Yahoo To Reject Microsoft Bid 302
Many outlets are echoing a subscribers-only report in the Wall Street Journal that Yahoo's board has decided to reject Microsoft's takeover offer. The NYTimes offers the only other independent reporting so far confirming this claim. The report says that Yahoo will formally reject the offer in a letter on Monday, since they believe it "massively undervalues" the company. Microsoft offered $31 per share, a 62% premium on the stock price at the time, for Yahoo; but the latter believes that no offer below $40 per share is tenable. The AP has some background on Yahoo's options in responding to the bid.
What happens next (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Microsoft ups their offer. Yahoo board indicated they wouldn't consider anything under $40.
2. Microsoft walks away. Shareholders revolt after stock drops big time.
3. Microsoft wages a proxy fight and tries to win over shareholders over the board's head.
(3) is the most likely outcome. Microsoft already said something like "we won't take no for an answer".
Re:Excuse me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hello stock price freefall!
$40 as a minimum is quite reasonable when you consider the massive devaluation which will occur the moment the deal goes through.
Re:Not smart (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with American business and the financial "industry" built around it is that there is actually no interest at all in sustainable business, but rather exponential profit growth at all cost, even the death of the company itself. The company dies, the money vultures move on to the next target.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying Yahoo will not make Microsoft smarter. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has proven, over many years, that it does not know how to run a search engine. Buying Yahoo will not magically make Microsoft smarter, especially since Yahoo has proven, over many years, that...
Thank God. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's an idea. Sell you stupid DRM pipe dreams down the river of wasted time and turn into what you should be, a DIVIDEND paying LOW GROWTH utility company. Make a good operating system with no bells or whistles that will pass any anti-trust case, sell it for a low enough price that the trouble of downloading a bit torrent crack isn't worth it. Make it so I can add/remove modules over the Internet at will for low low prices. Then make a a version that looks fucking fantastic and sell it like a Mac for a premium to fanboys and people who think translucent colored baubles are the shit.
Someone over there has finally woken up. I have been teaching Office 2007 and for god's sake it's a great product. 90% of the things that have made want to skull fuck the assholes in the Office department to death are gone. The menu system is great. The Page layout break controls are great. The automatic formating is now controllable. Best of fucking all you can now set the default action for paste to be text only.
I want Microsoft to stop being a bitch like Sony. (Don't FUCKING sue yourself.) Don't get delusions of being a media company or and Internet company you twits. Give me my fucking retained earnings as a dividend, make Office for a profit, make Server for a large profit, and make Windows so it works underwater in space, in the future, across standards, platforms, without a hoot because it is a god damn utility that doesn't give a fuck because everyone has to use it and doesn't hate it because it just fucking does its job come hell or high water.
Re:Well, that took long enough.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yahoo has sharks circling. This is because it's dying much faster than MS. Yahoo, is essentially an empty brand name, content, and a database -- i.e. just like AOL before it. It has executives who have never understood its client base, nor cared for one single second long enough to find out what they want. It is astonishing that it survived the 1st dotcom crash -- it was in trouble then. Even now, in its final throes, they trundle out yet another doomed to fail product in "unlimited" webhosting. Except it is not unlimited. Just another Yahoo lie that will backfire like all the rest.
The only bad thing about this is that Yahoo is so toxic that it may have brought MS down faster. Nevertheless Yahoo will be a dead name before MS is, and it won't take 5 years. Both are, however, definitely dying.
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What happens next (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely Ballmer knows many/most Yahoo! engineers aren't happy with the idea of being Microsoft employees (even if they do endure it, they won't do so happily, which affects productivity). Also most/all of Yahoo! is built using tools not easily integrated into Microsoft's (but this could be mitigated with a slow integration process). So the actual value of Yahoo! for Microsoft isn't all that great. Is this worth wiping out all of Microsoft's war chest and going into debt to boot? I doubt it.
Instead, imagine what would happen if Yahoo! vanished overnight. Yahoo! users would migrate either into Google services or Microsoft ones. Ballmer might believe that he can woo the majority of them; even if not, it still raises Microsoft's market share, even if while doing so it does the same for Google. And this might be achievable by doing exactly what Ballmer is doing: getting Yahoo! directors (and employees) to fight with Yahoo! stockholders. Yes, it might not wipe out Yahoo! overnight, but as a consequence the stock might topple downwards, and who knows what might happen then - the board might get replaced, internal turmoil, etc. etc. Even if it doesn't kill Yahoo!, it might make it less competitive, again, something that is good for Microsoft.
Something stupid this way comes.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:4, Insightful)
yahoo shows this in their insane logic that shares in their company are worth 2x what they are selling for in the market.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:0, Insightful)
Just goes to show me that even on the off chance I would want to work for MS, had an interview, and was offered a position that I would not take it after hearing that. To have a CEO who can't use professional language is just showing that the company needs to look elsewhere for a CEO, not to mention it shows his lack of variety and knowledge of the English language. But maybe they have the cream of the crop already. After all, how many CEOs have morals and ethics?
Re:It was always going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it's not a "real" company... (Score:5, Insightful)
He has viable competitors out here, about which he can't do a fsckin' thing.
Oh, and _zero_ market loyalty, after ten years of abuse. Make that negative numbers...
Re:Not smart (Score:1, Insightful)
This also explains why oil is currently at $90 a barrel and why it jumped ~$20 in a few weeks time. Even though the poor are having trouble getting to work to make money the high and mighty rich investors are making profits on oil. Just another day of work for them.
It's called negotiation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
1/2 of 1% of a company's outstanding shares being traded in a given day is a VERY high volume. This means that even on a big news day, well over 99% of shareholders still think owning the stock is a good idea. They value it therefore at some amount higher than the going price.
In order to get these people to sell to a buyout offer, you have to make it go from 1/2 of 1% thinking that they should sell to 50%+1. To convince all the shareholders between .5% and 50.0000001% to sell means you have to raise the price, substantially.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
> cards, completely reliant on the fickle advertising market and pumped
> up share prices.
This would be the same market Ballmer proposes to run Microsoft into debt in order to buy into?
c.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
When is somebody going to step back and look at this phrase? Yeah, come to think of it, every media format on Earth, from newspapers to radio stations to magazines to TV stations, has companies that are completely reliant on the fickle advertising market. Been going on for 200 years+ of American capitalism; I don't see it stalling any time soon.
Re:Not smart (Score:5, Insightful)
I challenge you to show how Yahoo is a sustainable business. Before the MS offer, they just announced that they would have to fire 1000 employees [google.com]. The company's revenues year over year are shrinking [nwsource.com] because their management cannot find a way to translate all of their site traffic into money. They have a history of failing to meet their own projections. At the very least this a poorly run company, and with the coming recession, I do not think its sustainability is out of the question.
Second as an individual that owns stock, and thus is one of these "money vultures," why should I or any investor want to own Yahoo's stock, outside of takeover speculation. The company offers no dividend, which means the only return on investment I will see in it is from the company's growth, something it has clearly failed to predict, manage, or deliver on.
You claim that the entire financial industry is built on "exponential growth" but you fail to ignore the fact that Yahoo abd most tech stocks choose to hold their stock out as a growth stock, meaning they can only justify their stock price by *gasp* growing. If Yahoo were too come out tomorrow, declare a dividend (like say Altria), and pay some of the $1.5 billion dollars in cash they have to their shareholders, than their stock would finally have some intrinsic worth NOT tied to their rate of growth. (Note: For an explaination of growth stocks vs. value stocks, check this link [axaonline.com] out.)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
If google started charging for search, would you seriously not investigate the nearly equally good alternatives?
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. (Score:5, Insightful)
--- and a good many more who wish the joke could be retired along with the other long-since-gone-stale running gags that pass for humor on Slashdot.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:2, Insightful)
The market may rise and fall, but endeavor and scarcity are constant.
Google, by offering a simple utility, by openly indicating a "sponsored link" while Yahoo and Altavista quietly took money to do so, created a successful business model. Younger users may not remember to what insane degree AOL exploited screen real-estate-- I was inadverdantly clicking ads three times a minute just trying to navigate. The immediate attraction of Google, Craig's List and Wikipedia's attention to white space was a welcomed reprieve. By Ballmer's standard, a true business model is one that exploits captive consumers-- like an airport, like Microsoft, like AOL. What angers Ballmer and others is their lack of control in the face of innovation.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:2, Insightful)
Non search properties (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it possible Microsoft is after these? Like Palm wasn't after BeOS?
What would the acquisition of these other properties do for Microsoft? For Google? Google could sell the search and advertising off and get a lot of mileage off of the other parts
I think it's all this other IP that puts Yahoo! in a much better position then the narrow "Search Merger" view provides.
Re:Not smart (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a yahoo account (don't really use it), but I primary think of them as a search engine. Used them until after google came along, but joined the pack.
So based on that, here's my question - _if_ Yahoo is a search engine, and _because_ you point how they're not a sustainable business, then perhaps the real deal is that your post has three links in it, none of them from Yahoo. In fact, you use google as the first link to find out / prove how Yahoo was doing with its employment.
No one pointed out the irony until now. It's that proof in and of itself of the trouble Yahoo _really_ has? Advertising requires mindshare or is meant to build it - whichever way you want, you just proved _something_.
TEN years of abuse? (Score:5, Insightful)
MS was a customer hostile enterprise (eventually proved criminal, time and time again) from the day Gates crawled out of bed and set it up in 1975, with mission: Enrich ME, fuck everyone else. (Remember the anti-hobbyist memo [wikipedia.org] (first of many famous incriminating memos)? [google.ca] The leopard doesn't change its spots.)
I make that 32 years. The cost to civilisation is incalculable, and we'll be paying for decades to come. Millions of lives are made worse by Windows and every other worthless MS product, every day.
Ballmer was hired and retained to continue the disgusting legacy.
Re:Not smart (Score:3, Insightful)
-$12 commission. You can do the same thing in Vegas with a $1000. IE you bet $50 a day, and double down until you hit once. Even with $1600 it would be on average 1 month until you lost your initial $1600, by then you would have won $1550, so if you reinvested that you would likely make a year until you lost everything. The casinos hate this, not because they lose money at the table, as many think (eventually they get their share cause the 0, 00 put the odds in their favor eventually,) But these are disciplined gamblers who don't bet enough to be worth the casinos time. Also with comps, the time in the casino they assume more money than $50 a day average will be at stake, so they lose some off the table.
Similar with you "Vampire" strategy, this type of betting actually stabilizes a stocks value, would slow it's growth but also slow any decline. So not really bad for the stock generally, again it may upset the Mutual funds,etc. Because their is a need for the majority of $ invested to be educated to keep a stock in line. These non fundamental purchases encourage movement for movement, not the preferred movement for fundamentals that is supposed to keep the markets efficient.
How much was Eric Schmidt responsible? (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought you were going to say, "... when they took on Eric Schmidt". Novell was at the top of the network software market. Through a lot of foolish moves, like buying Word Perfect for $1.1 billion, if I remember correctly, in 1994, Novell became "Who is Novell?"
I don't have any idea how much Eric Schmidt was responsible for the downfall of Novell. He became CEO of Novell in 1997. By 1999 [wikipedia.org], "Novell had lost its dominant market position".
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:3, Insightful)
The new thing here is the internet, and people becoming used to the idea that you don't need to look at ads in order to make use of it. How many of us AdBlock? How many people have switched to Firefox after seeing how wonderfully effective it is?
You use radio, newspapers and TV as examples of ad-supported media that has stood the test of time. As a single data point, I can tell you that I haven't listened to commercial radio since early high school (around '95 or so). After I started listening to Triple J (government-funded station with no ads) I found commercial radio to be almost painful in comparison, what with the constant obnoxious loud adverts, and annoying promos crowing about how they're doing an ad-free hour or whatever. Now that my and JJJ's music taste have diverged I mostly listen to my own collection. I stopped watching TV a long time ago too; I download any programmes I want to watch because it's more convenient and don't constantly interrupt my viewing with ads. I've never even bought a newspaper; if I want news I can find it online.
The big thing is that once you stop watching or hearing ads for a while, when you do encounter them you find them really, really annoying -- and this just makes you want to avoid them even more, even if it requires a bit of extra effort in order to do so. Any company that relies on ads is in a very scary position because the fact is the vast majority of people don't simply "not like" advertising, they actually dislike it. When your primary product is something people not only don't want but actively seek to avoid, you're going to have problems.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
While the yahoo board would obviously be tempted with a cash only offer, getting stuck with M$ stock at this time would be nothing the Yahoo board could, in all good conscience, recommend to its share holders. Oddly enough, a substantial portion of the rise in Yahoo share price that resulted from M$'s bid will remain because of M$ admission of defeat in the Internet market place, simultaneously that admission of defeat does not bode well for M$.