are nuts on a practical level - the two cultures and software woudl take years to integrate - if at all...
Nuts on a financial level too...
yahoo shares are up significantly at the moment.
Can't imagine why ;)
Good time to short.
From the Wall Street Journal:
A year ago, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. explored the idea of combining to form a greater competitor to Google Inc. The talks led nowhere, leaving Microsoft and Yahoo to forge their own paths in pursuit of Google.The same situation seems to have just played out again. Microsoft and Yahoo in recent months discussed a possible merger of the two companies or some kind of match-up that would pair their respective strengths, say people familiar with the situation. But the merger discussions are no longer active, these people say. The two companies may still explore other ways of cooperating.
It's kind of difficult to comment on the pros and cons of a possible Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo.
I think the U.S. over-hyped prosecution of Microsoft in the late 90s and very early 2000s made some damage to the company's reputation.
Could this be one of the reasons people don't visit Microsoft's properties on the Internet?
An acquisition of Yahoo then makes sense taking into account the previous scenario.
On the other hand, the growing install base of IE 7 and the deployment of Windows Vista is surely making damage to Google's market share. Usage of Yahoo and MSN for search purposes will surely increase in the following months.
So, if today Microsoft has the money to get the technology developed and acquired by Yahoo in the past years, then its the appropriate time for the acquisition.
No matter how, with or without Yahoo, Microsoft wins in the medium-long term.
Reuters [reuters.com]
[edited by: herb at 9:08 pm (utc) on May 4, 2007]
desperation by MSFT
Yahoo is not competitive at any level and will never be. But since MS can`t create anything new and as good as itunes, youtube, ebay, real, flash, they will have to buy what has been left.
At least they can afford failures and a loser image enabled by their windows monopoly until Google will come up with a complete, free and better operating system.
Usage of Yahoo and MSN for search purposes will surely increase in the following months.
Surely? .... lol
Have you checked your Web statistics lately?
Referrals from Yahoo and MSN have increased quite a bit for my Web sites.
I think the new Windows Vista and IE 7 installations are affecting Google's share.
You can think MSN & Yahoo are taking off like a rocket all you want. Hardly makes it the case though - you shouldn't draw conclusions about the rest of the web based on a sites stats.
Lets check back in a few months and we'll see about that dent they are making in Google's market share. Too funny, imo.
That's what I thought when I saw it under Webmaster General.
A business that is focused on search , ie Google will be the winner IMO. A potential acquistion of Yahoo by Microsoft does not appear focused and neither company has demonstrated the high ground in search for some time.
If they had a good plan in the first place, it would have been easy to finance and scale.
I can't comment on other strategies which they may be considering.
Have you checked your Web statistics lately?Referrals from Yahoo and MSN have increased quite a bit for my Web sites.
Not for mine. Google is still way out in front (more than it used to be, in fact). MSN referrals have almost caught up with Yahoo referrals, though.
A few huge promotional campaigns with good guy/gal actors would do them a lot of PR good. People (as opposed to webmasters) use Google because it is the friendly happy web enabled version of Ronald McDonald. Yahoo has the potential to grab some of that market back. MS have no chance.
(For what it's worth my Yahoo referals are up somewhat, but still nowhere near Google's. MSN get less each month. Somewhere around 0.5%. Although their spider activity is 75% more than the others.)
