RSSMicrosoft drops $50 billion bid to acquire Yahoo
By Nate Mook | Published May 3, 2008, 11:37 PM
In a statement issued late Saturday, Microsoft announced it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo. Speculation surrounding the status of the $50 billion deal has escalated since Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell's deadline of last weekend passed.
"We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo! and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo! was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the statement.
"Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal," Ballmer continued.
"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. While Yahoo! would have accelerated our strategy, I am confident that we can continue to move forward toward our goals," he said.
Kevin Johnson, Microsoft's head of platform and services who manages Web strategy, reiterated the company's progress. "We are investing heavily in new tools and Web experiences, we have dramatically improved our search performance and advertiser satisfaction, and we will continue to build our scale through organic growth and partnerships," he said.
Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock issued the following statement in response: "We remain focused on maximizing shareholder value and pursuing strategic opportunities that position Yahoo! for success and leadership in its markets. From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft's offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market."
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang added that he was pleased Microsoft's unsolicited proposal was behind him.
"I am incredibly proud of the way our team has come together over the last three months. This process has underscored our unique and valuable strategic position," Yang said in a statement. "With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users."
I'd say Yahoo sucks, but ... MS's live search is so much worse. Google all the way, and I hope to heavens that THEY don't sell out, because as with anything else they end up corrupting it somehow or making it slightly less user friendly. I don't say it often, but MS really does suck sometimes.
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|Who has the cash to buy Google? Oh that's right, the Arabs. Good luck with your searching if they get their mitts on Google.
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|Yeah, because all "Arabs" are terrorists or incompetent....
Just like all Jews are bankers and all Asians are ricers, right?
/sarcasm
Nice stereotyping there.
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|Yes, I agree, no doubt about it, Yahoo goofed and they did it big time. I do find it disturbing however that a filthy rich company can do just as they please, not only to yahoo, but to others. That does bother me a weeeee bit.
But for me, I would have taken the money and run all the way to the bank.. Hostile take over, guess we will find out, but that does sound logical...
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|And they did what to yahoo exactly..?
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|indeed
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|When you are a publicy traded company...anything goes when it comes to a buy out. Don't want to be bought by another company...stay private.
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|Exactly.
Same with take-two.
The second you become public, you give up control of your company. End of story.
Whining about it later is just PR BS.
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|Yahoo declined... they are ****ing stupid... now their stock is going to take a complete s***...
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|How did a crapcan organization like Yahoo come to be worth 50 billion dollars?
It's a strange world we live in indeed.
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|The same version why crapcan site like myspace and facebook worth billions. AKA, they are buying the users.
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|This is classic hostile take over bait set out by Microsoft. Here is how this is going to play out. Monday morning, the shorter's (day traders) will dump the Yahoo stock, the stock will then plumed further and thus Microsoft will buy the outstanding shares of Yahoo having majority ownership in the company.
The only way Yahoo would be able to fend this off is by already having already reached an agreement with another outside company or make a series of announcements that would boost the value of the stock back up.
I say it's going to be option a) the stock will tank and Microsoft will purchase Yahoo at a very nice discount. Making Yang wish he had taken Balmer's initial offer.
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|I seriously hope so. Yahoo is simply not worth that amount of money. The branding has global value but for 50B you can rebuild every meaningful Yahoo tech asset 10 times.
The childish road-blocks put in place by Yahoo's CEO didn't help either. Balmer writes a nice letter now and can't wait to sack the guys ass.
I have no issue with Google - in fact lots of advantages. But I'd like to keep it that way. And the only way to achieve this in today's economy is healthy competition, which means the merger in this case.
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|Well Shellcodes_coder, it is simple I guess, Microsoft feels that only they have any rights in the computer world and have on ocassion tried to prove that. They want to own everything and money is no object to them as they are ultra filthy rich. Money means more to them than life so it seems. Yahoo is a young company, and I find it extremely interesting that Microsoft would offer $50. billion dollars. This is going way beyond anything rational these days. I would think Microsoft would concentrate on their software and fix that. But no, they cannot do that, they have to own all or nothing.. It is all about money and they could care less how they get it...
Now I am not against Microsoft at all here, but it seems they are headed in the direction of delcairing themselves God of all that pertains to comuters. If it were not for Microsoft we may well not have computers today or like what we see now. But the question is, how far is too far and how far are they willing to go, seem they have no limit..
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|It is comments like this that are the reason I dread coming to betanews as of late.
I have no problem with freedom of opinions floating around, but there is a shortage of those willing to stand up to people like you, who clearly do not form your opinions from sound reasoning but rather obtain your opinions from what others around you think.
Microsoft gives more money away to charity than any other company in the US. If they wanted to own everything why would they do this, hmmm?
If they had wanted to own everything why didnt they raise the price so they could buy Yahoo? Don't they have enough money?
Now I am not against Microsoft at all here...
It is obvious from your comments about Microsoft that you either hate them or the opinions that you borrow from others suggest that they hate them. Why would you say what you did if you are not against them?
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|You seem to be missing the point that by law, Microsoft, as a public company, is required to attempt to increase shareholder value. It has nothing to do with "declaring themselves God" or anything else.
Yahoo is a young company, and I find it extremely interesting that Microsoft would offer $50. billion dollars. This is going way beyond anything rational these days.
As of Friday's close, Yahoo's market capitalization is $39.45 billion. In order for Yahoo shareholders to approve a sale or merger, they would naturally expect a premium. That's how Microsoft [and the investment bank(s) advising them] arrives at a number like $50 billion. It isn't pulled out of a hat.
None of this process is about emotion and speculation, it is plainly and simply about finance.
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|Al Capone also gave away a lot money of charity trough his life, as most gangsters did.
Does it convert them to good people? Think again. Harm can be done with business practices and Microsoft was found guilty in *many* cases. In the last years Mr. Bush made a lot easier the cases for MS, but in Europe MS continue to face cases, year after year. Do you need more proof than that?
Unfortunately for us, the MS lawyers team seems to be more capable than their programmers... Sad, but true.
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|Why is Microsoft desperately after yahoo? They already dominate the software, mail and messenger market. As far google, their search engine is nice but I still prefer my windows live mail and messenger not google talk which has a sick look and very few features. I do like gmail but I still prefer windows live mail over it. And yahoo...just another vulnerable web giant. They are very good at fixing security holes in their messenger and mail service after hackers exploit them. So no yahoo for me. Oh yeah, I do use yahoo but just for chatting but I only run it on my XP via virtual PC 2007 on top of vista. So, that people can't boot me, bombard my computer with PMs aka pm bomber, and exploit security holes in their vulnerable messenger and mail service to access my data even if they do, it wouldn't be my real system or personal data.
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|Why is Microsoft desperately after yahoo? They already dominate the software, mail and messenger market.
Software, yes, but do they dominate the mail and messenger market? And let's face it--google's search engine runs circles around Microsoft's.
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|it seems like they were after the advertisement system that Yahoo had. Google buy DoubleClick and became the most powerful advertisement system of the web. Microsoft and Google had always that rivalry, I think it started when Google bring us GMail. 4G of free email space, when Hotmail offered 2M with a limit that if you don't use it in 30 days it will get erased. 25M for premium users. Hotmail was forced to increase their size. before that Google was just a search engine competitor. Google brings Google Earth, Microsoft brings Virtual Earth. Google Buys DoubleClick, Microsoft buys.. nothing. Yahoo didn't want to.
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|Hotmail is the world's largest free web-based email provider and the most secure one too
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|Watch Yahoo!'s share price drop now!
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|Hey, didn't MS also attempt to buy Google at one stage? I think there was something about it in the past but I am not exactly sure so that's why I am asking.
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|Microsoft: YOU FAIL
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|Actually.. Yahoo did.. thier entire company is virtual... at least you can touch microsofts products... I can't wait to see how bad yahoo takes a crap tomorrow...
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|This is always an amusing post.
Final nail in their coffin?
The Year of The Linux Desktop?
Proof MSFT is finished?
Yeah... Been hearing it all for decades. Least you could do is come up with something original...
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|well, this is going to be something to remember.
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|Agreed. I'll be one of those shorters!!! Easy Quick Buck
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|Watch Yahoo's shares tank Monday as the shorter's get to work on yahoo shares ;-)
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