Microsoft to Buy Yahoo for $44.6 Billion
section: common, for your questions: KezNews forum, 1.2.2008
In its race to become the runner-up on the search engine and online advertising markets, Microsoft is about to give Google a little something to chew on.
The Redmond company is looking to buy Yahoo for no less the $44.6 billion. Microsoft has just announced the proposed acquisition of Yahoo for $31 per share. According to current estimates, the transaction is valued at no less than $44.6 billion and Microsoft is to offer both cash and stock. Yahoo has been increasingly losing its position on the search engine market, as well as its audience eroded by social networks.
The latest financial results posted by the Sunnyvale Internet giant feature a consistent loss, with profit dropping to $660 million for 2007, down from $751 million in 2006. Yahoo was even preparing to lay off a reported 1,000 workers of its 14,300 workforce, after the poor financial results of the past year. Microsoft's proposed acquisition offers shareholders a 62% premium to current trading price for Yahoo! The Redmond company has presented its proposition to Yahoo's Board of Directors.
"We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. "We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners."
"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," said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft. "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."
Yahoo has failed to officially respond or comment on the acquisition proposal from Microsoft. Still, it is clear that the Redmond company will not hesitate in the least to cough up no less than $44.6 billion for Yahoo. The aims is of course the online advertising market, which is estimated to double in the next couple of years, from $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010. Microsoft revealed that the move to buy Yahoo was made as a measure to counter Google and its increasing dominance over the online advertising market.
"The combined assets and strong services focus of these two companies will enable us to achieve scale economics while reaching R&D critical mass to deliver innovation breakthroughs," said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division of Microsoft. "The industry will be well served by having more than one strong player, offering more value and real choice to advertisers, publishers and consumers."
source:
news.softpedia.com
Send link 2 friend | Permalink
MORE RELATED ARTICLES:
Search: Google, 61 Billion vs. Microsoft, 3.3 Billion || XP SP3 and Vista - 1 Billion PCs, Onward to 2 Billion with Windows 7 || Microsoft To Buy Logitech? || Why Microsoft should give up on Yahoo || Yahoo to Microsoft: Show us the money
Comments(5)
this is gonna be kind of harsh, but i can't let it go unsaid:
imo yahoo! is
loosing market share because they've completely lost touch with their community. their
latest 'look' (the 'new' my yahoo!) is horrifically unattractive and completely
useless - a pale shadow of their long standing interface. whoever approved this should
have been fired with malice. it seems like they're looking for another killer app to get
people fired up again - the new my yahoo! took them about as far as they could go...in the
opposite direction.
regarding kevin johnson's remarks:
"the
combined assets and strong services focus of these two companies will enable us to achieve
scale economics while reaching r&d critical mass to deliver innovation breakthroughs,"
huh? talk about meaningless corporate speak. can't dazzle with brilliance,
so you're try to baffle with bs? seriously, if i talked like that to my clients i
wouldn't have any clients. i get the gist of what kj's implying and that kind of talk
may go over in the boardroom when the execs are stroking each other but in order to relate
to the public at large (those with functioning brain cells) might i suggest the following,
kevin: take an english class and join the rotary club or get some kind of public speaking
experience and learn how to say something someone might actually care about hearing.
"the industry will be well served by having more than one strong player, offering
more value and real choice to advertisers, publishers and consumers."
uhh...yeah...since when did ms *ever* believe that? oh, that's right...when odf should
move aside for ooxml. even ms office 2007 doesn't follow strict ooxml.
i
can't help but wonder if this means yahoo! search will become as weak as ms live search
or that live search 2.0 is ms' last attempt before assimilating a better search engine.
i'm no ms or yahoo! hater, but, man...where's the walrus?
have to agree, the new yahoo is more yah...oh...oh dear. you wouldn't think yahoo could
get any worse but i'm very sure microsoft will have a good go.
yahoo still
remains my search engine and homepage of choice, more out of habit then anything else, a
microsoft take over is all the incentive i need to google instead.
this is like a demo derby. just wait and watch ms kill the bleeding yahoo. btw all,
forget yahoo, or live or google, they all keep track of you you know. use scroogle for
your search. you can plug it into firefox very simply!
i hadn't been to yahoo for about a year before i read this article and decided to see
what they were doing.
i used to go there all the time in the 90's to get my
geocities accounts for mp3 file storage lol.
the front page is too busy. google just
seems better and less in your face.
if i was one of the yahoo guys i would take that
$44 billion offer and laugh all the way to the bank.
you're worried about sites tracking you and you use firefox???
get yourselt process
explorer by sysinternals, fire up firefox and watch firefox connect to google and other
tracking sites without your knowledge.
better still, disconnect from the internet and
move to mars.
No new comments are allowed for this article.
For your questions use our KezNews Forum
Hmmm...
By NotSomeoneElse on 02.02.2008 - 04:02