“After a months-long standoff, Microsoft and Yahoo are in active merger talks, a person involved in the discussions said,” The New York Times reports.
“Microsoft, which had threatened to abandon its bid, has increased its offer ‘by several dollars,’ this person said,” The New York Times reports.
“Meanwhile, some Yahoo shareholders say that they have received a flurry of phone calls from both Yahoo and Microsoft, as the two companies are trying to find out what price large shareholders would find acceptable,” The New York Times reports.
Microsoft has privately raised the possibility of upping its offer, currently valued at about $29.30, to as much as $33 a share in recent days. Some shareholders have signaled they are holding out for more than $35. One shareholder said he believed an offer of $34 would probably be sufficient to consummate a deal,” The New York Times reports.
Full article here.
He’s going to eat Yahoo up and all their children too. He likes MEAT!
Ballmer is a yahoo!
Hey! Cool! The picture of Ballmer just changed. Does it change on every page reload?
In my experience with mergers there is no such thing as a ‘merger’.
All mergers become buyouts after a couple of years.
And yes you know which company will be bought out and absorbed into the Redmond monolith.
I feel sorry for Yahoo, their business is profitable and a highly valued brand, they do not need this deal with Microsoft.
If anything, its Microsoft that needs this deal to survive – not Yahoo.
Yeah! It does!
There is no limit to his goofiness.
Best thing that could happen to Apple. How the hell is Microsoft going to beat Google with 2 search engines that nobody uses?
MS is busy shopping for Yahoo… and if the merger really happen, they’ll be even more busy. At the same time Vista’s causing them a looooooots of problems, and it’s not anytime soon they’ll release Windows 7. Also Dell is going down baby, doooown as fast as a downhill skyiing gold medalist!!!
Apple has currently the opportunity to throw a kick to all these fellows!!! The time is now, not tomorrow. The should really launch an affordable complete desktop solution for $799 in order to eat all these people’s pie now. The hit would mean a worldwide market share three times bigger in 3 years.
Just an idea…
Damn! I don’t want my Flickr account owned by Microsoft.
This is GREAT news (for Apple). It will keep MS distracted that much longer trying to sort out their mess (and this time I am NOT talking about Windows).
Peace.
@ boulderfrog
Best laugh I had all day; cheers, mate!
😀
Wonder if Jerry Yang will stay after the merger. When Ballmer finally is fired (as we know he will be eventually), Yang could take over as CEO? I doubt it, but you never know.
Microsoft is looking to give the Big Ballmer fist to Yahoo’s Jerry Yang.
I here Rev3, Apple and Google have been actively interviewing lots of Yahoolagains over the past few weeks
That picture of Ballmer makes me think he’s just begging for a football helmet and a cowbell.
Ballmer is not gonna get fired as long as Gill Bates supports him.
As much as I don’t want to see a Microsoft-owned Yahoo, I do want to see MS waste a lot of money.
no no we need ballmer running MS… Lets him run the M$ ship right into the iceberg
If this goes through, it will mark the beginning of the end for Microsoft…….
What Ballmer needs is a straightjacket and a nice white room with padded walls that also has builtin screens only showing pictures and videos of Macs and MacOS tormenting his mind ’til he selfignites…
The scientists at CERN were recently accused of devising high speed particle experiments which may result in the creation of a mini black hole.
What the frak to they think this merger will do!!!!!
Bring it on.
There goes MSFTs cash-reserves.
AAPL still has theirs, and still growing every quarter, like a piggybank.
In five years, Jobs will have to come to rescue MSFT.
“Also Dell is going down baby, doooown as fast as a downhill skyiing gold medalist!!!”
That’s fine. There’s plenty more where they came from…
1. Ballmer is not a visionary, he has no way to lead their ship, none.
2. Thus, buying up companies is his only game, its all Redmond has because of their crippling overbloat of employees, now in the tune of 66,000+… Very little innovation, massive bureaucracy, no speed to market.
3. Ballmer will continue to screw things up, but so long as he has Windows and Office to lean upon, Redmond has no immediate reason to change direction.
The smart shareholder would demand Ballmer be fired tomorrow, because once MS hits the tipping point of no profits, it’ll snowball fast, and won’t be easily corrected.
Apple is highly likely to continue eating away at Redmond’s feast for the next 2-3 years, but at some point after that time, Apple’s sales will become a true and unavoidable thorn for MS, something they won’t know how to deal with…
May Ballmer stay as MS fearless ego-laden leader forever.
This smells like the Time-Warner and AOL conflagration.
“Also Dell is going down baby, doooown as fast as a downhill skyiing gold medalist!!!”
SB As a woman sprinter..
Steve Jobs used to say: It isn’t necessary in order for Apple to win that Microsoft must lose. I believe we are approaching a point where it is safe to say “It is not necessary in order for Microsoft to lose that Apple must win”. Microsoft is doing a great job losing on its own. Apple has no reason to try and kill it. For the purpose of the value of my Apple stock, I don’t want Apple wading into the razor-thin margin, cheapo, sub- $1000 computers. Or licensing their Mac OS X to other computer makers. I want them to continue their focus on uncompromising design and innovation.
Today, AAPL closed at around $181, with a market capitalisation of about $160 B. This is just above Cisco systems, just below IBM and JP Morgan Chase. At this point, Microsoft is less than double the value of Apple. If the value of Apple’s stock continues to grow at the same pace as it had for the past three or four years, in exactly one year, Apple will be the largest technology company in the world and one of the top ten companies by market capitalisation, among Exxon-Mobile, China Mobile, GE, Royal Dutch Shell, etc.
Let Microsoft try to eat Yahoo. I am going to take up front row seats for that show. It will be an enormous fun to watch.
Will this mean no more free push e-mail for iPhone?
Could someone with more knowledge spin the numbers please. Can MicroSoft afford $33/share or will they have to mortgage the company? That could be bad for future profits which don’t look too strong anyway.
I find it hard to believe that MS cannot build what Yahoo has for less than $40B. This merger, if it goes ahead, will further confuse MS as to what the company is really about. Plus it’ll increase their massive head count and reduce their appetite for more sensible merges for years to come.
It’ a marriage of two losers. This should be fun to watch
Yahoo needs to demand an all-cash deal, none of this stock offer BS.
Then take the money and RUN.
I’d be the first to congratulate Ballmer on his $45 billion URL. 😀
I can’t wait for this to happen. Yahoo! is already confusing enough. Just wait until Microsuck has anything to do with it…
They’ll probably end up having 10 versions of the website which will automatically redirect you to the one best suited for your version of Vista. But of course the system check will take forever, and will always redirect you to the wrong one.
Then they’ll turn the music store into some Zune mongering disaster, while not acknowledging the iPod they copied is already in a major transition to a new platform (Touch).
Blah, blah, blah.
I don’t understand why some people want the destruction of Microsoft? I may not like their software, search engines, and it’s business practices & monopoly, but I don’t want it to be the end of Microsoft.
They need to drastically sort themselves out, and fast.
How the hell is Microsoft going to beat Google with 2 search engines that nobody uses?
The same way they’re beating Apple with several “editions” of a crap OS that nobody wants.
This deal will be a windfall for Google and Apple.
Balmer is fairly ugly for a public figure of a large company. I wonder what his kids ended up looking like? ….. something amusing to think about.
Microsoft has destroyed dozens of innovative smaller companies that could have changed the computing landscape. Besides ‘Bob’ what has Microsoft innovated? A world with a MUCH smaller Microsoft could lead to a second Golden-Age of computing.
It’s photos like this one that keeps me coming back to MDN.
Life’s too short to not have a little fun!
Balmer’s Folly and Yahoo’s doom. Microsoft will do for Yahoo what AOL did for Netscape… and sink itself deeper into the mire in the process.
@JAYGEE
“I don’t understand why some people want the destruction of Microsoft?”
Just desserts, JG. Many, many people want to see the complete destruction of Microsoft. Microsoft has acquired, taken over or otherwise destroyed so many good companies, in most cases just to kill a competing product that they couldn’t otherwise compete with. Destruction of Microsoft is the only fitting end.
List of companies acquired by Microsoft
Ballmer is awesome, he is doing a fantastic job of running M$ into the ground. I want him to hang on for as long as possible.
This is going to be fun, we will get to watch 2 of our most loathed companies DIE!.
HAHA!!!
not making this up
MDN magic word: together
Chicks: would you put out to Ballmer?
Guys: if you were a woman, would you put out to Ballmer?
Breaking news, seems that MS has upped the ante. $31 a share. So far the mainstream news media is reporting this. Heck MS can raise it to 40 bucks a pop. With a Monopoly, its unlimited revenue every quarter… they can make up the lost easy.
With a Monopoly, its unlimited revenue every quarter… they can make up the lost easy
If resources are unlimited, why doesn’t MS forget Yahoo, and focus on making their own MSN work? That $44-some billion would go a long way in-house…
MS might have monopoly money, but they have zero management. They are living off yesterday’s remains.
MS can’t make MSN better hnce the purchase of Yahoo. MS left to its own devices really isn’t very successful outside of Windows and Office. But as I’ve said for years, it’s their business plan, not their softtware that’s really successful. They muscled their way to the top. No finesse, no real innovation. They scnookered the world into adopting them as the de facto standard for computing. At least for a while…
And this is why buying Yahoo is an example of their colossal hubris. They are muscling into search (read: advertising) in a huge way. They believe that it’s their size as a bit player in search that is keeping them from reaping more reward. They fail to see that it’s the WAY they do things that is no longer favorable to the rest of the world.
Let them buy Yahoo. The emperor has no clothes.
Yahoo should quietly switch to Google’s search and map engines, then let the MS deal go through.
Better yet, Yahoo should quietly contract with all of Google’s engines. With something absurd like a 99-year agreement and some huge penalty (in tens of billions $) for backing out early. Then make sure the MS deal goes through.
All Google has to do is turn their minimalistic search page into a true portal and Yahoo along with Softy are toast. I bet they are working on this as we speak (and for a lot less then 40B)
re: If resources are unlimited, why doesn’t MS forget Yahoo, and focus on making their own MSN work? That $44-some billion would go a long way in-house…
MS might have monopoly money, but they have zero management. They are living off yesterday’s remains.
—–
Remember we are talking Microsoft here…
They have’nt got an original idea among them.
They are the rich kid on the block with all the greatest toys ever made but with no friends to enjoy them with.
They may have all those billions but they havent the insight, intellegence, creativity or innovational culture to use that money for any good.
Microsoft is basically the biggest venture capital firm in the world – they dont create anything that is successful and only buy up companies to steal their ideas to make money.
If Microsoft was any good at what they do then their share price would be higher than Apple’s and they would have invented the iPhone.
Fact is they didnt and never will be a market leader – Microsoft are the biggest also-ran in business history, and that folks is where they will always stay… as an also-ran with shit loads of cash.
Its almost impossible to come up with a logical reason for M$ to buy Yahoo.
40 billion would allow our cat to build a decent search engine, but not M$.
Google works because it is unobtrusive, has Maps (unbeatably brilliant) and is now the verb meaning ‘to search the Internet’.
Yahoo is a jumbled mess. A few days ago, my Yahoo page switched to yahoo.ca and I had to switch it back (Yahoo Canada is a seriously bad joke).
Intrusive and stupid.
Hey, just like M$!
These two clown companies are meant for each other, and only failure awaits their insane merger/buyout/takeover.
Apple has nothing to do with this, except that it keeps stupid Ballmer occupied while OSX slowly eats his lunch.
Yahho is one of the big corporate backers of FreeBSD (though the FreeBSD foundation has worked to decrease this dependency).
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They employ some core-developers, have helped in the past with liaisons to hardware-manufacturers and do provide the hosting for a a large part of the freebsd.org infrastructure (AFAIK).
So, as OSX’s userland commandline tools are based on FreeBSD to a large part, this is the only place where this merger affects AAPL.
But I don’t think a lot will change. And I’m sure, people at Freebsd.org have a “Plan B”
Windows is what drives Microsoft’s financial success. Yet, with Windows Vista being unpopular and literally forced on users who by new PCs, and other users sticking with 7-year-old Windows XP as long as possible, Microsoft chooses to distract itself with this Yahoo merger that drains its cash reserves to nothing. I guess Zune was not distracting and expensive enough to take Microsoft’s corporate mind off of the Vista fiasco.
I predict two years have been added to even the most pessimistic released date for Windows 7. This is good news for Apple. However, for Mac users, it may mean the development schedule for Mac OS X will be stretched out, with no threat from Microsoft. It has already happened; Apple was comfortable delaying Leopard’s release because it saw that the release of Windows Vista was not a major threat for Tiger and ongoing Mac sales.
Ah hahahahahha, MS just gave up its bid for Yahoo. Too bad, was thinking maybe MS would buy Yahoo and kill itself in the process. Steve Ballmer hasn’t a clue what he’s doing running a company. He WAS a genius marketer back when no one understood what a computer was, but now is just another idiot swinging wildly hoping to make a buck. So long SteveB, enjoy the death spiral!!
I prefer Yahoo maps to Google, but if this deal goes through, I’ll never hit a Yahoo Maps search again. It’ll be permanently removed from my bookmarks.
I am dumping all my yahoo and flickr accounts.
Just like I did hotmail.
As of this timing, talks have broken off.
Good, Yahoo may still survive.
M$ Steve will probably cry himself to sleep tonight.
Slap in the face Big Boy.
Keep Ballmer, keep Ballmer, keep Ballmer …
M$ shares will fall again on Monday!
From http://news.yahoo.com:
“We have a talented team in place and a compelling plan to grow our business through innovative new services and strategic transactions with other business partners,” Ballmer said.
HAHAHAAAHAHAHHAHAHAAAAAAAHAHAHA!!!!!
Translated: “Oh shit.” And nice spin, Ballmy. If you had a talented team and a compelling plan, why the Yahoo bid?
But Ballmer said he concluded that pursuing a so-called proxy battle was “not sensible.”
Sometimes even someone as fsked up as Ballmer can see the obvious.
MS still has a chance here, unfortunately. many were waiting for a big stock payoff that is not going to happen now. When people dump Yahoo, MS could swoop in and buy. Or, Yahoo is so emasculated that MS wins a battle anyway.
MS is cutthroat in business. It’s the one thing they’re actually good at.
On that picture, he looks like Dr. Evil…