Microsoft Sets Three Week Deadline for Yahoo! In Public Letter

An anonymous reader writes "In a letter sent today, Microsoft writes to Yahoo's board of directors to tell them that they would like to 'negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies.' Their message is a combination of friend and foe: 'If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders.'"

Re:defaults

[Ilgaz]

Putting icons to users desktop and tricking users by Start menu didn't work well for MSN. Yahoo won because people have chosen it, not by a trap, by actually going to www.yahoo.com or getting their toolbar (as opt-in) from toolbar.yahoo.com . They have chosen Yahoo because it promises a minimal configuration need which definitely won't "punish" you for not using Windows OS.

AOL purchased Netscape just for home.netscape.com start page for $5 billion. What happened when they made Browser irrelevant? People basically changed their homepage. People aren't that stupid.

Re:Shareholders are supposed to sell ...

[rtb61]

Now for the reality of a M$ deep pockets take over. If M$ wanted they could have simply announced the takeover bid and simply started buying shares. The big catch with that is, as it works in the current market, share price is a supply and demand, M$ in the buyout attempt creates an artificially high demand, how high will they go double, triple current values.

So a lot of investor start buying Yahoo stock in competition to M$ in hopes of selling to M$ at an even higher price. The more M$ invest, the more pressure is on them to complete the transaction, otherwise they end up selling at a loss (demand collapses) when the buyout fails.

What makes this buyout far more interesting is it all boils down the the bloated ego of Ballmer, how high a price can he be forced to pay in order to save face, will he go storming of in some drunken temper tantrum because nobody wants him running their company and pull out of the bid at the last moment. Of course there can be the crushing reality, should the EU block the takeover in Europe due to M$ already being a convicted monopolist and this would make the situation far worse.

I myself would find the buyout interesting, just to see how quickly M$ could destroy Yahoo's market share once the takeover, how quickly Ballmer will convert a profit making Yahoo into a loss making MSN. You can bet one thing for certain, none of Yahoo's or MSN's, competitors will be protesting the takeover, Google, Ask, AOL, will all be rubbing their hands together as they expect a surge of new customers and quality employees, who will jump ship to get away from ballmer and M$.

Panic?

[icsx]

Microsoft must be real desperate for getting Yahoo to theirselves. Funny thing is that there is no one to stop them if the stockholders will sell.