Major Yahoo investor urges Microsoft to raise offer
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BOSTON/SEATTLE  - Yahoo Inc's   second-biggest investor urged Microsoft Corp  to raise  its $42 billion bid for the Web pioneer and warned Yahoo it has  few options left, raising the pressure on them to seal a deal.
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Yahoo Inc's  board met by  telephone on Friday and discussed strategy for getting  Microsoft Corp  to raise its $42 billion offer for the  company and the possibility of hiring Google Inc to run Yahoo's  search, the Wall Street Journal said.
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While observers believe that Microsoft is willing to pay Yahoo $44 billion primarily for its users and advertising base, Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, wants to grow its developer community as well."We respect the work Yahoo has done in the realm of creating an open development platform through its Yahoo Developer network and look forward to extending this great work to an even broader base of developers," he said during a press conference discussing Microsoft's offer on Friday.The question now is how that process would unfold. Yahoo's approach to development has indeed emphasized open source. In contrast, Microsoft has a deep investment in its proprietary .NET programming framework and Visual Studio IDE (integrated development environment). It only recently began making some overtures to the open-source community.But Microsoft also boasts a vast army of loyal developers -- something that Yahoo can't necessarily claim, although it does maintain the Yahoo Developer Network. And a Yahoo purchase clearly ties into its emerging "software-plus-services" strategy for distributing online applications.This may be a case where the pieces fit to form a serendipitous whole, according to one observer."Yahoo has the most beautiful set of [APIs] in its properties," such as for the Flickr photo-sharing site, said James Governor, an analyst with Redmonk. "But frankly, it just has not done a great job of building an ecosystem. ... there's no such thing as a 'Yahoo developer.'"Yahoo's tools hold promise but really need a high-profile evangelist pushing hard behind them, Governor argued. "The first thing I would do in taking over the company would be to get someone who really understands APIs ... to me, Jon Udell -- who is now at Microsoft -- would be ideal in this role. He would be someone I would be thinking of right away," he said.While Yahoo's APIs arguably are more consumer-oriented, they could still hold value within the average corporate shop, Governor said. "There's no reason why Flickr can't have some enterprise applicability.... For the enterprise developer, it's probably not the biggest thing in the world, but it definitely offers some cool new things."But other observers said there are obstacles as well as opportunities.John Gruber, who writes about the Web and Apple at his site, daringfireball.net, sees a major architectural clash between Microsoft and Yahoo, which has an infrastructure that incorporates Linux."I don't think Microsoft has ever bought -- and maintained -- a significant software product that wasn't written against Microsoft technology," he wrote on his blog. "So there's a paradox: Technically, I can't see how Microsoft would migrate all of Yahoo to Windows servers and software. But culturally, it just isn't in Microsoft's DNA to accept and maintain all of these PHP/FreeBSD/Linux products."Robert McLaws, a .NET developer and blogger at windows-now.com, questioned the overall wisdom of the acquisition attempt, given this inconsistency. "If one of the points in buying them is their infrastructure, but their infrastructure isn't Windows, what are they buying?" he said in an interview on Monday.Yet there's no doubt that Microsoft would move to merge its tools and assets with Yahoo's, according to Greg DeMichillie, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft and a contributor to the initial design of the .NET Framework. "Anything Microsoft does, they think about it from a platform perspective," he said.The final shape of that platform is far from clear as there are substantial redundancies between the companies' services offerings. (Purely on the development front, Yahoo and Microsoft are competing within the mashup market with their Pipes and Popfly toolsets, respectively.)For developers already wedded to the Microsoft platform, the major pitfall is the "corporate indigestion" that could follow a deal, according to DeMichillie."The biggest risk to developers is that it defocuses executives from the important job of getting a Vista successor out," he said.A Microsoft spokesperson said Monday that the company would not comment beyond materials on its Web site announcing the proposed deal.
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Technology giant Microsoft Corp said  on Friday that it had offered to acquire Internet media company  Yahoo Inc for $44.6 billion in cash and stock.
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Business & money: Online search firm Yahoo, subject to takeover interest from Microsoft, tells of rival offer from News Corp
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A major investor in Yahoo Inc   has met with Microsoft Corp  Chief Executive Steve  Ballmer to see if he would raise a $42 billion unsolicited  offer for the company, the New York Post reported on Friday.
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Yahoo Inc's board met by telephone on Friday and discussed strategy for getting Microsoft Corp to raise its $42 billion offer for the company and the possibility of hiring Google Inc to run Yahoo's search, the Wall Street Journal said.
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Yahoo Inc.'s Jerry Yang, newly named as chief executive, was found wanting on Wednesday by investors who sought quicker answers on how the Web media company would combat weak advertising growth.
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Now that Microsoft has said it wonât raise its bid for Yahoo and is moving to take the matter to shareholders, it is time for Yahoo to say what it plans to do next.
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Skeptical investors are trading Yahoo Inc  shares at a 6.5 percent discount to Microsoft Corp's  unofficial offer price, but some Wall Streeters expect the software giant to raise its bid.
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In what may be a sign that its investor base is growing restless, Yahoo sent a letter from its chief executive, Jerry Yang, to shareholders Wednesday explaining the Web company's decision to turn down a takeover offer from Microsoft and laying out its turnaround strategy. The letter went well beyond Mr. Yang's previous e-mail to Yahoo [...].
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Yahoo&#39;s Chairman Roy Bostock is leading a group of the company&#39;s board members in favor of accepting&#160;Microsoft&#39;s unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover bid,&#160;according to a new report.
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Fingers in both pies !!!!! Some of Yahoo!'s institutional investors are keen for the proposed Microsoft takeover to go ahead, not because they're pleased with the offer price but because they own shares in both Microsoft and Yahoo!.â¦
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Microsoft Corp. is offering $44.6 billion in cash and stock for search engine operator Yahoo Inc. in a move to boost its competitive edge in the online services market
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Yahoo Inc. is discussing a possible partnership with News Corp. in its latest effort to repel Microsoft Corp. or prod its unsolicited suitor into raising its current takeover bid, according to a person familiar with the talks.
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Microsoft was urged to raise its $42 billion bid for the Internet company and warned Yahoo that it has few options left.
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Most of Yahoo Inc's top institutional shareholders may be more interested in making sure Microsoft Corp does not overpay for the Web pioneer, because they have more money invested in the bigger software maker, a research report said on Friday.