Microsoft pulls its Yahoo offer
Update 5 p.m. PDT: Microsoft has made its move official. Click here for the story and here for the text of a letter Ballmer sent to Yang.
Microsoft is withdrawing its offer for Yahoo after talks between the two companies broke down on Saturday, a source told CNET News.com.
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Microsoft hiked its offer to $33 a share, but Yahoo was holding out for $37 a share, the source said. The two sides met face to face again Saturday, but remained far apart.
Although price was a key issue, Microsoft also had strategic concerns and saw it as unlikely to achieve a friendly integration process. According to a source close to Microsoft, Yahoo founder and CEO Jerry Yang had "unrealistic expectations."
Microsoft made its $31 a share cash and stock offer on February 1. Yahoo rejected the bid as undervaluing the company, and the two sides had only the most basic of negotiations until Microsoft set a three-week deadline last month. Negotiations heated up on Friday, but the two sides remained far apart.
The move leaves both companies in a tenuous spot. Although Microsoft has said it has a strategy to take on Google without Yahoo, Yahoo represented the biggest opportunity for Microsoft to gain scale against its rival, which has a much larger Internet advertising business.
Yahoo, meanwhile, has had talks with AOL and Google, but it is unclear whether deals with either would produce the kind of immediate return for shareholders that a Microsoft deal would offer.
Microsoft is expected to announce its move publicly shortly, according to the source.
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It would have been fun to watch. *sigh
At least we still have Vista, Office 2007, and the Zune to laugh at.
What's next for Yahoo? Buying AOL, I hope so...
First, it was an idea only you could hatch with a straight face.
Second, it was a really stupid idea.
Third, only one company hates MSFT more than Yahoo! and only
now coming to the conclusion that the company was "unlikely to
achieve a friendly integration process" is really a sign of early
onset Alzheimers. Consult with your doctor.
Steve, hello. Clue. Yang is a Lotus guy. Remember all those
underhanded schemes MSFT used to kill Lotus Smart Suite, you
know, the ones for which MSFT had to settle with IBM some
years back? Think this might have influenced Yahoo!'s culture
and have something to do with the fact that everyone at Yahoo!
who can put on their socks without pictorial instruction would
rather go on a diet of camel smegma than work for MSFT?
Anyway, congrats on another disaster that could not have been
more calamitous if you'd planned it.
Its a sad day for Yahoo, their over inflated egos got the better of them.
Now is Jerry Yang going to be forced out?
Whether unreasonable or not, Yang and Company have said defiantly to Balmer and Company that they're not willing to fit the mold of a company (Microsoft) that obviously and demonstrably has no clue how to succeed in the Search Wars (as evidenced by the complete failure of Live Search). Microsoft's archaic thinking of innovation through acquisition helps nobody, and its been a pleasure to see them so openly feared throughout this process.
GOOD for you Yahoo...stick to your guns. We all know you'd like to defeat or even compete more appropriately with Google, but it victory (or even success) won't come at the bequest of a company that only sees you as a cog in their machine. Do your own thing, get smarter...and for God's sake avoid Microsoft. You don't need them.
This will be immensely damaging.
?Developers, developers, developers?...get a clue, ballmie.
Devs are a dime a dozen.
Its ?ideas, ideas, ideas? ... and other people?s ideas are whats beating the crap out of msft, not their developers. Its what their developers are doing....with ideas.
Did you catch that?
My plan B would be to cap ballmie, hes the GWB of msft.
Anybody that feels they have to reach outside msft to such an extent to be competitive, with the resources they have, and in such a damaging way, needs to go.
Now.
- Ballmers next move
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by The_Decider
May 3, 2008 7:34 PM PDT
- Well after a month of throwing chairs has ended.
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1 | 2 | 3 | Next 10 Comments >>He is going to say that they didn't want Yahoo, didn't need them and unveil a plan to unseat Google by spewing the most massive ball of buzzwords ever uttered by 1000 people until he implodes, leaving a massive crater in Redmond.
Either that or he will continue to attempt to buy MS into further irrelevancy.