According to techcrunch, there seem to be an eminent merger between the two Internet pioneers!. But I wonder what AOL got that Yahoo wants!
"Yahoo is continuing its marathon merger discussions with AOL, sources close to the negotiations have whispered to us, and a deal could happen as early as this month. Is this just a rehash of the reported discussions in February and then again in April?"
The wolf can't let the sheep go. M$ published the following short news item. I think M$ and some other people has much to gain, if Yahoo is in their pocket!
REDMOND, Wash. — May 18, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today issued the following statement:
“In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties.
“There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions.”
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Microsoft is walking away from Yahoo! Acquisition after upping the ante to US$40bn-plus. The news is a blow to Microsoft, which had seen the acquisition as a way of competing more effectively with rival Google. But the wolf err Steve Ballmer said he knew the exact price that that Yahoo! is worth. So After Jerry Yang has said my company worth more than you think; M$ decided to walk away, after writing a letter to Jerry Yang.
“After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement.
Here is the full letter;
Dear Jerry,
After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo.
I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo’s board of directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible.
I am disappointed that Yahoo has not moved towards accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers, and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our decision to offer a 62% premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions.
In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33/share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5bn of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70% compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5bn or more, or at least another $4/share above our $33 offer.
Also, after giving this week’s conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.
We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo undesirable to us for a number of reasons.
First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo’s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.
Given this, it would impair Yahoo’s ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.
In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.
This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.
It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google’s search services.
Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft’s proposal to acquire Yahoo.
We will move forward and will continue to innovate and grow our business at Microsoft with the talented team we have in place and potentially through strategic transactions with other business partners.
I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.
But clearly a deal is not to be.
Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.
Sincerely yours,
Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation
Jerry should be happy Steve did not throw a chair at him or curse him.
According to this Yahoo news article, Microsoft or Chief Executive Steve Ballmer if you follow the article plans to go hostile with take over bid, as soon as today!;
""We're willing to pay for that at some level, and beyond that level we're not willing to pay for it. I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me," the executive (Ballmer) said. "I won't go a dime above, and I will go to what I think it's worth if that gets the deal done."
But he didn't offer a figure, and he didn't say whether Microsoft is considering raising its unsolicited bid, worth $44.6 billion at the time it was made in early February.
The offer is currently worth about $42.4 billion, or $29.48 per share, based on Microsoft Corp.'s closing stock price Thursday. Yahoo Inc. has rejected the offer, saying it undervalues the company. Microsoft's board has been considering whether to raise the bid to as much as $33 per share, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Ballmer didn't provide any new insight into the company's efforts to buy the Silicon Valley pioneer during the meeting at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters, but he did indicate that an end to months of speculation was near.
"We ought to announce something in relatively short order," Ballmer told employees.
His comments were first reported by Silicon Alley Insider, an online technology news site, and confirmed by a Microsoft spokesman.
Ballmer added that buying Yahoo is just one of many moving parts in the software maker's strategy to compete with Google Inc. in search and Web advertising, and that if neither a friendly nor a hostile deal "look good," he's willing to walk away.
Microsoft's board met Wednesday but reached no decision on a next step, the Journal reported. The software maker had given Yahoo until last weekend to agree to a deal or face the prospect of an ugly proxy fight.
Meanwhile, Yahoo is exploring a possible advertising partnership with Internet search leader Google Inc. or a merger with the online operations of Time Warner Inc.'s AOL as possible defenses if Microsoft tries a hostile takeover.
Impressed by a two-week test completed last month, Yahoo could firm up a long-term deal within a week, according to the Journal. Any alliance between Yahoo and Google would face intense antitrust scrutiny, however, because the two companies control more than 80 percent of the U.S. market for search advertising.
Yahoo and Google hope to allay those concerns by structuring their deal so their rivals, including Microsoft, could participate in an auction-based system, the Journal said."
SAN FRANCISCO/SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp gave Yahoo Inc no hope of a higher takeover price, saying it was ready to go hostile or even call off its bid if Yahoo maintains "unrealistic expectations" of a better deal.
"Speed is of the essence for the deal to make sense," Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said on a conference call on Thursday. If no deal is reached by this weekend, Microsoft will reconsider its offer and reveal new plans next week, he said.
"Unfortunately, the transaction has been anything but speedy and has been characterized by what would appear to be unrealistic expectations of value," he said of Yahoo's moves to frustrate Microsoft's unsolicited merger proposition.
Microsoft sees Yahoo as a way to compete with arch-rival Google Inc in the Internet search and advertising arena, but company executives have repeatedly said they have limits to what they are willing to pay to get a deal done.
"We have yet to see tangible evidence that our bid substantially undervalues the company," Liddell said, referring to Yahoo. "In fact, we see the opposite."
Liddell reiterated a threat Microsoft made three weeks ago to Yahoo's board of directors that it would consider cutting its bid, now worth about $44 billion, and take its case to Yahoo shareholders if a deal is not reached by this Saturday.
Continue reading at Reuters..
It seems Microsoft's top lawyer does not like Yahoo and Google getting cozy, He on Thursday warned that any deal between Yahoo and Google would hurt competition. WOw! This coming from a company that has been sighted as a monopoly!
"Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search-advertising market in Google's hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement.
The statement follows reports that Yahoo is considering a limited test of using Google to deliver some search advertising.
Smith said Microsoft will "assess closely all of our options." Microsoft is looking and even threatening to purchase Yahoo!
Iread it at CNET.
Microsoft sent a letter to Yahoo board of Directors saying / Threatening that Yahoo has three weeks to negotiate a decent deal, after which time Microsoft / Steven A. Ballmer is going to go postal. So if Balmer has his way, we might see a new Yahoo! board selected by Share holders / M$.
If you like to read the letter it is here.
"Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.
It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass."
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — A Microsoft executive on Friday sent workers an upbeat email outlining a vision of how the software giant expects to take over Yahoo and merge the companies' cultures and resources.
Yahoo spurned Microsoft's 44.6-billion-dollar bid for the veteran Internet firm on February 11. Microsoft is reportedly planning a hostile takeover bid if Yahoo's board of directors doesn't change its mind.
In a message to employees, Microsoft platform and services division president Kevin Johnson shared "a perspective of the process going forward."
"We look forward to a constructive dialogue with Yahoo's board, management, shareholders, and employees on the value of this combination and its strategic and financial merits," Johnson wrote.
"Once Yahoo and Microsoft agree on a transaction, we can begin the integration planning process in parallel with the regulatory review."
If Yahoo capitulates, the transaction would likely close in the second half of this year, according to Johnson.
The email is a tactic from the playbook of Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang, whose messages urging employees and stock holders to have faith in the company and its board have gone public after being filed with US regulators.
Johnson's missive comes on the same day that pension funds for Detroit city workers filed a civil suit charging Yahoo with betraying its duty to stockholders by resisting Microsoft's advances.
In an effort to avoid being gobbled up by Microsoft, the struggling Internet firm has reportedly explored alliances with Google, Time Warner-owned America On Line, and social networking website MySpace owned by News Corp.
Some Yahoo stock holders in California are suing the firm for not accepting an offer Microsoft made to buy Yahoo early last year, when the stock price was higher.
Microsoft is currently offering a combination cash and stock deal initially valued at 31 dollars per share but which fluctuates with the price of Microsoft shares.
Yahoo's board is said to believe the company is worth at least 40 dollars per share, a price that would drive up Microsoft's cost by more than 10 billion dollars.
Microsoft is adamant its offer is "full and fair" and argues that the merger would create a needed and "compelling" alternative in an online search and advertising market ruled by Google.
"I have personally met with top executives of the major media companies, and I know there is a desire for more competition in search and online advertising," Johnson wrote.
Google has condemned Microsoft's takeover bid as an attack on the freedom of the Internet.
While not promising that a merger would not result in the elimination of redundant jobs, Johnson said Microsoft wants to hold on to top talent and is so large it can absorb people in other parts of its operation.
In an effort to keep Yahoo employees from bailing out in the face of a Microsoft takeover, Johnson promised "significant rewards and compensation" will be given to workers at a combined company.
Johnson brushed aside speculation that Microsoft's historically stuffy corporate culture would clash with Yahoo's relaxed, playful California style.
"We would have an opportunity to bring together the best of both companies," Johnson wrote.
"Some aspects of the two cultures will naturally merge quickly and some will remain unique in the near-term and merge more slowly over time."
Yahoo would remain in Silicon Valley, where Microsoft has a campus, according to Johnson. Microsoft's headquarters is in Redmond, Washington.
Until a deal is cut, Microsoft employees should treat Yahoo workers as rivals, not budding workmates, the email urged.
"It's important that Microsoft employees not speculate with Yahoo employees about the proposal or about what a deal would mean for the combined company," Johnson wrote.
"Prior to the close of the transaction, we must continue to compete with Yahoo as before."
When I read this Washington post article, I said yes. People have been using IP Addresses in their daily use and it is personal information. I have had the same IP range since 1990's and it has really become a part of my information. Way to go EU.
BRUSSELS -- IP addresses, strings of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday.
Germany's data-protection commissioner, Peter Scharr, leads the E.U. group, which is preparing a report on how well the privacy policies of Internet search engines operated by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others comply with E.U. privacy law.
Scharr told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address, "then it has to be regarded as personal data."
His view differs from that of Google, which insists an IP address merely identifies the location of a computer, not who the individual user is. That is true but does not take into consideration that many people regularly use the same computer and IP address.
