Microsoft
No victory: Yahoo feels the heat after Microsoft walks away
Everyone's searching for YHOO, waiting to see how low the stock can go.
Even more so than usual, the tech world is glued to the market today, waiting to see how low Yahoo can go. Indeed, Google Trends says that YHOO, Yahoo’s stock symbol, is, so far, the 28th fastest-rising search term today.
But that’s the only thing about Yahoo rising today. Its stock opened at $23.02 this morning, about 20 percent down from Friday’s closing price of $28.67.
Friday was, of course, a universe away: That was before Saturday’s final meeting between Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer, Yahoo and Microsoft’s CEOs, at which Ballmer refused to pay a penny over $33 per share for his takeover of Yahoo.
Yang stuck to his price, $37, and Ballmer flew back to Redmond. Ballmer could always come back — but for now, Yahoo’s got to face the consequences of its strategy.
Yang himself may be pleased with it. Citing “people close to” Yahoo, the New York Times on Sunday reported that Yang considered the outcome a “personal victory,” and added that “high-fives were exchanged” among Yahoo execs when they learned of Ballmer’s decision.
Yahoo employees — whose wealth is tied up in the stock — are surely less excited. On Jan. 31, the day before Microsoft made public its takeover offer, Yahoo’s stock was trading at $19. Microsoft’s first offer — of $31 — caused the shares to surge to $28. But now that a deal’s off the table, folks at Yahoo once again face the prospect of sub-$20 shares.
Aware that he wouldn’t win any support from his employees if he were seen as happy about standing in the way of a huge Microsoft-stock payday, Yang, in a post on Yahoo’s company blog, denied any glee:
Frankly, there’s a lot of nonsense and misinformation in what’s being reported. Just so we are all clear, here’s what happened. The board took its mission very seriously. We clearly indicated to Microsoft that we were open to a transaction but only if it were on terms that fully recognized the value of Yahoo! and was in the best interests of our stockholders.No one is celebrating about the outcome of these past three months … and no one should.
As Kara Swisher reports, though, many at Yahoo aren’t buying it. Here are some quotes she pulled from distraught employees:
“I am in shock.”“I don’t know if we won or we lost. I think we lost.”
“I don’t love that it was Microsoft, but I think everyone thought $33 was a pretty good offer from a pretty good tech company.”
“Having to face my staff tomorrow will not be so much fun and I need some Prozac, since I don’t know what I can say to them about how our leadership is going to get our company going again.”
“Where’s the Jelly memo when you need it?”
“I can’t really talk to Jerry, since it is difficult to tell a founder tough things he probably needs to hear.”
“Do you think we need to do an intervention with Jerry and the board?”
What should Yahoo do now? Many are pushing it to make permanent a search deal with Google, one that it first initiated as a way to avert the Microsoft offer.
As part of the deal Yahoo would outsource its search operations to Google — it would get increased revenue in return for what would likely be the end of search-engine innovation at the company.
Henry Blodget argues that this is a fine trade, because Yahoo was never going to beat Google in search anyway. Why continue to invest resources in a game that’s already over? Better to spend the money in new markets that Yahoo could potentially lead.
But even a Google deal may not pacify investors. If Yahoo’s stock continues to slide, Microsoft could always return with another proposal — and this time, Ballmer wouldn’t have to offer anywhere near $33.
Farhad Manjoo is a Salon staff writer and the author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. More Farhad Manjoo.
Latest WikiLeaks: Microsoft aided dictator
Bill Gates' deal with the government of Tunisia, and other instances of officials and corporations behaving badly
Bill Gates and former Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. (UPDATED BELOW)
Politicians and corporations behaving badly: that’s one theme that emerges from the latest secret State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.
The new revelations don’t measure up to the seriousness of the alleged massacre of civilians by U.S. troops in Iraq that I delved into over the weekend. But they are still very much worth noting.
A cable from 2008 titled “Mayawati: Portrait of a Lady” reports that the chief minister of India’s Uttar Pradesh state (the country’s most populous) once dispatched an empty private jet to Mumbai to procure her favorite brand of sandals:
Continue Reading CloseJustin Elliott is a reporter for ProPublica. You can follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott.
Microsoft to buy Skype for $8.5 billion
Purchase will mark largest acquisition in the software maker's 36-year history
Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it has agreed to buy the popular Internet telephone service Skype SA for $8.5 billion in the biggest deal in the software maker’s 36-year history.
Buying Skype would give Microsoft a potentially valuable communications tool as it tries to become a bigger force on the Internet and in the increasingly important smartphone market.
Microsoft said it will marry Skype’s functions to its Xbox game console, Outlook email program and Windows smartphones. The company said it will continue to support Skype on other software platforms.
Continue Reading CloseSteve Jobs beats Microsoft with an iPad club
The last time life was this good for Apple, the PowerBook was new and Windows 3.1 had yet to launch
The Mac Classic II The news that for the first time in 20 years, Apple’s quarterly net profit — $5.99 billion — has exceeded Microsoft’s — $5.23 billion — is remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, there’s the fact that the massive success of the iPad has pounded the market for consumer laptops and notebooks running Windows.
Continue Reading CloseConsumer PC shipments dropped 8 percent in the quarter, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein said. Netbooks — the cheap laptops that became popular during the recession — plunged 40 percent, partially because of defections to tablet computers, he said.
Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.
Nokia, Microsoft in pact to take on Apple, Google
World's largest mobile maker will use Window's software as the main platform for its smartphones
Smartphones like the Nokia 5800 will now be programed with Microsoft Window's Phone software in a partnership aimed at taking consumers away from iPhones and Androids. Technology titans Nokia and Microsoft are combining forces to make smart phones that might challenge rivals like Apple and Google and revive their own fortunes in a market they have struggled to keep up with.
Nokia Corp., the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, said Friday it plans to use Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone software as the main platform for its smart phones in an effort to pull market share away from Apple’s iPhone and Android, Google’s software for phones and tablets.
Continue Reading CloseRay Ozzie leaves Microsoft
He was considered a possible heir apparent; his departure is bad news for the software giant
Ray Ozzie Ray Ozzie gave me hope for Microsoft. When he joined the software behemoth after it bought his collaboration-software company, Groove Networks, he brought qualities to the executive suite that Microsoft sorely needed. The most notable was an appreciation that the software world was moving toward models of cooperation with others as much as plotting their ruination. He was considered a potential, even likely, successor to Steve Ballmer, the only other CEO Microsoft has had besides Bill Gates.
So much for that idea. Ozzie’s departure, announced today in a weirdly low-key manner, shows that Microsoft is still struggling to define itself for the Internet era.
Continue Reading CloseA longtime participant in the tech and media worlds, Dan Gillmor is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication. Follow Dan on Twitter: @dangillmor. More about Dan here. More Dan Gillmor.
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