Potential suitors throw Yahoo! to the wolf Yahoo! can marry Microsoft or remain an old maid with a less than rosy financial outlook. Those are the options. And we're being kind including one of them. In the wake of Microsoft's $44.6bn bid for the struggling web giant, many asked whether other mega corporations might jump in with their own bids. In fact, the issue was …
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Let MS buy yahoo and take Google on. Ok it leaves only 2 big players in the game, but it will open more doors for a host young startups. With social engineering sites becoming yesterday's news, gaps will start to appear in the online world which need to be filled and who knows, maybe someone else will appear out of nowhere and side swipe the whole industry a la YouTube, Google, Facebook etc etc etc.
And to be 46bn lighter, MS will have to make this gamble work cos that doesn't leave much money for other high profile acquisitions.
As far as i'm concerned, let MS have Yahoo.
Its game on for the next generation.
Surely it's Google that have the monopoly status as they take the lion's share of all web searches. Microsoft's move really just says that MSN has been a dismal failure and Yahoo is in free-fall. If it goes on market share of the search business I can't see how you can argue that Microsoft/Yahoo would be an "illegal monopoly" as even combined their share of Internet searching is less than half of what Google's is.
Er... so you think that the FTC will rule a purchase by MS as an illegal monopoly but would allow a Google purchase?
Thing is, in the US it's likely to come down to politics. In theory, Microsoft could well argue that the combined entity will be smaller in revenue and reach terms than Google, and it could be accepted. The problem is that there are many people out there who are instinctively reluctant to let Microsoft go through with the purchase, comparing it to the Windows/ IE anti-trust case rather than the Google/ Doubleclick (or similar) deal.
MS> "Given that Google has roughly a 75 per cent market share worldwide for online paid search they are not in a position to do this. Given its super dominant market share, Google is clearly prevented by the antitrust laws from buying Yahoo! or buying this business from Yahoo!"
So, MS with something like 85% of the desktop market is no risk, but Google + Yahoo is? Ha ha ha! MS displays many of the hallmarks of someone with a mental illness.
I like the idea of a free/open source search engine, combined with 'open' media distribution, that appeared in another article's comments (I may be biased). Maybe a consortium of companies and people could buy Yahoo to give that a kickstart?
Monopolies by themselves are not illegal, it's leveraging a monopoly to gain unfair advantage that is illegal. So maybe Google could by Yahoo! (I really do not care either way), so long they do not abuse their monopoly position. Still, anti-trust groups would (and should) scrutinize any bid by Google.
All said, Yahoo as a brand and that's all. They own no innovative products and although they have a lot of tin in a lot of warehouses it's of negligible value. The only value this company has is the three people who still have yahoo.com set as their homepage and the 18 people who still have yahoo.com email addresses and have not switched over to gmail or the like.
I'd put up a fiver for the domain name... maybe £30 as it's a dotcom.
No way that's worth £30. If it was a *decent* .com I'd pay for it, but yahoo?
Although, come to think of it, it would be kind of funny to come up with a good idea of something to put on it. You know, for the three people you mention who have it as their homepage? Porn's too obvious but I'm sure these are fertile grounds.
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