Yahoo! counts! the! reasons! it's better! off! without! Microsoft! Tired of taking it on the chin from bully activist investors, Yahoo! executives are counting the reasons why they're better off forging a advertising partnership Google rather than selling the company's search business to Microsoft. In a letter to shareholders CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock said the Microsoft plan " …
The choice seems to be:
A) Take the Borg route, sell out to MS as they make hostile takeover purchases even if it is not as sweet a deal as it might have been a few months back.
B) Take the moral high road and slowly watch your YHOO share certificates turn to toilet paper.
Investors buy shares to make money, not to earn karma. They will go with (A).
I like seeing Microsoft have it's nose tweeked and teeth pulled occassionally! Why does no-one see that this is a cynical attempt by MS to kill it's major competitor in searches and IM (Yahoo Messenger is far superior and more intuitive than MSN messenger in my opinion, and less prone to crashes)???
Icahn justs wants to make pots more cash whatever the cost...
also, why no anti-trust involvement here??
"While Microsoft's search-only hybrid proposal may have been helpful to Microsoft, our board and management concluded it would have had a significant adverse impact on Yahoo! strategically, leaving the company without the operational control of search assets and technology we view as critical to our objective of becoming a leader in the converging search and display advertising business,"
so farming your ads out to google will help you become a leader in the advertising field ????
I believe Yahoo should hold out with all their strength against Microsoft buying them. If Microsoft do manage to buy them they will destroy the company and leave it a ghost of its former self in 5 years. Witness what they did to Hotmail which at the time was far and away the most popular web based email. When it didnt become the cash cow they wished (because they seem not to 'get' the web) they ignored it for 3 years (I jumped ship to yahoo mail during this time).
Microsoft will destroy Yahoo!
@ Alan Fisher - MSN Messenger = most popular IM service in the world 245+million users vs Yahoo's very resepect able 100million. Oh, and Icahn wants to make lots of money? No shit sherlock.
@ Toby Allen - "which at the time was far and away the most popular web based email" - at the time when MS bought hotmail there were a lot less net users - and anyway Hotmail is today the #1 email service (270m+ users). If you want to attack MS's online rep, why not go after search, you wont find anyone disagreeing with you, hence why they tried to buy Yahoos.
Toby, I put it to you that it is you, if anyone, that does not "get" the web.
Yahoo board members seem to have forgot that when they got billion dollar windfalls that also meant that is wasn't "their" company any more.
On a different note, maybe someone can explain to me why when bittorrent sites enable people to share potentially copyrighted content, its a crime, and when youtube (Google) do it, they have one of the most widely known and accepted presences on the internet. Double standard? I think so....
A penguin, because who doesnt like a penguin.
This post has been deleted by its author
Microsoft already announced they would no longer be offering to buy Yahoo. Icahn's proposed sale is off the table now, not at $3 let alone $33. He'll continue his nuisance lawsuit (more to save face IMHO) but it will have little long term effect.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06132008/business/icahn__yahoo__investors_clobbered_115350.htm
The man lost and looks like a silly old fool.
What an idiot idea Icahn had anyway, behead a successful company and sell it to a company that is unsuccessful online and whose only possible redeeming feature was lots of cash. Do that first WITHOUT A PRIOR AGREEMENT on price, and somehow expect MSFT to pay a hefty premium for this beheaded corpse he proposed to create? WTF was he thinking. He'd have been lucky to get $10 a share after that.
Did he imagine shareholders are stupid?
Icahn wants HIM to make money off this. He doesn't give a shit about any other shareholder and DEFINITELY not the company or its employees.
The best way to get money to the shareholders is to sell ALL assets and give the money to shareholders.
This kills the company, but then again, what do you think MS want to do to Yahoo?
Oh, and Steven, if MS will lie, how do we know the offer wasn't a lie?
"Icahn wants HIM to make money off this" - I dont think anyone was suggesting he wants anyone else particularly to make money off this.
I think what you must be missing is that he will make a lot of money....as a shareholder, albeit a major one. And in order to make this money, he risks a lot of his own up front, currently he's about 10% down.
"The best way to get money to the shareholders is to sell ALL assets and give the money to shareholders" - the value of yahoo as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, pull it apart and much of its value would be lost, so the best immediate way to release shareholders investment would be a single transaction sale of the whole company to one buyer.
what do you think MS want to do to Yahoo? - they want the search element, this isn't some $40b vendetta.
Penguin, because who doesnt like a penguin?
Indeed. However, the CEO and board are responsible to ALL shareholders, NOT Icahn. They are responsible for ensuring that the business continues to make a profit.
What do MS want to do?
Take their customers.
Sack the people.
Sell off the rest.
Why? If you add Yahoo customers to MS's customers, you get MORE customers. This benefits MS and THEIR shareholders but leaves MOST of the Yahoo shareholders taking it in the shorts and ALL the employees looking for a job (which is nice...).
So the CEO isn't responsible to Icahn. He's responsible to the company and the shareholders (note plural). Icahn may not like it, but he could buy up 51% of the company and sell it off if he likes.
True mate, true but i stopped using MSN messenger myself because it constantly crashed my pc, was getting so many vulnerabilities and exploits....plus it somehow let viruses in through my firewall....yahoo on the other hand was way more stable, has some cool features and is much less likely to be attacked/exploited.....my favourite saying mate
"just because a million people believe in a stupid thing, it does not stop being a stupid thing"
popular msn messenger may be but the best out there it is not.
I agree with Toby Allen, any buyup from Microsoft would be the death of a great product....any doubters should give Yahoo Messenger a try some time....
@Mark
"the CEO and board are responsible to ALL shareholders, NOT Icahn. They are responsible for ensuring that the business continues to make a profit"
I completely agree, but I would flip this around and say they are responsible to all shareholders including Icahn, relatively speaking what represents the best deal for one shareholder should be the best deal for all shareholders.
Take their customers - in terms of internet users, MS's acquisition of Yahoo would be destructive, Yahoo users fundamentally wont become MSN users, why, because they already are, there is a huge overlap in most major online markets between the top portals. What they would be buying is a competitive search program.
Sack the people - of course over time deparments/teams would become consildated in order to achieve economies of scale, but Yahoo employees had their jobs safeguarded for at least a year, and we all know what the turnover rate for employees is like in this industry.
Sell of the rest - to who? why? Not a chance. MS dont have much of a history of selling companies, in fact relatively speaking, they even have little history in buying companies in the online space, relative to say Yahoo.
@Toby
You're completely entitled to prefer Yahoo messenger, I am not in a position to compare the two. I am sure it has some great features.
As for your computer crashing and this being due to messenger, could be, but it cant be happening to everyone otherwise no one would be using it. I certainly use it every day with no problems.
"Any buyup from Microsoft would be the death of a great product" - maybe, but thats not what this is about. The product is dying anyway, if anything think of this as a renaissance.
A penguin, because who doesnt like a penguin?
Nope, Icahn is a very small cog in this. He has no special right any more than I do as a voter in the UK.
I.e. he's a self-serving retard. He doesn't care if anyone else gets fucked over by this and that's why he shouldn't be listened to, just like we shouldn't listen to Abu Hamza's insane rants (that doesn't mean he should get sent summarily off to the states, where he'll probably get "lost" and turn up in Saudi Arabia). Just that the government shouldn't do what he says. Mostly because he's a freaking nutcase.
Like Icahn.
Oh, and your "turn it around" isn't turning it around. It's equating ONE shareholder with ALL shareholders.
That's not "turning around" that's making shit up.
Nope, Icahn is a very small cog in this. He has no special right any more than I do as a voter in the UK.
- thats my point, but he does have the same rights.
"self-serving" - all investors are self serving, why did you buy Yahoo shares?
"he's a self-serving retard" - who has done pretty well for himself inspite of this alleged handicap/
Can you suggest a scenario under which Icahn benefits and all other shareholders suffer? I fail to see this possibility, anyone with shares in Yahoo should love Icahn, and those with any sense do. Give me one scenario where he "fucks everyone over".
But as you are citing Abu Hamza and nothing you wrote made any sense, I suggest you probably dont reply.
Pegnuins....you know the drill.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
