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Yahoo Likely to Accept Microsoft's Offer

online.wsj.com — Yahoo Inc.'s directors meet Friday to discuss alternatives to a Microsoft Corp. takeover, with many insiders still seeing a Microsoft deal -- without the participation of News Corp. -- as the most likely outcome.

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  • jflowers45, on 04/12/2008, -13/+4also check out the techcrunch article regarding why microsoft wants yahoo so badly
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/11/gartner-says- ...
    • diggrnumber1, on 04/12/2008, -0/+6is there really any mystery as to why microsoft wants yahoo?
    • Shadowgamers, on 04/12/2008, -2/+1And the appropriate quote for that article would be (go decker12!):
      "This headline and story makes no sense. It's like saying that General Electric will go out of business because a single show on NBC (owned by GE, among their MANY companies) isn't in the top 10 most watched for the week."
  • vik16, on 04/12/2008, -5/+5This is the only way they can compete with Google (both companies)
    • MacSuxWindozSux, on 04/12/2008, -1/+4I hope they don't pull an AOL Time Warner, merge then let half of their properties wither and die due to lack of attention / consideration.
    • niceyuk, on 04/12/2008, -4/+13They still wont compete with Google.

      Two losers doesnt = 1 winner.
    • pw378, on 04/12/2008, -0/+1The funny thing is, they don't have to compete. Yahoo! and Microsoft both had a very successful partnership with Google for many years that made all of them tons of money. Microsoft and Yahoo! 'chose' to compete. They didn't need to and they didn't have to. Microsoft saw someone taking a fair share of the profits in the partnership with google and got green with envy (pun intended).
  • upran, on 04/12/2008, -6/+1Whao.
  • Churbs, on 04/12/2008, -8/+55. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _________
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    • amdforever, on 04/12/2008, -1/+14Most appropriate use of "It's a trap".

      Good job dude.
    • Mawds, on 04/12/2008, -2/+6Wait I haven't mentioned that "Admiral! We have enemy ships in sector 47!" yet.
  • Rauby, on 04/12/2008, -10/+12No, please no.. Why Microsoft?
  • Shadowgamers, on 04/12/2008, -6/+14How long before a 'M$ SUCKS GRRR >:V' post?

    Also ***** yes competition, it will be extremely interesting to see (if they do merge) the things that Yahoosoft do to be in competition with Google.
    • 4321234, on 04/12/2008, -2/+12 hours. M$ SUCKS GRRR >:V
      • Shadowgamers, on 04/12/2008, -0/+3GRR WHY DID YOU TAKE SO LONG JEEZ. >:V
    • omaryak, on 04/12/2008, -0/+2It will be more interesting to see how many more takovers will be necessary for them to think they finally have a level playing field with Google. Competition isn't about the size of the company; it's the quality of your ideas. If you have the right ideas, the size of the company will follow. Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.
  • macmangb, on 04/12/2008, -15/+6Isn't this anti-competitive?
    • Shadowgamers, on 04/12/2008, -0/+3Unless the merger was going to produce something for almost free that would stunt competition with Google, no.
      • pw378, on 04/12/2008, -0/+3Hotmail + Yahoo! mail? Owning 90% of the webmail market is not anti-competitive?
        MSN Messenger + Yahoo! chat? Owning 80% of the instant messaging market is not anti-competitive?

        Said it before, I'll say it again... its not just about search market share.. Microsoft is waving their hands and saying "these are not the monopolies you are looking for..."
  • e68895f, on 04/12/2008, -7/+5well, there goes the neighborhood.....
  • NerveBand, on 04/12/2008, -2/+9On a side note, does anyone know how WSJ creates those images of those people? I really like the style.
  • Sidzilla, on 04/12/2008, -1/+17I am reminded of the Time Warner/AOL merger. Everyone was sure it would ruin the Internet and the world would end because one company had so much sway over the entertainment/media/distribution arena. Instead, they fizzled and managed to turn AOL in to the joke of the industry with Time Warner skulking back in to the shadows to lick their wounds. I can't help but think that when one company that makes widgets purchases a company that makes sprockets, the sprockets suffer. Yahoo will lose it's market share big time if this merger happens. Good luck to both companies, I guess.
  • tfadman, on 04/12/2008, -15/+2WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS: Yahoo takeover is one of the most important issues of the tech industry. Yahoo has become a national and international icon that should be taken back by the public.

    WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU: You can own YAHOO,INC and build a revolutionary change to business and the control large media conglomerates have over the global formatting of culture from the Americas to Europe to Asia.

    GOAL: Form an international collective of internet users to takeover ownership of YAHOO,Inc.

    PRICE: Less than $156.25 per user/person.

    PAYOUT: Let's use the cliche "priceless"

    TIMEFRAME: We have 2 weeks to campaign enough interest to achieve this goal. If you are interested in building a method to collect contribution promise notes IOU's from the (minimum) 320,000,000 users let me know. Of course this work would have to be done without compensation for the greater good.

    BENEFIT: For a small price you and I will have equal ownership in one of the potentially largest media giants of the future.

    WHY: YAHOO is the only viable competitor to Google and without competition Google will have too much control of our future. Even worse would be letting Microsoft or AOL takeover. We have seen where their visions have brought us. If it were the Gates Foundation soliciting a takeover, that would be a different scenario for us to contemplate. I am almost certain Microsoft will try to close the deal and I think it's especially interesting that YAHOO's president Susan Decker and Bill Gates are both Director's of one of WallStreet's largest Holding companies. No conspiracy theory, but they seem like they would get along with each other and when your making business acquisitions it's easier if you can keep current chief management in place.

    I am probably one of the largest fans of Google using almost every service they offer including a vast amount of advertising features, analytics, BASE, search, google earth, gmail, igoogle, images, blogger and you name it. I even attended the Google dance last year and wear my free Google Dance tshirt at least once a month.

    Oh yeah...then Why should I care about Yahoo? The same reason you should. To gain control of future media giants that prefer to have us hovering over our keyboards drooling over an advertisement that includes Britney Spears and a little monkey taking handouts (poor example but the idea is humanity rapidly loosing control as we are force fed by media giants).

    HOW THIS COULD POSSIBLY WORK:
    Form a cooperative of 320,000,000 internet users (or more to reduce individual capital cost) from around the world who contribute $156.25 to buy out YAHOO for approx. 50 billion dollars in what would be the most elaborate takeover of a company that the world has seen. Who controls the money exchange? Well I assure you with 320,000,000 people cooperating we will figure out a way. I'm sure some of us will be business lawyers or Ivy League business graduates who will be willing to cooperate and facilitate the transaction for the greater good knowing that the free publicity will pay off dividends in the future.

    ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:
    By forming this buyout holding company we preserve a worldwide legacy and business empire. At the same time control of the empire is handed over to the 320,000,000+ individuals who own the company. The international distribution of ownership would make YAHOO the biggest republic by the people for the people a true democracy. How can 320,000,000 people run a company? Only 1 person runs the company and for now that's Jerry Yang. What we do is vote via unanimous proxy vote on who will run the company as the future unfolds. Perhaps elect representatives that will make sure the interests of the 320,000,000 owners are upheld basically like running a nation. Instead this would be the first nation that truly has no borders. Perhaps this could be the first physical flattening of our world.

    How do we make YAHOO a viable company and protect our interest. That's where 320,000,000+ owners come into play. Like minute men, we can pull our equal shareholders together to address issues at bay. If it requires putting pressure on another media giant until our common interest is upheld, then so be it. We are 320,000,000 strong and a force to be reckoned with. So my feeling is that the media giants will have to conform to our needs. The needs of humanity. My longterm vision is that Google will see the success of this business equalization and sell itself into the same economic model where a large mass of the earth's population owns the business and it looks after the business so that the business will look after it's nation of people.

    LONG STORY SHORT: Maintaining a competitive business environment among media giants is critical. Since media has the largest influence over humanity, then who better to control it then the common collective of humanity. Or we could just let one guy control everything and hope he doesn't prescribe an active ingredient of alien drool to our diet.

    beyond YAHOO ...This would be the biggest business collective ever known to man kind if it could actually gain interest. Basically we build a Holding Company at internet speed that would be owned by 320,000,000 people approximately and that company would buy out Yahoo as part of its first global business acquisitions for the greater good of humanity. The start of the buyback of civilization.
    • tcpip4lyfe, on 04/12/2008, -0/+10You just wasted a lot of your time.
      • tfadman, on 04/12/2008, -1/+0ideas plant seeds for more ideas and eventually one idea will be great
        • swrv2000, on 04/14/2008, -0/+0Yes, the risk of sounding crazy weigh little compared to the gains that come from the evolution of ideas. Anybody that thinks throwing ideas out into the world is a waste of time is a slug. I'll buy in.
          • tfadman, on 04/14/2008, -0/+0i meant to digg your reply but accidentally clicked the undigg button.. maybe 13 people did the same thing to my above post. ha ha. anyway it's an outlandish idea and will never happen but what the hell why sit back and let media moguls have all the fun...lets stir sh#^ up.
    • lamiaconfitor, on 04/12/2008, -0/+3its a great idea, but it will never happen. you are talking to broke ass techies.
      • tfadman, on 04/12/2008, -2/+0You're right this is probably the wrong communication portal to pose such an idea. But if it could happen would you be willing to own YAHOO for $156?
        If you need to get a loan then we can setup a low interest or no interest loan platform to reduce barriers to entry but I just figured $156 is a small enough value that could be achievable at least in theory.
  • Exhibitionist, on 04/12/2008, -9/+2240 billion dollars for a few crappy web pages that nobody ever visits. Fools!
    • Burritoboy, on 04/12/2008, -4/+4Good point, but it is worse than that.
      40 billion dollars and they're still in second place, with an overlapping range of products and a talent that is likely to evaporate within a couple of years.
      Google are laughing, quietly out of earshot.
  • tcpip4lyfe, on 04/12/2008, -3/+8As a Microsoft share holder, I'm wondering how this will affect my stock.
    • theaceoffire, on 04/12/2008, -2/+2MS has done a lot of large scale, negative public press recently (RRoD, Vista compatible hardware, Vista Authentication Servers failing, etc).

      I am honestly not sure if buying Yahoo will be good for them or not. If they kill yahoo and redirect everything to MSN, then yeah its bad... if they leave Yahoo mostly alone, it might be ok...
  • TheLD, on 04/12/2008, -5/+5I don't think people are seeing the bigger picture .Yea, sure it's MS who are probably going to get Yahoo!, but this will drive up competition from Google which means we will get better services all round.
    • niceyuk, on 04/12/2008, -1/+6How is reducing 3 competing companies down to two good for competition??

      Yahoo's systems are mostly Unix based, Microsoft will spend years trying to integrate them and convert them to Windows servers, in the meantime Google and other companies will push even further ahead of Microsoft.
      • Gavagai80, on 04/12/2008, -1/+1Unix is beside the point. Any reduction of the number of major opponents google faces makes it easier for google to win, and harder for innovation to happen.
    • ha1f, on 04/12/2008, -2/+1What I don't think people realize is that Yahoo really doesn't have anywhere else to go. If Google got them, it's anti-competitive, and only an idiot would join up with AOL. Yahoo is in deep *****, they have been for a while, and this is most likely the best way for them to save themselves. Instead of looking at this as Microsoft potentially changing Yahoo's web services, maybe there will be an actual improvement to the standing Microsoft services.
    • latova, on 04/12/2008, -1/+2MS has nothing to lose in this because they still own the OS market. Google has everything to lose because search and advertising are their biggest market. Googles share in search is not as large as MS' share in the OS market. Sure its great to have competition, but the second google loses that means MS is at top, and we know MS is evil. Just look at what they did with the browser war, they won and ended up making the abomination that is IE6 which has held back innovation on the internet for years.
  • lamiaconfitor, on 04/12/2008, -6/+11Two sub-par technology conglomerates merging to be one giant bastion on mediocrity? Sweet thats like something... or something.
  • vinnyvenus, on 04/12/2008, -1/+3This could end up like a Sprint/Nextel merger
  • Bamshackle, on 04/12/2008, -3/+4I don't really care. I never used Yahoo for anything except Fantasy Sports, and only use Microsoft products because there is little alternative. Sure I have a Mac but that doesn't count really since if I want to play any game besides WoW I have to run windows. My thoughts are as long as Microsoft doesn't screw up Yahoo Fantasy Sports than i don't care. What we are going to get is Hotmail with smiley faces.
  • ExRe, on 04/12/2008, -0/+2Aww, I was hoping they would act stupid until their stock prices fall off completely and Microsoft buys them up for less than 1/2 the initial price. That would have been rather funny, but it seems like they ruined it by growing a brain.
  • gfunk84, on 04/12/2008, -2/+5A first I was opposed to this. Then I heard AOL was in talks to merge with Yahoo!

    MS > AOL (doesn't say much)
  • peterinjapan, on 04/12/2008, -2/+4I *sold* all my Microsoft stock about three weeks before the buyout offer was announced. For one, I am a happy camper.
    • SniperGX1, on 04/12/2008, -2/+2When their stock price shoots up and people make bank, will you then become a douchey camper?
  • mobling, on 04/12/2008, -8/+4What if? I will delete all accounts I hold with Yahoo. I will remove all bookmarks that relate to their sites. What if Microsoft paid through the nose and nobody ever visited Yahoo again. I know it would never happen, but every little bit counts. It would be a sad day for Yahoo, but when you are infested with cancer, sacrifices have to be made. COMPOSED ON LINUX BABY!
    • 4321234, on 04/12/2008, -3/+1Ditto.
    • ha1f, on 04/12/2008, -3/+2Do you realize how ***** retarded you sound? You are the reason people don't show the Linux community any respect. IT'S NOT ABOUT DESTROYING MICROSOFT, RETARD! It's about freedom. Jesus Christ you're a ***** idiot.
      • sublimemm, on 04/12/2008, -1/+2I thought it was about having an OS that doesn't suck...

        p.s. to the mac people out there, mac os is great, I just don't like the whole proprietary hardware part :)
  • xjeffx, on 04/12/2008, -1/+11Please don't screw up flickr!
    • carpespasm, on 04/12/2008, -0/+2I'll probably find another service for next time my flickr subscription renews if this deal goes through.
  • chaserdog53, on 04/12/2008, -8/+3if they do i will delete all of my accounts!!!!!! I hate having to deal with microsoft at any cost
  • JasonCox, on 04/12/2008, -3/+2Come on Bill, slap some sense into Steve!
  • binaryloop, on 04/12/2008, -8/+3Ready to cancel my Yahoo account.
  • olenick, on 04/12/2008, -3/+2MS tends to do well w/ stuff they buy -- they tend to either improve acquisitions or leave them alone; MS just isn't able to crank out meaningful new offerings. Still, Yahoo is so different than anything they understand -- even Yahoo doesn't seem to understand Yahoo -- this merger seems really risky.
  • NtroP, on 04/12/2008, -2/+4So... what happens to Zimbra? We're just about to implement. In a side-by-side test against Exchange it really put Exchange to shame. Exchange really embarrassed itself. Any bets MS kills it?
  • fuzzynyanko, on 04/12/2008, -1/+2AOL Time Warner vs News Corp vs Microsoft... For some reason, I trust Microsoft the most out of those three, and that doesn't say much...
  • ronaldmonster, on 04/12/2008, -6/+4I love Microsoft.

    Digg me down, but you guys can love Apple & Linux and I can't love Microsoft? WTH is up with that?
  • YodaJones, on 04/12/2008, -2/+3I want this deal to happen so MS and Yahoo will both be spread so think they will break and hopefully die. We need to move on from Microsoft based technology, it's just an evolutionary matter.
  • Darph.Bobo, on 04/12/2008, -1/+3Microsoft doesn't know how to run their own company, let alone Yahoo!. I can't wait for it to happen, it will dissolve Microsoft's market cap by 50 billion in two years. Ballmer's always been colossal fool. Set your clock.
  • surferjoemaui, on 04/13/2008, -1/+0If anyone hasn't checked out goolge services now is a good time. it also seem that company's that specialize can survive with
    what ever market share they happen to have at the time, so long as they are run intelligently.
  • eminiguy, on 04/13/2008, -1/+2Misleading title. Not likely at all. And you are so out of touch...
  • EEdesigner, on 04/13/2008, -1/+1Good, now Google can write off Yahoo as a competitor. Nothing creative (or even operational) will emerge from this doomed company again. Microsoft has become such a joke. Remember when all the formerly great American companies decided that diversifying was the way to go? Remember what happened? Funny thing is that those companies had good reputations and products when they tried and failed. Microsoft - of course - has Vista... Heh!
  • Laughsatyou, on 04/14/2008, -0/+2will this mean that yahoo chat will get rid of the sex bots? cuz if so Im all for it.
  • perot9296, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1 I'm sick of M$ always buying up companies and wanting to be in every industry even remotely related to computers.
  •  

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