Microsoft offers $44.6 billion for Yahoo. | The Coffeehouse

Stebet
Buuuurrrritoooo!

wow!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22947626/

harumscarum
out of memory

That's a lot of users. If it does happen I wonder if MS keeps the yahoo brand and services or converts everything to "live".

Lloyd_Humph
If Blackberrys are addictive cellphones, Channel9 is the ultimate addictive website.

I doubt it will be converted to Live, after all, people joined Yahoo because they liked Yahoo. MS wouldn't want to jeopardize that.

Hopefully Yahoo Mail will not go from "Unlimited" to 5GB....

Stebet
Buuuurrrritoooo!

Let's not forget Flickr.

ionix5891

well i hope this goes thru

need a counterbalance to Google's evil empire

tho even if they do merge the share of the search market still be less than half

dahat

I suppose this is one way to make a good version of Yahoo Messenger for WPF... although it does seem a bit overkill though.

Lloyd_Humph
If Blackberrys are addictive cellphones, Channel9 is the ultimate addictive website.

I doubt it will be converted to Live, after all, people joined Yahoo because they liked Yahoo. MS wouldn't want to jeopardize that.

Hopefully Yahoo Mail will not go from "Unlimited" to 5GB....

Dovella
Go Microsoft !!!!!!!

[URL=http://imageshack.us]

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YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

eagle

Yahoo Takeover

Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo

Microsoft has just offered Yahoo stock holders $31 a share in what must be characterized as a takeover rather then an acquisition. Yesterday Yahoo's share price closed at $19.18, so it appears that this is going to be a knockout rather then a long drawn out fight.

Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling, high-scale services and infrastructure...The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own. - Ray Ozzie, chief software architect Microhoo

stevo_
Human after all

Wow, I'm obviously not capable to work out why Yahoo is worth investment of what much..

Given they have maybe twice the search engine market share than Microsoft, but still nothing to Google..

Are search engines really that important? Google used it to get 'big', but Microsoft is already 'big'..

Massif
aim stupidly high, expect to fail often.

I said it on reddit so I'll say it here:

"All Yahoo! base are belong to MS"

Cybermagellan
Live for nothing, or die for everything

creditcard wrote:
This sounds like AOLTimeWarner all over again. MicrosoftYahoo? Yahoosoft? Microhoo?

No, it'll be Steve B and the board tossing Jerry Yang, etc out on their rears in a week if that was the case.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Yahoo is big in Japan, as a portal, as a search engine (about on par with Google), as an auction site (there is no real eBay Japan), Softbank and AU have contracts with them for Internet on mobile phones.

This'd make MS the biggest Internet services company in Japan in an instant.

Vasudev

Yes, let us hope this deal materialises.

Also check the text of the letter that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent to Yahoo!’s Board of Directors: Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo!

jsampsonPC
SampsonBlog.com SampsonVideos.com

dahat wrote:
I suppose this is one way to make a good version of Yahoo Messenger for WPF... although it does seem a bit overkill though.

That was already done. Yahoo was one of the biggest showcases for WPF on Vista with their Vista-specific Yahoo IM.

It turned out not being as good as initially advertised...but maybe with time it will get better.

As a member of their adsense-alternative, I'm more interested in what MS would do with Yahoo Publisher Service Smiley

eagle

Sven Groot wrote:
Yahoo is big in Japan, as a portal, as a search engine (about on par with Google), as an auction site (there is no real eBay Japan), Softbank and AU have contracts with them for Internet on mobile phones.

This'd make MS the biggest Internet services company in Japan in an instant.

Softbank is a Partner and Steve said on the conference call this morning they would remain Partners. The same goes for China with Alibaba.

We have to wait to hear what Jerry Yang has to say, he may fight this takeover and he could win.

MSFT is down and YHOO is up

Xaero_Vincent
Sexy me

Am I the only one thinking this might be a set back for Microsoft?

Isn't $44 billion huge for even Microsoft? I thought Microsoft had only about $50 billion in stockpile cash.

Matthew van Eerde
AKA Maurits

Yahoo has a "we're thinking about it" response on their press release page:

http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=291270

GoddersUK
I CAN has cheezburger and you CAN'T has stop me!

flipping heck.

This story has made the front page of the BBC news site.

It's unusual for a tech story to get so much coverage.

eagle

Xaero_Vincent wrote:
Am I the only one thinking this might be a set back for Microsoft?

Isn't $44 billion huge for even Microsoft? I thought Microsoft had only about $50 billion in stockpile cash.

This is a big set-back for Microsoft, management doesn't have enough confidence that they can thrive on the web with the people and technologies already in place.

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

eagle wrote:

Xaero_Vincent wrote: Am I the only one thinking this might be a set back for Microsoft?

Isn't $44 billion huge for even Microsoft? I thought Microsoft had only about $50 billion in stockpile cash.

This is a big set-back for Microsoft, management doesn't have enough confidence that they can thrive on the web with the people and technologies already in place.

or: MSFT needs to do something useful with all that cash it has laying around. It doesn't make money unless it's invested somewhere.

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

eagle wrote:

Xaero_Vincent wrote: Am I the only one thinking this might be a set back for Microsoft?

Isn't $44 billion huge for even Microsoft? I thought Microsoft had only about $50 billion in stockpile cash.

This is a big set-back for Microsoft, management doesn't have enough confidence that they can thrive on the web with the people and technologies already in place.

So eagle, that interview of yours for Microsoft's CEO position didn't pan out after all, eh?

Expressionless

Massif
aim stupidly high, expect to fail often.

GoddersUK wrote:
flipping heck.

This story has made the front page of the BBC news site.

It's unusual for a tech story to get so much coverage.

Well it's more a business story than a tech one. (Until they start merging tech...) And it's a pretty big one.

One idea just struck me though, for all the talk of "they better not break flickr" I just remembered all that stuff Blaize was talking about when we first saw photosynth.

And who probably has the most geotagged photos in the world? Hmm... would that be flickr?

flickr + geotagging + photosynth = IfTheyDon'tMakeThisI'llCry.

eagle

PaoloM wrote:

So eagle, that interview of yours for Microsoft's CEO position didn't pan out after all, eh?

If Jerry Yang successfully holds off this takeover bid, the MSFT Board may be looking for a new CEO.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

Sven Groot wrote:
Yahoo is big in Japan, as a portal, as a search engine (about on par with Google), as an auction site (there is no real eBay Japan), Softbank and AU have contracts with them for Internet on mobile phones.

This'd make MS the biggest Internet services company in Japan in an instant.

Yahoo is also big in the middle east. I know a lot of people who use Yahoo for instant messenging, e-mail and a lot more.

Long did a great image of the new Yahoo - and I think it sums it up greatly: