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.'"

Antitrust someone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this sound like a case for antitrust? I don't think EU would approve it.

Re:Well, it was nice knowing you Yahoo...

[contrapunctus]

I really want to agree with you but I teach at a small college and (almost) all my students couldn't care less about Microsoft and trust. They all have hotmail or msn or yahoo email addresses, lay it all out on facebook and myspace and they don't know about MSs tactics. So if MS is shooting for the (lucrative) young-and-ignorant demographic, they will succeed (people who know what they are in the minority).

I've found that young people very trusting and don't care about privacy.

So just like the rest of the sleazy successful businesses of targeting the ignorant (spam, late night commercials, mailings, etc.), they will find a big market and make money...
Wal-mart doesn't make money by earning trust or catering to the elite either. Same market.

Re: Yahoo email alternatives

[gabble-blotchit]

Ultimately, the shareholders of Yahoo! are its users. If they lose their users, their business is worth nothing.

So the first question is:

How do I let Yahoo know I'm bailing out of their email services if they turn into MicroHoo! ?

Re:Micro-Who?

[baomike]

You seem to have a little sympathy for Yahoo. I used to but, no longer. They did it to themselves.
Other wise, yes , the combo of MSFT and yahoo is likely to be a "drain on resources". And it's going to be MSFT's . Oh joy Oh Joy.

Now if MSFT would buy AOL all would be well with the world.
Maybe they could diversify, maybe buy a airline, or Kmart ....

Re:Realistically

[eclectro]

Resistance at $29.37 per share is useless.

Actually, they could use a poison pill [wikipedia.org]

Re:Well, it was nice knowing Zimbra too...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem here is that there are many open source projects that are now under yahoo license such as Zimbra:

Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) source code is licensed under the terms of the Yahoo! Public License (YPL). YPL requires that any modifications to the ZCS source code files that you redistribute outside of your organization be published for all in source code form. YPL also requires the preservation of all copyright and attribution notices within modified versions of the ZCS Open Source Edition.

So all changes that people all over the world have made to Zimbra does now belong to Yahoo, when bought by Microsoft these terms will go to Microsoft - so everything everybody made is now copyrighted by Microsoft... If the deal goes through...

Things such as this must be considered - Zimbra is one of the big Open alternatives to MS Exchange server, and it is obvious this is a move for less competition, not more. These sort of details may result in the merger being rejected by EU or US. Yahoo might loose more money from first throwing in the towel then get into the legal battles related with the merger - which may result in Yahoo on their own now without internal thrust, nor money for the share holders... In fact they could likely be much more hurt by the merger attempt...