Need more Competition!!! (Gotta have more cowbell)
@ Michael
Yahoo stock looks like it is at the same place as 6 months ago (before any M$ rumors I believe)
Sure there is a nice spike there on the news of buyout, but you are missing the bigger picture that not everyone invests in a company for todays value. I would argue that the majority, or certainly the most important investors in a company are those that buy and hold for the long term value for retirement. Yahoo at $26 today could be worth $2600 (and then adjusted for inflation of course) by 2020. A little lofty I suppose, but look at googles stock and see what expectations can get you in real dollars. Yahoo is one of 3 major internet protals (search, email, news etc) you don't think that this has long term value???
Also M$ is not considering hostile takeover, its a hostile bid, they are trying to force out the board, to replace them with one that will sell. Investors are daft to do this, that like letting a person replace your minister so you can get more money for selling the church - only a good deal if you don't care about the value of the church.
In a hostile takeover, they start forcing buys at $33, then people hold out, price goes up and M$ ends up paying more than $40 anywyas. Not to mention I am pretty sure the 80's showed that hostile take overs are completly unprofitable (unless they yeild a market monopoly)....
@ Grundy
People wont not buy windows XP because of bill gates, but people like myself will close down a yahoo account and open a google one just because they don't trust M$ as a corporation to own their data.
And Yahoo seems pretty good and making a profit, they are just also smart enough to invest proceeds into development.
If they sucked, then M$ would not be offering $40 Bil for the company people...
I am very personally against the merger because I don't like the way google thinks all my personal data belongs to them for the purpose of advertising? And where am I to take my accounts if M$ buys yahoo?
Good Grief, all these companies out there, the whole .com boom, and we are going to be stuck with M$ or Google as our choice of portals for news and Email.... I remember 10 years ago when I had more than 20 options.
Reccomendations anyone? I think I still have a myrealbox account..:)