Yahoo!/Microsoft Execs Meet For Round Two

psychosmyth writes "Microsoft's deal to Yahoo! is apparently back on the table. Yahoo execs met again with Microsoft early this past week to re-discuss the deal that fell through earlier. 'The gathering, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, gave Microsoft its first chance to sell Yahoo on the rationale for the proposed marriage since the software maker unveiled its plans six weeks ago. Since then, Yang has been exploring different ways to ward off Microsoft. The alternatives have included possible alliances with Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc., News Corp.'s MySpace.com and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.' Microsoft is apparently still keeping all of its options open; a hostile take-over is not out of the question."

if it happens

[FudRucker]

i hope this costs microsoft a freight train full of money, so much that it hurts microsoft and weakens them to the point that they can not buy anything else for a long long time...

Re:A fond farewell...

[vaderhelmet]

I think most ./ers would be in the same pessimistic boat on this one. You're right, shareholders of both companies are likely to win no matter how this pans out. One thing to think about though is how will employees and customers (users) be affected? My money is going on "adversely".

Re:Isn't it about time...

[flyingsquid]

The gathering, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, gave Microsoft its first chance to sell Yahoo on the rationale for the proposed marriage since the software maker unveiled its plans six weeks ago. Since then, Yang has been exploring different ways to ward off Microsoft. The alternatives have included possible alliances with Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc.

When they use the words "proposed marriage" to describe a Yahoo/Microsoft merger, it reminds me of an old Western melodrama. You know: the villain has managed to buy the local bank, so now he owns the mortgage on the girl's farm, and she has to marry him, or watch him forclose on her beloved farm and turn her out into the cold...

"Things are looking dire for Miss Yahoo! Will she be forced to offer her hand in marriage to the dastardly Cornelius Microsoft, to save her farm and herself? The very thought is too much for her weak constitution, and her stock price swoons! Cornelius, in the bank office, clutches the mortgage in his bony fingers, then twists his long, black moustache. He throws a chair across the office, laughing in triumph. But who is that figure silhouetted against the horizon? That handsome, broad-shouldered man wearing a white hat and riding a white stallion? The reflected sun shines from the gleaming sheriff's badge on his chest, which reads, 'Don't be evil'. But can he possibly come soon enough to save the fair Miss Yahoo? Next week, the exciting finale!"

Of course, it's a serial. So the next episode ends in a cliffhanger, with Microsoft tying Yahoo to the train tracks as Google races to get there in time...

Re:A fond farewell...

[milsoRgen]

Maybe, but Yahoo isn't just a search engine, is it..

I guess your correct in that statement, but I tend to think of it as it was when I first started [archive.org] using it. Wasn't much more than a search engine with a directory attached back then, but now they have too much going on on their front page. Sure search.yahoo.com is good, but I am under the perception their priorities lie elsewhere...

I don't think it's likely that yahoo will disappear, after all, it has a lot of customers.

I don't think it will disappear either but I do think it will cease to be of any improtance rather quickly, only floated by whatever scheme Microsoft devises to get Windows users there. Default start pages and what have you, it wouldn't have to be that way, but I just don't see a world where Microsoft owns something like Yahoo, or Flickr and doesn't rebrand it and attempt a half assed integration into it's existing products.

Migration headache

[rice_burners_suck]

I have this feeling that one of the terms of this deal will require Yahoo! to dump all its FreeBSD-based technology and migrate their entire system to Microsoft's newest Windows Server. This deal will undoubtedly create the same sort of chaos that ensued when Microsoft switched Hotmail's systems in the same manner, since there is this rule that goes something like, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Making such a large-scale migration is sure to create nothing but chaos until after completed and after all the bugs have been ironed out, and the only benefit is that Microsoft can later brag about how Yahoo!'s entire system runs on Windows. There can be no other benefit since the system evidently works fine under FreeBSD.

Re:Flickr

[KwKSilver]

MS has made it plain that this is an offer that Yahoo! can't refuse. As soon as I heard about MS's intent to force it, I closed my Yahoo! e-mail acct. I'd only opened it a day or two before MS made this offer, so there was nothing important there, anyway. Since MS is going to force this on Yahoo! it is only a matter of time. Plus, I'd expect that the first order of business after a takeover would be to make using Yahoo's services intolerable for BSD and Linux users, which I am. Why wait?

Re:Flickr

[tsa]

Because I had a Pro account that was expiring and I thought I'd wait until the uncertainty about the takeover is over before paying again. ;)

Warding off Microsoft

[The Famous Brett Wat]

Yang has been exploring different ways to ward off Microsoft.

TFA doesn't say whether he's tried such approaches as garlic, holy water, etc. What is the appropriate ward against Microsoft, anyhow? Come to think of it, I suspect it might be the GPL: their attitude towards GPL'd software is a lot like a vampire's reaction to a cross. So if Yahoo really wants to ward off Microsoft, they should spin off some of their software into a GPL project run by a separate non-profit entity, something like the Mozilla Foundation [mozilla.org]. Microsoft will recoil in horror. (Not that Yahoo has any software the rest of us would care to see, so far as I'm aware -- but that's beside the point.)

Save Flickr!

[Fishbulb]

Please GOD, if anyone at Yahoo! is reading this:

SELL OFF FLICKR FIRST!

It's one of the few sites I kinda like.