RSSMicrosoft has closed the door, says Yahoo
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 12, 2008, 4:30 PM
A statement issued by Yahoo this afternoon says that all talks with Microsoft over any possible combination of their businesses has effectively concluded, and that it wants to maintain its own search business.
One final meeting between both companies' executives apparently took place on Sunday. "At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo, even at the price range it had previously suggested," the statement reads.
With that result, Yahoo board members determined that any business deal with Microsoft that would constitute less than a merger, would leave Yahoo without an independent search business that the company says is "critical to its strategic future and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders." This flies in the face of rumors circulating as late as an hour ago, stating Yahoo may have been ready to cede its search business or search capability to Google.
Some sources are expecting a possible joint statement from Yahoo and Google this afternoon, though that expectation may have been triggered by heads-up comments to the media about this Yahoo statement.
4:42 pm ET June 12, 2008 - Immediately after Yahoo's statement was issued, Microsoft followed up with its own corporate response, which seemed to indicate the door wasn't entirely closed from its vantage point.
4:45 pm ET June 12, 2008 - This news comes amid word that one of Yahoo's long-time engineers, Jeremy Zawodny, is leaving the company.
"In the next few weeks, I'll walk the halls at Yahoo as an employee one last time and turn in my purple badge," Zawodny wrote for his personal blog early this morning. "After 8.5 years of service and a better experience than I could have possibly imaged back in 1999, the time for me to move on has arrived."
Zawodny was a developer on the company's search team and a popular "technical evangelist" who last month, on his personal blog, asked readers to send in their resumes for anyone who'd like to be a technical evangelist. If anyone put two and two together to ascertain he was talking about his own job, it wasn't shared with the rest of the world.
Back in December 2005, Zawodny was embroiled in a minor scandal over his decision to sell textual advertising links on his personal Web site -- text links that provided browser data to the source being linked to. Colleagues advised that he should have instead have included attributes in his text links that provide no browser data to advertisers -- attributes that have been dubbed "link condoms." Yahoo had apparently advised its bloggers to use such attributes, but in a celebrated case, Zawodny refused.
Observers had been expecting the departure of a high-level executive from Yahoo today, and arguably Zawodny is not a high-level executive.
haha in this one instance above all others I have to give Microsoft their due respect. good for them. put an over greedy Board in their place and now essentially tells them To bad so sad, too little too late...
IMHO NOT adding Yahoo to MS is probably the most bold thing they have EVER done to date. And also IMHO will result in a superior product in the end.
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|Nice to see that credibility and stock price are correlated.
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|Crap, look at this! I should have put my money where my mouth is on this one...
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|Microsoft = MONUMENTAL FAILURE:
Windoze Me
Windoze 2000, XP ( viruses, spyware, rootktis, etc.)
Zune (The brown iPod Killer, LOL)
Vista
Vista 2nd Edition (Code name Windoze 7)
Yahoo! acquisition
Oh the pain, the pain! Make it stop Microsoft!
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|Microsoft = MONUMENTAL FAILURE:
*laughing*
...he says about one of the most powerful companies in the world.
Your comic genius knows no bounds, sherlock.
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|You are definitely showing your idiocy. Now get out and cut the lawn before daddy cuts off your allowance!
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|rich? yeah
powerful? meh.... not so much.
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|*laughs*
Maybe it's your blind dislike of anything MSFT, but you cannot seriously be that dense....
Market share = power in the consumer world. Anything over 40% and you can damn near change the focus of the entire market on a whim.
If that ain't power....
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|HA what a punk
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|I think its about time this idiot is banned Scott. Not one single time has he had anything constructive to add, pure trolling.
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|Yeah, but it's entertaining trolling, and he hasn't resorted to posting nothing but flames.
...yet.
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|Interestingly, childish anti-MS statements like this (name calling, etc.) mostly come from Apple fans (although it doesn't mean all Apple lovers are like that).
Linux and MS trolls seem to be more restrained. Just an observation.
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|PC_Tool is right. Right now market share is equal to power, but that is being challenged in the new government models all around the world where too much market share is associated with monopoly and hard rules are applied for them.
Look at what Microsoft achieved in Europe. They made a couple of mistakes and now they check when a Microsoft employee goes to the bathroom. Of course you will find things not well done in everything if you analyze to such level of detail.
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|you know whats funny, apple has been around just as long and has less then 4.5% of the market that microsoft does.
so if Microsoft is a failure, what does that make apple?
mega gigantic super epic monumental failure?
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|You ignorant moron just STFU
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|MSFT still hold a majority of the market in Europe.
Market-share will always equal power when speaking in terms of any capitalist market.
The EC is still a capitalist market, though they sure do seem to be trying to change that, especially with that last statement by Neelie where the government gets to choose what products you can use or not.
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|OK, MS Truth...
Windows 98se > Windows ME
Windows 2000 > Windows 98se
Windows 2000 for short time > Windows XP home
Windows XP Pro SP2 > Windows XP Home SP2
Windows XP Pro SP2 > Windows 2000 SP4
Windows XP Pro SP3 >= Windows Vista (On old machines)
Vindows Vista Ultimate (On Newest equipment only) > Windows XP Pro sp3
Windows XP Pro SP3 (legacy equipment) > Windows Vista anything (legacy equipment)
So all this means, Get a new machine (especially 64 bit with 2gb Ram minimum) Use Windows Vista Home premium at least and you'll be very happy with it...
Below that stay with XP pro SP3, and all is good in the world.
Thats all MS had to say from the very beginning to gain the respect of the tech community instead of telling everyone to upgrade to Vista that really could not benefit from doing so in any way cause their machines were not up to par, and the upgrade felt more like a downgrade at a very high price...
Indeed many on the Technet forums was begging MS to only release Vista Ultimate in 64 bit or OEM. No retail at all. And to get rid of Vista Home basic entirely, so as to leave that legacy market for XP Pro SP3. Ultimately MS reluctantly agreed with us that THAT deployment plan would have been better then the one they opted for. Which even the most die hard Executives in MS are now agreeing Vista is another ME style failure for them in consumer acceptance... So a lot of this learned objectivity is going into Windows 7. More innovation, less hype over what the consumer can not see; and honesty in compatibility. SO By that time... Windows 7 for windows 7 machines ONLY(and this time MS sticks to their guns on compatibility specs), and rest of the field Vista, which is expected to be SP2 by that time. And even XP did not meet its prime acceptance till SP2 so thats believable.
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|Wow.
I actually agree with damned near all of that.
The upgrade SKU should have never even been considered. I don't even have a problem with OEM-only on top-of-the-line PCs.
That would have made a hell of a lot more sense from the beginning and would likely have been a much better move PR and sales-wise, both fro MSFT and hardware companies (new OS, new hardware).
*shrug*
They messed up PR-wise.
The PCs they are selling it on are finally getting better. My last trip to the store didn't find one with less than 2GB of RAM..and many with 3 or more. Finally...
Hopefully by Win7 consumer hardware will be up to speed.
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|Somewhere up in his SuperDeathVistaStar, Darth Ballmer peers out through his hooded cloak and says: "Something Something Dark Yahoo... Something Something Something Complete...."
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