This Just In: Reports of Yahoo’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated (Today)
The Yahoo board meeting, via phone, went off today without a resolution, as BoomTown surmised in an earlier post today.
See this report on the telephonic meeting from our excellent reporting colleagues at The Wall Street Journal, Kevin Delaney and Matthew Karnitschnig.
As you can see, the breathless reporting that Yahoo’s fate was to be decided today was, shall we say, a bit premature, and Microsoft will have to wait a bit longer to claim its prize.
Of course, as we also noted, it is unlikely Yahoo will have many options other than Microsoft, given that none seem viable.
That includes the threat of doing a deal with Google to take over its search-ad business.
As BoomTown noted:
But the Google threat is just that, claim sources close to Microsoft–-a threat that is relatively empty given that it still carries with it all the monopoly issues related to Google’s dominance over the search market if struck. If Google takes over Yahoo’s search business, the thinking goes, it might as well buy the whole company, given that the regulatory headaches are the same.
Google will argue, of course, that an independent Yahoo is free to pick whatever partner it wants, if it decides to outsource its search-ad business, without noting that the pickings are pretty slim.”
And getting slimmer.
(And here’s a very good email Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget penned for Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to send out to the troops, which would be a step in the right direction.)
Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
Comments
this alliance is most likely to happen as Yahoo is left with no choice - Microsoft has timed it really well. Yahoo’s stock and market share going down for the last one year - it couldnt have been better. But I suppose it has both pros and cons - pros on the side of search as a competition to google which I believe is doing unhealthy stuff now and cons on the side of monopoly over email, messaging and web services. I wish the alliance could be only in part for the benefit of the users.
Posted by Rajat Bhadani at February 8th, 2008 at 10:23 pmMicrosoft has to have Yahoo’s audience and keystrokes.
If Microsoft doesn’t get them, Google will continue to disrupt Microsoft’s audience and keystrokes.
Posted by Tim Cohn at February 9th, 2008 at 6:36 amSignature line was incorrect in Wordpress…
Posted by Tim Cohn at February 9th, 2008 at 6:43 am