Microsoft Offered $40 a Share For Yahoo 306
fistfullast33l writes "Bloomberg is reporting that a recently unsealed court case by shareholders against Yahoo reveals that Microsoft offered $40 a share for the Internet search company in January 2007 and Yahoo turned it down. We've extensively discussed Microsoft's bid for Yahoo earlier this year for $33 a share, which was rebuffed. Investor Carl Icahn has launched a proxy fight against Yahoo over the spurning of the Microsoft deal." CWmike notes Computerworld's coverage of the revelations: "The complaint places much of the blame on [Yahoo CEO Jerry] Yang, describing him as someone with a 'well-known' antipathy toward Microsoft who acted out of a personal interest to keep Yahoo independent. Something wrong with that? Oh, yeah... public company."
It's like watching ugly people kiss (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's asset is an OS that people are still locked into, but becoming violently sick of. Yahoo's asset is a rapidly diminishing brand and user base. Combine them and you just get an even faster and more epic fail. This is the next AOL/TW.
The guys who will eat their lunch are the Googles and Apples of the world, who are both innovating and listening to their customers. Size alone won't help you compete with that, you need to get back to innovating. I think people are being way too slow to jump the sinking ship here - if I were a YHOO shareholder, I'd have dumped as soon as the offer hit the table and the stock hit $30. Why on earth would you hold out for $31?
Public companies (Score:5, Interesting)
Public companies are now being run by the shareholders that take out payday loans, refinance their houses so much they owe money when they sell, cannot build traditional savings since all their income is treated as disposable. Basically the get rich generation with no long term goals other than their next big "fix".
Why does it surprise anybody that the driving force behind these companies is to sell out no matter what the cost to the business, the employees, or even the customers?
Re:Public companies (Score:5, Interesting)
And to head off the stream of ignorance about to insist that public companies are legally required to maximize shareholder value, the US Supreme Court has rejected that interpertation. The purpose of a Board of Directors is to protect a company, which it is allowed to view as a collection of relationships between customers, employees, etc. The case that decided this precident was based around rejecting a higher offer to take one that better served the companies culture.
Your company culture may be "profit maximizing," but don't pretend you can dictate to other companies.
Re:Jerry Yang did the right thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Its far better from Yahoos point to get together with Google in the long run. A good partnership could generate new revenues that they themselves cant get alone. For example they together have enough of the online sphere to use as a lever in phones, smartphones and UMPC's and get a real firm foothold in those.
Killing a company is not in any way in the shareholders best interest. The only interest it serves is those who dont hold them but merely buys and sells them on a daily basis. If companies should take that as their prime interest all a company needs to do is to fire all the staff and sell out all the assets to be successful. It would make China very happy but it wouldnt be fun to be an american for very long.
Carl Icahn's role in this... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the world of billionaires, not always the most friendly of folks, Icahn is about as pleasant as a rabid shark with PMS. If he gets his way, he'll install a new board, sell Yahoo to MS at $40, help gut the company, and then leave with a few more dollars in his pockets. Yahoo staff will be out of work, the search engine market will become a battle of two titans, and basically everyone will lose except for Carl and his board.
Re:It's like watching ugly people kiss (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't discount Office. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course the real monster is Office. I know Mac fans who did not move to Intel versions until Office was native. It is more important long term than the OS under it is.
Apple to me seems to be moving away from the desktop trying to redirect us to the living room; one place I refuse to allow a PC to enter (apple or ms or linux)
I know its accepted to ridicule Ms and speak of imminent doom and gloom but its been the same for ages here. I remember day one here for me and it was always Microsoft is going to die. There are just too many smart people there to write them off.
Now Yahoo, yuck. I can't even stand going to their clutter of a page. If anything they probably are the loser here, they need someone to use them because the public isn't
Jerry Yang did the right thing for the COMPANY (Score:5, Interesting)
If it came as a surprise to anyone that Yahoo's founders and high-level managers have an antipathy towards MSFT then they must've been living in a cave, or are total morons. From Yahoo's inception there has been little love for MSFT--if they ever cooperated it was grudgingly, in their own self interest. There is a cultural gap bigger than the Grand Canyon there.
It doesn't help that there is a giant impedance mismatch when it comes to technology and infrastructure. A Netcraft search is telling: Yahoo is almost universally FreeBSD, and what is left is Linux. Yahoo has ZERO Microsoft in their data centres. MSFT, of course, is almost universally Windows Server.
Remember what happened to Hotmail when MSFT bought it? They ripped out all the FreeBSD over the first couple of years, subjecting users to regular periodic disruptions. "To hell with users, we eat our own dogfood dammit!". Not only that, I'd say most of the hotmail employees were abandoned too--wandered away or pushed out.
Hotmail still exists today as a cornerstone to MSFT's "Live" initiative and is probably the biggest webmail provider out there so it wasn't all bad of course, but there is a difference here: MSFT had no webmail service of note before buying Hotmail. In the case of Yahoo, what have they got that MSFT doesn't have? They both have an IM platform and client, a search portal, webmail, advertising services, etc...except NONE of Yahoo's runs on MSFT technology! Within 2 years, the yahoo portal will be gone, the IM client will be gone, the webmail will be gone, everything will be gone. Yahoo is coveted for its customer base and advertising presence. It'll live for awhile as "MS Yahoo! Live" for awhile then it'll be gone. It's employees will be gone. It'll be a footnote in history.
It doesn't matter all that much to me; I have no great love for either company and think they both offer mediocre service and crappy software. However, if Yahoo's directors and Yang himself care about the company and really believe it would grow, they've made the right decision to resist a buyout by MSFT. You'd have to be a fool to think there'd be anything of substance left of Yahoo after MSFT slayed them and feasted upon the corpse. Some of us would cheer to see that, but I'm betting the founder, directors and loyal employees would understandably NOT want to see that.
Anyways, who is to say that Yahoo shareholders would be better off with the MSFT shares tossed their way in a buyout? Right now, I'd say NEITHER stock is going anywhere exiting in the next 2 years. By the way, if you just go by the charts, Yahoo did the right thing; in the past year, YHOO has lost just over 9 percent, but MSFT has lost over 10 percent. If you extend where things have been out to 2010, if you think YHOO is heading towards $11, then MSFT will probably be $10.50.
The pulse of the cube farm (Score:3, Interesting)
It's true, I've been out of the cube farm for about a year and a half. And I think it's true that there, Windows still has significant penetration.
But consider the following:
(1) Even in the corporate world, users are ready to get off the upgrade treadmill at Windows XP. Precisely for the reason you mention "It works just fine for what these users need to do." Nobody needs the next version of Windows, nobody really cares, and Vista really isn't that great.
(2) There exist increasingly capable alternatives that also "work just fine for what these users need to do."
(3) More and more work is done on web apps.
It does not 'break' as often as you would like it to, or believe it to break
I'm sure that somewhere, there's a place where seasoned Windows sysadmins correctly administer Windows boxes built from well-selected reliable hardware so well that your statement is true. However, it certainly has not been the case in the business and home environments I've been a part of. And "as often as I'd like it to?" I'd be a happier man if it broke under my use not at all.
But even assuming your statement is truer than I think it is -- the other three points are what I really mean by "Windows is stagnating." Microsoft's licensing revenues certainly aren't going away overnight. But right now, in the main, Windows is pretty much headed to the ignominy of just another commodity.
Re:Carl Icahn's role in this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, Google has started down the path of crapware bloat w/ its acquisition of YouTube. At least its front page is still an honest-to-goodness search engine, with clean interface and clean results.
Re:It's like watching ugly people kiss (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd imagine the real reason he's pissed is that he's so heavily invested in Yahoo he can't possibly get out of it.
That said, even if it halved in value had he sold his stock off, he can still cry me a river: "I only made $750,000,000 cashing out my YHOO stocks, wah!"
Re:It's like watching ugly people kiss (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Public companies (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I'm not. And no, the board is not. Unocal v. Mesa Petroleum established that, for Deleware companies (like Yahoo!), when faced with an unsolicited bid, the board could take into account not only shareholder value, but also the interests of: creditors, customers, employees, and possibly a larger community.
When the Board throws a "For Sale" sign up, however, it is obligated to take the highest bid.
Re:It's like watching ugly people kiss (Score:2, Interesting)
Creating that board they way the did was genius, and they laid out some new techniques.
"The iPhone is nice, but it's a cleaned up version of the Nokia E70"
are you high? it is a lot cleaner then E70, better usability, better circuit layout, and much, much more stylish. And no, stylish is not an opinion. That is a myth created by people who don't know what they hell style means.
"Slashdotters would still decry it. "
I've been here too long to believe that. Some would, but many would give it it's due...grudgingly.
MS's bank account are rather emptier then they where 8 years ago.
Re:It's like watching ugly people kiss (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Messy mergers (Score:5, Interesting)
HP has done reasonably well since then, but that is akin to saying just because Time Warner has some success now, that doesn't justify the disasterous merged with AOL.
Re:Jerry Yang did the right thing for the COMPANY (Score:2, Interesting)
March into a public company using loads of capital and credit...
Take over, oust lazy shitheads at the helm, make a stagnant, potentially capable and profitable company work again...
Sell off his interest for a serious gain.
He does what many of us only dream of. What would you do if you could buy the helm at Yahoo or Microsoft? You'd eject the flotsam, divert resources to things the company is likely to do well, focus on doing them well...
And let's remember that employees often benefit greatly from this sort of thing.