Yang! tells! MS! to! buy! Yahoo!

Jerry Yang believes Microsoft should buy Yahoo!, despite being blamed by many for apparently rejecting a $33-a-share offer from the software giant just a few months ago. Yang told the audience at the Web2.0 love-in in San Francisco that he and the board remained open to possible talks with Microsoft, but that nothing was going …

[Andy Barber]

Yahol?

Yahoo & AOL merger? How is Yahol going to deal with the millions of non us AOL customers, like the Brit's who are controlled by Carphone Warehouse?

I for one... etc!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a non tech company could buy them

Their tech base is quite good, one would hope they kept most of their brightest tech on. MS would be looking to change the infrastructure, whereas a non tech company would be looking to harness some of the tech in place.

That could work out quite well. Possibly a media company would make sense, yahoo is engineered well, and they are pragmatic, just what a media company needs.

Or they do a 180, and buy a media company, then reposition themselves, a few good tech orientated films or TV series combined with net would be quite interesting.

[Gianni Straniero]

At last

If Yahoo! buys AOL, and then Microsoft buys Yahoo!, I can finally forward that merger email promising $240 for every downstream recipient. Time to get paid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Smells of desperation

Yang must be desperate. This time next year I reckon Yahoo'll be dust without a buy-out.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

MS will destroy Yahoo

There's no way Microsoft will be able to resist force-marching all of Yahoo's technology to Windows. This will of course destroy what's left of Yahoo.

[TJ]

We cannot continue...

Without mentioning how stupid Mr. Yang is. He is just the lastest example in how worthless the corporate America CEO has become. They sit there, have no idea what they are doing, and collect millions. What he has basically is "$33 dollars a share? No way! We want $14 instead" Congrats on failing math, Mr. Yang. You've cost people jobs, People Money, your own respect, all while lining your pocket. If your not whats wrong with corporate America please, point me to the even bigger, loser section. At least at Enron they tried to cover up their stupidity. You put it on the front page.

/coat.

[Richard]

If you listen very, very carefully

You can hear the milk coming out of Steve Ballmer's nose...

[Mark]

Didin't! You!

Tell! Yang! To! Sell! To! MS! Last! Month!?

[Chris iverson]

hahahahhahahha

no really hahahahahhahhaHAHAAHHAHAHAHA. your undervaluing us. Oh shit where did the economy and google go......Steve...im sorry can we talk again.....yes I know its 14....yeah.....uh huh...

and so on

[Nusato]

AT&T?

Why don't they just ask AT&T to buy them out completely? For that matter, if Microsoft buys Yahoo! what happens to the AT&T Yahoo integration?

Oh great and wise vultures, you need a blue Death Star icon for AT&T.

[M. Burns]

A fair offer to buy Yahoo!

Would be about $5 per share. Yang should be so proud if such a deal were to go through.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yang is...

Yang is just like so many who make it rich in Silicon Valley, absolutely no different that the many who do not make it rich in Silicon Valley. He's not a better Technical Guy. He's not a better Businessman. He's not a better Company Officer. He's simply to guy who was at the right place at the right time and got lucky. And times change.

[Charles Manning]

Yahoo is no longer valuable to MS

Ballmer is Google obsessed and wants to beat Google at their game.

At the beginning of the year MS + yahoo were slightly bigger than Google in search and an aquisittion would have made MS temporarily bigger than Google. Ballmer would have paid big for that.

Roll on a few months and Google is now bigger than the rest of the market added together. MS + Yahoo would be smaller than Google. Ballmer won't pay to have it pointed out how small he is in search space.

Therefore Yahoo is no longer any value to MS, except for asset stripping.

If Yang had not been dazzled by his own reflection in the mirror he would have seen this and taken the money when it was available.

[Hans]

@TJ

I guess YOU are rich now, as YOU knew of the economic disaster that just occurred well in advance? Cut the crap, please, Yang wanted to get as much out of Yahoo as possible at the time ... and failed, but he could not "really" predict the meltdown, well he could have, but it was thought to be very unlikely to happen this year, at the time ....

Anyway, who sells to Microsoft, vanishes.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Hans

Yang's responsibilities, under US Securities Law, was to get/preserve the greatest value for the shareholders, not to take steps merely to keep Yahoo from vanishing. That is why he will get creamed in the courts by the shareholders class action suits that are in the works.

[Mark]

@AC

No, the CEO is to manage the company to the benefit of the shareholders, the workers and the public that give them the rights of incorporation.

That CEO's use the US securities law to justify butt-fucking EVERYONE they can doesn't mean that this is required of them.

Then again, you spout neocon agenda and this probably sounds alien to you.

[Anonymous Coward]

re: We cannot continue..

to be fair to yang he was betting the google deal would go through - thus keeping Y! wholesum

Unfortunately he should have kept them both as active options playing one off against the other - he slammed the door on MS when he should have been progressing discussions (albeit slowly)

Given the credit crunch impact and the failure of the google deal it would have been better financially to take the MS deal. Any deal now - for example with a large media company - would probably be a loss maker. I would batten down the hatches and weather the storm over the next couple of years.

The way to play it now is to be the definitive #2 in web advertising revenue - the future plan should always be bright even if it is actually in doubt.

but this is all CEO 101....