Yahoo! Wants More From Microsoft
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The fight for the Internet portal could top $50 billion.
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Microsoft bids $44.6 billion for Web portal Yahoo!. News, commentary and analysis.
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Yahoo! plans to launch software in coming weeks that allows users to search for e-mail and other files stored on their computers, but unlike rivals Google and Microsoft, it is turning to a partner for help with the technology.
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Microsoft has extended its partnership with Yahoo to deliver sponsored search results on its US and international MSN sites, despite the software maker&#39;s recent declarations that it intends to be a major force in the search market.
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Yahoo Inc's   second-biggest shareholder urged Microsoft Corp  to  raise its $42 billion bid for the Web pioneer and warned Yahoo  it has few options other than to accept, raising pressure for  them to seal a deal.
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Google has made its first official comments on&#160;Microsoft&#39;s proposed acquisition of Yahoo&#160;saying that the deal raises &quot;troubling questions&quot; and that the underlying principles of the Internet stand to be tested by the proposed deal.The statement refers several times to Microsoft&#39;s past regulatory transgressions and indicates that Google could be preparing to fight the deal -- if it is accepted by Yahoo -- by pushing regulators to disallow it.&quot;Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?,&quot; asked David Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer at Google in a statement posted on the corporate blog on Sunday.Drummond also asks if an acquisition could allow Microsoft to &quot;extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?&quot; and to &quot; take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors&#39; email, IM, and web-based services?&quot;A report late Sunday in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal said Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang on Friday to offer help to the rival in thwarting the bid. The newspaper, which quoted people familiar with the matter, didn&#39;t provide details of the telephone call.Google has something to fear from a combined Microsoft and Yahoo. The proposed deal, which was announced on Friday and has Microsoft offering $44.6 billion for Yahoo, would combine the number two and three search engines. The two companies are also leaders in the areas of Web mail and instant messaging so a merger would provide stronger competition for Google in those areas.But Google has a massive lead in search and the deal wouldn&#39;t necessarily lead to an improvement in search results, so Microsoft and Yahoo would still face a challenge to surpass Google&#39;s current dominance in this part of the market.The Google statement got a quick response from Microsoft, which said a combination of the two companies would benefit Internet users by establishing a stronger number two competitor to Google.&quot;The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet,&quot; said Microsoft&#39;s top-lawyer, General Counsel Brad Smith, in a statement.&quot;Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the Internet. We believe that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will advance these goals,&quot; Smith said.A merged company would still only account for about 30 percent of the search queries run in the U.S. and about 10 percent in Europe, he said.
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Microsoft&#39;s $44.6 billion offer to purchase Yahoo&#160;is a dramatic statement from a company that delayed acknowledging the importance of emerging Web business models for so long, it faced becoming an also-ran in the Web 2.0 economy.But the cultural implications of the move are so tricky that the deal could end up backfiring for both vendors if Microsoft doesn&#39;t take care to learn from its past and use Yahoo to transform its business and&#160;not just help bolster its unproven efforts in online advertising and hosted services.The unprecedented deal, which would put a sizable dent in Microsoft&#39;s wallet, would be the largest purchase ever for the company. If Microsoft is willing to spend that much money, it also has to be willing to change some old ways of thinking to make the most out of the investment, analysts say.To achieve this, analysts caution Microsoft to be careful not to view Yahoo as a one-trick pony, taken onboard only for its user base and infrastructure to bolster Microsoft&#39;s online advertising interests against Google. While this is certainly the primary reason for the deal, to make the most of it, Microsoft has to not only respect the strength of Yahoo&#39;s brand but also be willing to let go of some of its own traditional proprietary interests -- not just on the product side but in its culture as well.Microsoft has never been one to let go of its vision or proprietary interests too easily; when acquiring companies, it usually subsumes the products and services and brands them as its own.While this has worked in the past because Microsoft traditionally has shied away from acquiring big-name or big-ticket items --&#160;last year&#39;s $6 billion aQuantive deal&#160;was a notable exception -- it&#39;s not as simple to do this with a company like Yahoo, analysts said.In the areas of online search and particular services and as an online destination for users, Yahoo is a stronger brand than Microsoft. Microsoft must recognize this and be willing to give up some of its interest in new content and services branded, respectively, under MSN and Windows Live to make the deal successful, said Ned May, director and lead analyst for market research firm Outsell.&quot;The big question is, will Microsoft take this and recognize it for being a stronger property and migrate its efforts there, or will it try to push its own efforts out through Yahoo?&quot; he asked. &quot;Historically, there&#39;s no precedent for it to do anything but use [an acquired company] to get Microsoft&#39;s message out.&quot;Though Microsoft and Yahoo are different types of companies and the union itself makes much more sense, Ron Schmelzer, analyst and managing partner with Zapthink, likened the deal to Time Warner-AOL, in which AOL&#39;s brand was damaged, not enhanced, after all was said and done.But investing as much as the gross domestic product of some countries in one company could inspire Microsoft to &quot;change its stripes&quot; and rethink its own interests, he said.To make the deal a true success, Microsoft also has to prove that it can let go of its entrenched Windows OS and desktop software culture, which had been the anchor keeping Microsoft from moving more quickly against Google and Yahoo in online advertising and services in the first place, Schmelzer said.&quot;The application itself is moving away from the thing that sits captive on your desktop to the thing that&#39;s distributed on the Internet,&quot; he said. &quot;Microsoft has to rid itself of its &#39;80s and &#39;90s perspective -- which was great in the &#39;80s and &#39;90s, but now 80 percent of the value of the computer is not in the computer itself.&quot;Microsoft had been moving in this direction before Friday&#39;s news, but it has been burdened by its need to keep the customers of two of its biggest consumer products -- Windows and Office -- happy, as well as its enormous portfolio of enterprise and business customers. Instead of moving full bore into the Web, Microsoft had adopted a &quot;software plus services&quot; strategy as a nod to its software legacy and inability to move fully to a more services-oriented strategy because of it.Still, some think an entire cultural shift isn&#39;t necessary for Microsoft to make the most out of the deal. David Mitchell Smith, vice president and fellow at Gartner, said Microsoft can leverage Yahoo successfully without changing its usual way of doing things, by keeping the brand and merging the best parts of Yahoo&#39;s Internet business, such as its online content, advertising and search, with its online services efforts.&quot;I would expect to see the Yahoo brand come out of this very, very strong,&quot; he said. In particular, Microsoft has been making moves to drive more video and other multimedia content online through MSN, and that is one area where the company could give up its own identity in favor of Yahoo&#39;s, Smith said.Andrew Brust, chief, new technology for consulting firm twentysix New York, said that the combination of Microsoft&#39;s existing Web technology and the Yahoo brand would be &quot;nicely complementary,&quot; though he acknowledged the risks of such a union. Even so, &quot;risk aversion is not a good Internet strategy,&quot; Brust said. Taking a risk in this area as well as bringing &quot;some truly Internet-focused mindset into the corporate culture&quot; may be just what Microsoft needs.Others likened the deal to another risky one, HP-Compaq, which many feared would be a disaster because of product overlap and cultural differences. That deal eventually proved successful.However, it&#39;s important to keep in mind how much more of a role that culture and the cool factor plays on the Internet than it does in the world of traditional computer hardware, warned Outsell&#39;s May. He said Yahoo users may be put off by the notion of Microsoft as their new daddy and see Google as the lesser of two evils, which would defeat the notion of the Microsoft-Yahoo union in the first place.
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Well, he would say that wouldn't he? !!!!! Microsoft's offer for Yahoo! is fair, it's not going up and the company should take a long, hard look at it, Bill Gates reckons.â¦
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Some new features may give Yahoo! shareholders reason to shout.
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Yahoo! has reorganized its structure and management to align its operations with its key customer segments; audiences, advertisers and publishers, which the company believes will &#8220;effectively leverage Yahoo!&#8217;s significant strengths to capture future opportunities for growth&#8221;. &#8220;We&#8217;re moving aggressively to deliver the most possible value to our key customers &#8212; audiences, advertisers and publishers &#8212; and [...]
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Microsoft needs to do something online--quick. But buying Yahoo! isn't enough.
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There will be platform independence, this time Yahoo! has announced its intention to support third-party widgets on its mobile platform, promising platform independence and rapid development. The announcement came in a presentation at the CES event, currently taking place in Las Vegas.â¦
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Wondering why Redmond hasn't upped its bid for Yahoo yet? The software giant may be waiting for a "Dear John" letter.
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Google - not the only fruit Hands on Despite what you might read and hear about Google's web dominance, this is not Google-owned world. Yahoo! may be playing second fiddle to the internet's favorite search and ads service, but it still plays one hell of a tune in terms of numbers of users and the services it offers.â¦
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BOSTON/SEATTLE  - Yahoo Inc's  second-biggest shareholder urged Microsoft Corp  to raise its $42 billion bid for the Web pioneer and warned Yahoo it has few options other than to accept, raising pressure for them to seal a deal.
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F*ck! me! Microsoft has made a $44.6bn takeover bid for Yahoo!.â¦
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You can get more storage capacity now with Yahoo! Mail, but where's the gig?