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."
New York Post story [nypost.com]
I grew up in New York, the Post is not a newspaper, it's a gossip rag.
I'd think they would keep it. adcenter is awful.
MSNHOO
So the space gets trimmed to two major players? Something doesn't feel right to me. This should be interesting. The Clash of the Titans.
:) they have $30 Billion in CASH already, and if they decided to pay 100% cash for it (very unlikely), banks would be running over each other to lend it to them. If msft cannot afford them, no one can. If I was a Y! holder, I'd take a 20% premium and MS stock.
[edited by: walkman at 2:50 pm (utc) on May 4, 2007]
1) A formidable competitor to Google emerges by combining market shares and implementing the best technology from each company.
2) The merger process causes the best people to leave, confusion level increases, everybody focuses on merger/political/job security issues and takes their eye off the ball; a year or two later, combined market share is lower than before, tech projects are behind schedule, and both search and ad technology lag farther behind Google.
Based on past experience, I'd bet on the second possibility.
[edited by: rogerd at 3:35 pm (utc) on May 4, 2007]
This looks like desperation by MSFT, which has been so slow in the past to make deals and be aggressive--in stark contrast to GOOG.
YHOO has struggled for years to compete with GOOG, and it's also been losing market share (search, at least), for years. It has also had its own problems or mistakes which contributed to this, including in the last number of months; point being, YHOO still hasn't shown signs it can get its act together.
The stock trading today reflects the idea that YHOO investors will be glad to see someone else have a go at turning the ship around, and it also shows MSFT investors aren't exactly thrilled, because they know about all the problems YHOO has had--they know it's a troubled property and a risky acquisition.
If I wanted a company to fix YHOO, I wouldn't choose MSFT. MSFT hasn't even been able to overtake YHOO in search, for crying out loud, so why should I be optimistic?! Sure they'd get more market share, at least at first, but bigger isn't necessarily better.
p/g
2) The merger process causes the best people to leave, confusion level increases, everybody focuses on merger/political/job security issues and takes their eye off the ball; a year or two later, combined market share is lower than before, tech projects are behind schedule, and both search and ad technology lag farther behind Google.
Bingo. (IMHO)
Just imagine if msn kept their own search and replaced Yahoos with their own version - Google would have 100% of the market to themselves!
Frankly i would us have the three in the market - the more the better.
A few years delay and it may be too late
I think those few years have already passed :)
YHOO is up, but MSFT is down. That tells a story in and of itself...
That tells no story, other than what happens in all cases of acquisition. The acquiring company's stock price always dips on the announcement, while the acquired company always rises.
From a management/strategic standpoint, if you really thought this deal was going to fly, would you pull your ppc partnership with the company you wanted to buy and then go thru a lot of effort to create your own? If it does go thru, then adcenter was a (big) mistake at the top.
On a more serious note, could a combination of the two companies create something that is greater than to two or will it simply be joining the two and noting greater than the union come out of it?
What efficiencies are coming out of this?
How does this make them better?
How will this make them better able to compete?
[edited by: martinibuster at 4:29 pm (utc) on May 4, 2007]
Please let this happen if only to get rid of the Adcentre staff who are all completely below average especially their 'supremos' who are nothing more than glorified sales expletives.
I couldn't disagree more. Granted my search marketing efforts on adcenter are the least aggressive of the top 3 engines where I run campaigns, but my dealings with their staff have always been very positive. In my experience when calling Yahoo Search Marketing, there is a very simple equation:
The number of different answers to a question or stories you receive from their staff is always greater than or equal to the number of times you pick up the phone. This number will go up if you are transferred from one rep to another during a call.
I like having 3 big SE's, and they each have different character
I struggle to see this working out well
I think banks an financial folk are often unable to understand the complexities of tech companies, insisting on viewing them like any other tradtional business, it happens over, and over again
