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Yahoo! The Internet Businesses Microsoft

Yahoo To Reject Microsoft Bid 302

Posted by kdawson from the so-say-sources dept.
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.
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Yahoo To Reject Microsoft Bid More

Yahoo To Reject Microsoft Bid

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  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by FlyByPC ( 841016 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @02:58PM (#22362330) Homepage
    Redmond weather reports are predicting thunderstorms, with a 90% chance of scattered chair showers.

    • Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Informative)

      by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:27PM (#22362552) Homepage
      There may be some Slashdot readers who don't know the story about the chair: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google" [battellemedia.com].

      Quotes:

      At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." ....

      Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay... Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards."

      Quoted from legal papers in a court case brought by Microsoft.

      • Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Funny)

        by dotancohen ( 1015143 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:46PM (#22362706) Homepage
        Of course Google is not a real company. If Google was a real company, then Steve wouldn't be buying their competitor. They'd be buying Google.

        • Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Sunday February 10, 2008 @09:07AM (#22369268) Homepage
          The catch with that logic is it was not a 100% cash offer. It was a 50% cash and 50% M$ stock offer, now attempting to dump $22.3 billion dollars worth of M$ stock would mean in effect a substantial collapse in the purchase offer as the M$ stock price collapsed. After all M$ already took a substantial negative hit as soon as M$ admitted defeat in the Internet marketplace and was forced to make the offer to buy Yahoo.

          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$.

      • Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:4, Insightful)

        by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @04:14PM (#22362952)
        Ballmer is correct to an extent - google and yahoo ARE a house of cards, completely reliant on the fickle advertising market and pumped up share prices.

        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:5, Insightful)

          by HUADPE ( 903765 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @04:49PM (#22363312) Homepage
          Buyout offers are consistently above market prices, consider the following.

          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.

          • Not necessarily. You're not making a distinction between voting and non-voting shares. In order to achieve a buyout, Microsoft only has to convince the voting shareholders, which may be a substantially smaller number than the total shareholders.

        • Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)

          by c ( 8461 ) <beauregardcp@gmail.com> on Saturday February 09, 2008 @05:03PM (#22363422)
          > Ballmer is correct to an extent - google and yahoo ARE a house of
          > 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, Interesting)

          by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @05:12PM (#22363510) Homepage
          Good luck using the Internet and its vast store of information without Google or Yahoo! or any decent search engine. What are we going to do instead? Use Gopher? Google is what makes the Internet accessible to people. There's a TON of value in that alone. I realized the other day that instead of buying a book, doing traditional research, etc. I usually just Google for an answer when I have a technical problem. Do you realize the immense value in that? If Google suddenly started charging for search, I would pay for it. The search engine is a vital part of the Internet or any vast collection of information.

          Any tech company can be called a "house of cards". After all, what real assets do they own other than some buildings and equipment? The value of a tech company isn't measure that way. The foundation is the people they have and the talent pool they can draw from. Google has an immense talent pool that has shown itself being capable of solving many, many problems that bring value to people's lives. Advertising is just one avenue they use to monetize that value.

        • Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09, 2008 @05:15PM (#22363548)
          "completely reliant on the fickle advertising market"

          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: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by totally bogus dude ( 1040246 )

            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

            • Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)

              by liam193 ( 571414 ) * on Sunday February 10, 2008 @07:37AM (#22368864)
              The majority of users don't hate advertising, they hate the advertising they have been given. Google is a unique company on the net; their success is largely due to the fact that there is not a concentrated effort to remove their advertisements at all costs. Why? There is a perception by the users that Google's advertisements are not intrusive and annoying. So what's special about Google's advertising methodology:

              • They don't use images - Advertisements that uses images, and in particular large flashing animate images, on a web page speaks the following to me:
                • The organization believes I am too stupid to read their single line entry telling me about their product.
                • The organization doesn't value my time because they are using their advertisement not simply to compliment my experience, but they are trying at all costs to waste my time in finding the information that they pushed off the page with their advertisement.
                • I do not want to do business with this organization ever. In fact, I might want to take note of their name and consider using a competitor who hasn't shown this disregard for their customer's time.

              • Most, if not all, of the advertisements are in some way related to what I am viewing.
                • I am out there searching for a news article on a recent event and having the main advertisement tell me about a new medicine for something.
                • The advertisements are only slightly different from the search results (shaded background) and may actually be a valid choice for what I'm trying to find.

              • The front page doesn't have advertisements. If you are a search company, your front page should be a search page. It shouldn't have a ton of news and advertisements on it. If I want news, I will click on a news link or go to news.whatever.com. I don't need a page like www.yahoo.com that during network slowness is going to take time to load.


        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Viceroy Potatohead ( 954845 )
          I totally agree with that. And we're still in the Wild West days of the Internet. Look at Google's purchase of YouTube. That was a fsck load of money for what was basically a minor entity. They bought a popular saloon at the centre of things, without knowing whether the development on the other side of town will become the actual town, or if gold will be discovered fifty miles away, or if the local one will dry up. So many big players rise from nothing (such as Google itself), and without any predict

      • Of course it's not a "real" company... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by BattyMan ( 21874 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @04:40PM (#22363230) Journal
        If it were a "real" company, like, say, Netscape (was), the Empire could cut off its air supply. Same with "Linux" (_not_ a "real company", doesn't need to make money or stay "in business" in order to survive and continue to challenge The Monopoly). "Real Companies"(tm)(r)(c) can be eliminated using "real" monopoly business abuse. This is what _really_ has SteveB pissed off and frustrated to the point where he's reduced to swearing and throwing things.

        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: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
          after ten years of abuse

          Ten years? Try thirty.

        • TEN years of abuse? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by toby ( 759 ) * on Saturday February 09, 2008 @07:54PM (#22365056) Homepage Journal
          Somebody can't count.

          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.

      • Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by westlake ( 615356 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @05:24PM (#22363638)
        There may be some Slashdot readers who don't know the story about the chair

        --- 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: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Daniel Phillips ( 238627 )

          "There may be some Slashdot readers who don't know the story about the chair"

          --- 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.
          Trouble with your theory is, it is not a joke, it actually happened.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dpninerSLASH ( 969464 ) *
        From all accounts it seems as though Yahoo! is afraid of Microsoft, as they should be.

        Right now they've got Steve Ballmer in a corner. This is a man who is driven to win at all costs. Despite the flury of lawyers and PR folks advising against a hostile take over, I can't see him backing down. His identity and authority is too closely linked to his gratification.

        Yahoo has no choice but to try to work out some sort of partnership with Google, if only for its own survival. Fortunately, I do not se

  • Good to have more search engines (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Besna ( 1175279 ) * on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:01PM (#22362354)
    As much as we all love Google, I think there needs to be a variety of search engines. Microsoft-Yahoo might have been a bigger player, but we'd lose the variety. Ask.com almost doesn't count.

  • What happens next (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr Kool, PhD ( 173800 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:01PM (#22362358) Homepage Journal
    Either:

    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".
    • I think the exact words were "by any means necessary", so yes, I'd expect a hostile takeover at this point.

    • My bet... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Xenographic ( 557057 )
      (4) Their bid is denied thanks to EU anti-trust regulators, but they manage to cause havoc for Yahoo anyhow by distorting their stock price.
      • Microsoft and Yahoo are the 2nd and 3rd place players in this game...MS buying Yahoo doesn't weaken google's already 60%+ position.

        An anti-trust case has no legs to stand on in this case.
      • It won't happen. The EU can't forbid a buyout (IMHO). But They can force you to sell assets if your "new" position is a threat for a fair market.

        The gap between Google and Microsoft+Yahoo (in terms of search engine, advertisings, etc) is big. I don't see any reason why the EU would have to react.

    • Re:What happens next (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kripkenstein ( 913150 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:43PM (#22362676) Homepage

      2. Microsoft walks away. Shareholders revolt after stock drops big time.
      You know, the paranoid in me thought that this might be Microsoft's strategy all along.

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nullav ( 1053766 )

        Yahoo! users would migrate either into Google services or Microsoft ones.

        MS has the most popular desktop OS, has its browser as the default on the most popular desktop OS, and has its search engine as the default homepage on the default browser of the most popular desktop OS, but they're still having trouble with Google/Yahoo. Something tells me it wouldn't be worth that much to just buy and get rid of Yahoo.
        Rather than removing it entirely, I imagine MS finding ways to beat Google in the adspace game after getting two of the top search engines.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by metlin ( 258108 )
      A link to the WSJ article would have been nice, as some of us do have subscriptions - Yahoo Board to Reject Microsoft Bid [wsj.com].

      And to your point, I would have agreed that #3 is the most likely, although the final paragraph in the WSJ indicates that Yahoo has taken the "poison pill" in order to prevent a hostile takeover and that Microsoft may have to oust the entire board to do it.

      I find that particularly interesting - either they (Yahoo) are very desperate and are hoping for a miracle, or they really do believe

    • 3. Microsoft wages a proxy fight and tries to win over shareholders over the board's head.
      Isn't a 62% premium likely to make them jump? That's a lot of free money.
  • Yahoo, at least, now has a small glimmer of hope in changing itself from what Jeff Jarvis calls "the last old media company" into something relevant.

    Microsoft can't see beyond the desktop. Everything they do is tied to selling OS's and Office. They had absolutely nothing to offer Yahoo! beyond an aging and stale brand name.

    Kudos to Yahoo!'s board for showing some cajones and nailing yet another nail into Redmond's coffin.

    • They had absolutely nothing to offer Yahoo! beyond an aging and stale brand name.
      They had absolutely nothing to offer Microsoft beyond an aging and stale brand name.

  • Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tanman ( 90298 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:02PM (#22362368)
    Their P/E is 62. *SIXTY-TWO*

    That means they don't make money. At least not compared to the already-inflated value of their stock. The value of their shares should be down in the single digits right now based on their income -- a P/E from 15-20 would be much more reasonable. Microsoft comes along and offers to buy them out for an amazing amount of money, and they turn it down?

    Refusing this deal borders on illegal, assuming their job is to act in the interests of their shareholders.

    • Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:10PM (#22362420)

      Refusing this deal borders on illegal, assuming their job is to act in the interests of their shareholders.
      Instant profit is not always in the long term benifit if it comes along with total destruction of the company. And who says short term profit is what Yahoo!'s shareholders want?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rainhill ( 86347 )
        "And who says short term profit is what Yahoo!'s shareholders want?"

        Well, money (shareholders) always prefer instant gratification, seldom does it care about the company and its long term health, it can always move to the next company.

      • Re:Idiots (Score:4, Informative)

        by Tanman ( 90298 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:39PM (#22362646)
        Long-term benefit? Excuse me?

        We are talking about a deal that instantly infuses into the Yahoo shareholders' bank accounts more money than the company would earn in 20 years. It IS long-term benefit, and they ARE idiots to reject it.

        Insiders think it is worth $40? Who the hell are they fooling? Themselves, obviously.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Mikachu ( 972457 )
        Well, it looks like we'll find out what the shareholders want soon enough. Since Microsoft doesn't look like they're taking no for an answer, my guess is that they're going to try and win the shareholders over without even bothering with Yahoo's board.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by OakLEE ( 91103 )
        What long term benefit will accrue for letting Yahoo live and letting their arrogant management run the company into the ground?

        Their profits are dwindling, their effort to stimulate said profits are failing, and they are cutting their workforce by 7% because of this. I have friends at Yahoo, and the smarter ones have been looking to jump ship for months because they can see the writing on the wall. A buyout at MS would at least give these people a reason to stay (assuming MS only fires the chaff).

        I think

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eshefer ( 12336 )
      if you RTFA you'll see that they said "at least 40$ per share". it's not a denial it's bargaining.

      what they are doing is EXACTLY in the interests of their shareholders. if MS really wants then that bad they'll have to pay more.

  • It was always going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MLCT ( 1148749 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:09PM (#22362412)
    Yahoo would have been daft to accept as it was. The position they have taken (if correct) is the obvious line - "massively undervalues". The ball is firmly back in MS's end of the court - they will be forced to put themselves into substantial debt trying to force a hostile takeover (aren't MS sharholders going to love that on - yeah go ahead and piss away our 19B cash pile for a failing company) - or give up on it and look like a coward. Ballmer always likes to play the big man - it will be interesting to see how big he reacts to this. Depending on how obsessed he is about getting his own way this could end up making the AOL Time Warner debacle look like a minor business misdemeanour decision. 60B would be a out-of-thin-air figure I could see this ending up at - that would be absolutely hilarious.

    The other main option, namely attempt a takeover by proxy by trying to fill the Yahoo board has now (broadly) been nullified. If the current board is taking a position that will (if the takeover happens) make YH shareholders more money then they are not going to vote on MS stooges who would immediately accept the MS offer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by metlin ( 258108 )
      Eh? You are kidding, right? 62% premium and they reject it?

      Unbelievable and surreal.

      The stance the board has taken is only going to make it worse when/if MS actually does do a hostile takeover.

      *shakes head*

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MLCT ( 1148749 )
        Of course they would. MS has made it plain they want the company, and would not give up easily - those statements made with far less subtlety than you would normally find in takeover bids (short of outright hostiles).
        Yahoo have nothing to loose in attempting to shake a couple more dollars out of MS. It was a 62% premium on the back of a weak Yahoo boardroom who don't know what they are doing, coupled with poor recently reported results. It is nowhere near a 62% premium on the real worth of the company

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hangtime ( 19526 )
      This thing is not going down for $45 a share (60 billion). This is going down for $34 - $35. MSFT might be loaded but they will not go all the way to the mat. If MSFT makes a $35 offer and its not accepted...Microsoft won't have to wage a proxy fight, YHOO instititutional shareholders will do it for them. Yang and the board own like less then 6% of the company. While YHOO may point back to its high $35 price in November...a whole lot of stocks were high in November and tech is out of favor right now. MSFT b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MLCT ( 1148749 )
        You may be right - and 60 was broadly at the upper limit (I would guess 50 odd is more likely). But I just have a bit of a feeling on this - if MS keeps giving off the signals of desperation about *wanting* Yahoo so much - to the extent that this has all been a tiny step away from being a hostile - then the institutional shareholders might think twice. If they judge that MS are stupid enough to go as high as $45 a share then they certainly aren't going to cave too soon. So far MS has played this as an "

  • Buying Yahoo will not make Microsoft smarter. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:12PM (#22362434) Homepage
    It's possible to learn a lot by examining the world around you. For example, what am I bid for this half-eaten, moldy burrito? I am accepting no offers below $40.

    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...

  • Well, that took long enough.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dynamo ( 6127 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:15PM (#22362456) Journal
    Most of Yahoo's value spawns from how *completely* different their company attitude comes across from stuck-up, self-important, dying companies such as microsoft.

    This is backwards. Give it five or ten years, and Yahoo could be buying microsoft (and not just because Yahoo's value is going up.)

    But Yahoo's value would plummet by at least 75%, according to my completly random guess, if it were a division of MS. Imagine if your yahoo mail account was suddenly an MSN account. Your Yahoo IM suddenly merges with MSN. They both become worse than trash - I cannot imagine an organization (aside from the current executive branch of the us government) that I trust less than microsoft - all incompetence aside.

    If they were people, I would invite Yahoo over to a backdoor bbq. MS, on the other hand, I'd invite to.. nowhere.

    - d

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by owlnation ( 858981 )
      While I don't disagree that Microsoft is in a slow downward spiral. I'm not sure I understand the rest of your post.

      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. Ev

    • Your Yahoo IM suddenly merges with MSN.

      Already happened [yahoo.com].

    • Most of Yahoo's value spawns from how *completely* different their company attitude comes across from stuck-up, self-important, dying companies such as microsoft.

      Allow me to humbly suggest a moratorium on "Microsoft is dying" posts - at least - until the company stops posting record gains and growth each quarter.

      • Allow me to humbly suggest a moratorium on "Microsoft is dying" posts - at least - until the company stops posting record gains and growth each quarter.

        That could happen much sooner than you expect. Google for "microsoft cash" [google.com] and look for a diminishing trend over the last five years. If you had a stockpile of over $50 billion to start with, it's not so hard to post record gains, for a while. Until you need to start borrowing. [webmasterworld.com]

        At this point, corporations are no different from either individual persons or co

  • This is done (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hangtime ( 19526 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:16PM (#22362466) Homepage
    YHOO board comes out against, MSFT will rail that YHOO isn't worth that much, a month from now MSFT will offer a sweetened offer - call it $34 and propose its own slate of directors for the annual meeting. YHOO board will accept because they don't have a choice. MSFT will complete the purchase Jerry Yang and his cronies will go back to the bars in the Valley start their own venture capital firms or become part of one of the VCs like Kleiner-Perkins. Deal closes in the 4th quarter.
  • Come on, folks. Nobody but Microsoft thinks this is a Good Idea. I mean nobody. Microsoft has enough monopoly-like leverage as it is, without using that to leverage itself into even more markets where it could throw its weight around. In case nobody has noticed, there is a lot of weight to throw. Just try to heft Vista, for example. My computer was two pounds heavier after the install.

  • Thank God. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by F34nor ( 321515 ) * on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:28PM (#22362556)
    As a share holder in Microsoft I think that Microsoft has way better things to do with my retained earnings than pay too much for nothing right before the whole economy tanks.

    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.

    • I agree (Score:3, Funny)

      by OMNIpotusCOM ( 1230884 )
      The only thing the parent needs is some cool, blue, semi-translucent baubles and a Star Trek reference.
    • "Someone over there has finally woken up. I have been teaching Office 2007 and for god's sake it's a great product"

      For Excel 2007 they've made adjusting charts extremely painful and non obvious. To me that is a huge downside - the rest of the changes I'm fairly neutral on. Spreading the Blender interface to more programs is great of course (Ribbon is essentially a port of the Blender buttons interface).

      LetterRip

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jo42 ( 227475 )

      Make a good operating system
      That would require smart, intelligent people to implement, i.e. engineer types, not a bunch of gibbering MBA twits.

      Office 2007 ... it's a great product
      I've been using Office from the olden days when Word and Excel where standalone products. I hate the new version. Biggest fuster cluck being that Outlook uses Word to render HTML emails. At least in Office 2003 you could turn that idiocy off.

    • Re:Thank God. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @06:14PM (#22364066)
      Dogbert's strategy comes to mind.

      Make a bid, which is rejected.
      Generate a massive amount of negative media buzz, causing the stock price to fall.
      Repeat the original bid "I offer $31 for your company", which is now accepted with relief "$31 a share is more than fair."
      Dogbert: "Yeah, $31 'a share' would have been fair." implying they just sold the entire company for $31,being too paniced to read the fine print.

      We'll have to wait and see how this high-stakes corporate waltz plays out.
  • Microsoft doesn't really need Yahoo - it just looked cheap at $19. They can walk away and persue any of a dozen other strategies. They probably just want the advertising customers - and can might even get them by buying AOL for much less.

    Most of Microsoft's business are thriving - Yahoo is not.

    The numbers are sobering. Yahoo's stock owners will not get a better chance than this. For their sake I hope they are just bluffing to try and get their price up - because there is no other reasonable strategy on the

  • WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ohtani ( 154270 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @03:33PM (#22362594) Homepage
    I don't get why people are bitching at Yahoo! over this. Do you WANT Microsoft to own them? I don't care WHY they turned it down, I'm just glad they did, I personally don't want to see it happen at all! I'm not even sure if the FTC would like it much.

    • Do you WANT Microsoft to own them?

      I, personally, don't care either way. Until 2002 or so I was a huge Yahoo user. Now, except for some occasional visits to Flikr, and for being subscribed to some YahooGroups mailing lists, many of which I in fact was a subscriber of since it still was an independent company called eGroups, I hardly ever remember Yahoo exists. Now, if Microsoft were trying to acquire Google, then I'd worry. But the way things are, it acquiring Yahoo doesn't matter much.

  • Why do I have the overwhelming sense that something immensely stupid is about to occur? I've got my popcorn ready. Who knows, SCO did it...they banked everything on a whim. Maybe M$ will follow suit and bank everything on a hostile takeover. I wouldn't put it past Ballmer. But with the insanity that seems to be taking firm hold of the world and everything in it, I wouldn't be surprised if Ballmer, in a monumental display of egotistical machismo, tries to take down Yahoo, and his own company with it.
  • The clue train has not pulled into the yahoo station yet. They will only figure it out once yahoo is a penny stock. I figure, 7 or 8 years. I used to use yahoo email as my primary, but it's slow, and now they make you click through their home page, just for the extra hits. It's irritating. I've moved on to a gmail address. I haven't used yahoo search in years. Has anyone else here ? Yahoo got out of the auction biz a long time ago. They are giving up on the streaming music biz. What's left for them ? That m

  • It is compatibility problem really (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) * on Saturday February 09, 2008 @04:10PM (#22362918) Homepage
    FreeBSD doesn't work well with Windows. It is not a joke. If it worked (or works) it could be a huge disaster for both companies. Yahoo buyout is not some "dotcom startup invented something, lets buy it" thing, 46 billion is a huge money even for Microsoft. They can't say "Oh it didn't work" and turn their backs.

    Companies are not compatible with each other. Yahoo is a open source powered services giant. MS is Windows maker who struggles to make Windows more credible in large installations. Would MS pay $46 billion to further advertise open source technologies and operating systems like FreeBSD?

    I suggest Slashdot people who thinks Yahoo is lame because of their homepage check http://developer.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] to see what Yahoo actually is.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by quanticle ( 843097 )

      Would MS pay $46 billion to further advertise open source technologies and operating systems like FreeBSD?

      No, but it might be worth $46 billion to destroy one of the larger installations of open source software out there, in addition to starving open source projects like Zimbra of corporate support.

  • "Neeners! We want to do our *own* layoffs!"

  • So, is Yahoo the first and only company that dared to say "No" to Microsoft? I think it is.
  • SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc.'s board has concluded Microsoft Corp.'s $44.6 billion takeover bid undervalues the slumping Internet pioneer and plans to reject the unsolicited offer, a person familiar with the situation said Saturday.

    The decision, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on its Web site, could trigger a showdown involving two of the world's most prominent technology companies.

    If it wants Yahoo badly enough, Microsoft could try to override Yahoo's board by taking its offer -- originally v

  • It's called negotiation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Saturday February 09, 2008 @04:46PM (#22363286) Homepage Journal
    MS bid $31. Yahoo counters with "Not a penny under $40". MS counters with $35 or just does a hostile takeover.
  • "Nice to know you would have sex with me for $1 million. Okay, so would you sleep with me for $2."

    "What kind of girl do you think I am?"

    "We've already established that. Now we're just haggling about the price."

    So Yahoo! would sell out for $40, eh? Why am I not impressed with their integrity.

    The *REAL* problem is that "shareholder value" now has a circular definition of stock price, and anything that raises the price is increasing "shareholder value" even if the real assets of the company are being destroyed
  • IMHO the reason MS's internet search market share is source) is because much of its business practices, management, engineering, methodology has been mostly client-centered and doggedly hangs on to antiquated/hostile business practices (IP, DRM, anti-open source). Buying a competing internet company like Yahoo! isn't likely to have the effect they are looking for. I don't think MS inability to succeed in the internet sphere has anything to do with lack of resources. The methods, technologies, practices, s

  • Non search properties (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tuor ( 9414 ) <tuor.beleg @ g m a i l . c om> on Saturday February 09, 2008 @07:46PM (#22364978) Homepage
    I find most discussion only focuses on search. Certainly this is part of Microsoft's strategy. What is more important for Yahoo! is it's other services. Yahoo! groups, mail, TV, calendars, widgets, and lots of other properties.

    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.

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