Following is the verbatim text of the letter from Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer to Yahoo’s Jerry Yang. The source of this letter is Microsoft.
May 3, 2008
Mr. Jerry YangCEO and Chief YahooYahoo! Inc.701 First AvenueSunnyvale, CA 94089
Dear Jerry:
After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!.
I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!’s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially More»

Labels: merger, Microsoft, msft, Yahoo, YHOO

Microsoft has walked away from the merger talks with Yahoo after the two companies failed to reach agreement on price per share. Microsoft had increased their original offer of $31 per share in cash and stock exchanges to $33 per share (I’m not clear if that $33 took into account Microsoft’s lower price since the initial offer or did not factor that in). Most reports said that Yahoo eventually indicated they would sell for $37 per share.
My take on this is that this is a clever strategic move by Ballmer and Microsoft who I think More»

Labels: ballmer, merger, Microsoft, msft, Yahoo, yang, YHOO

The Wall Street Journal is following Microsoft and Yahoo closely and via Google news you can read part of the WSJ report here but for the full WSJ go to Google News and select the story from there.
Microsoft has indicated that they will raise their offer to $32 or even $33 to avoid a hostile takeover fight, and Yahoo appears to be willing to settle in the neighborhood of $37. With only four dollars per share standing between a huge black eye for Ballmer and a collapse in Yahoo’s price how long can this go on?
Not long at all.
I’d More»

Labels: Microsoft, msft, Yahoo, YHOO

The “deadline” imposed by Microsoft on Yahoo expired yesterday, which makes it likely that Microsoft is either preparing to drop their bid or - and this appears a more likely scenario - preparing for a hostile takeover where they’ll try to get a new slate of directors approved for Yahoo who would view the takeover favorably, leading to a probable merge this summer.
Yahoo’s board meets today and although it would be interesting to be there I’m certainly not envious of the Yahoo board right now. If Microsoft drops their current offer Yahoo stock is likely to More»

Labels: google, Microsoft, msft, Yahoo, YHOO

Over at CNET Steve Tobak is wondering how much of a role luck plays in business success. Tobak nots some big lucky breaks in business such as Bill Gates’ landing the IBM OS contract that launched Microsoft after being second choice for the job, but he winds up concluding:
… in my experience, passion, intelligence, hard work, perseverance and timing play a bigger role in success than luck.I’m in partial agreement but I don’t think I’m as convinced as Steve that things we can control play a big role in business success. If they did More»

Labels: Microsoft, Yahoo

Larry Dignan and Dan Farber at CNET have the early scoop on Yahoo’s freshly unveiled Yahoo! Open Strategy somewhat cryptically labelled …. “Y!OS”
Ari Balogh, Yahoo CTO said at the San Francisco Web 2.0 Conference today:
“We are taking open to a whole other place,”… “We are rewiringYahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assetsof Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience socialthroughout and provide hooks to developers.”

It is too early to know if this type of openness will be embraced by developers to the More»

Labels: google, open social, web 2.0, Yahoo, YHOO

Microsoft (MSFT) reported record earnings for the quarter but recent stock price increases appear to have anticipated a stronger report as the stock has fallen about 1.38 per share in after hours trading as of 4:34 pm EST.
Still, very favorable earnings reports are now in from Tech giants like Google, Yahoo, Apple, and Microsoft. Could all the talk of severe recession problems be overblown when applied to the tech sector?
Over at Yahoo Tech Aaron Task reports:
A funny thing is happening amid all the recession talk: Most big tech companies are reporting spectacular earnings and revenue growth, More»

Labels: Microsoft, msft, Yahoo

Yahoo (YHOO) reported earnings of about .11 per share after the market closed today, in line with the “whisper numbers” of this morning but handily topping analyst estimates of .09 per share.
Henry Blodget has some real time analysis as the market digests this news, which appears unlikely to have a significant impact on the Microsoft merger deal except perhaps to bump up Microsoft’s acquisition offer by a few dollars per share.
As the news rolls in YHOO is only up about $0.10 in after hours trading, indicating that this “good news” may be seen more as “no news” by markets More»

Labels: Microsoft, stocks, Yahoo, YHOO

Mechanical Zoo has an impressive startup team include Google News product lead Nathan Stolle. The concept, according to Zoo member Ventilla quoted at CNET:
… tackling the problem of subjective search–when no one answer would satisfy everyone–and the answer is not to serve a Web page,” Ventilla said in an interview. “We’ve developed an online social structure that lets users reach out to people they already know” for answers.Integrating social networking into the search experience seems to be one of the most promising ways to solve several problems with the search applications of today. Even More»

Labels: mechanical zoo, Yahoo

Despite some breathless pronouncements that Yahoo’s earnings report will be a watershed moment in the company’s long history, I would strongly suggest that Yahoo’s earnings are unlikely to have much if any impact on the fate of the company - a fate that is very likely squarely in the hands of Microsoft.
Obviously if the Q1 earnings come in way above the modest analyst expectations it is possible that Yahoo will escape a Microsoft merger by “earning” in the eyes of the market a much higher valuation. However the most likely scenario has Yahoo coming in with More»

Labels: Microsoft, msft, Yahoo, YHOO