Yahoo shares dropped yet again yesterday, closing at $12.65, in a vicious day across Wall Street.
That’s a decline of 8.07 percent or $1.11, a worse performance that the 7.3 percent decline in the overall market.
This means that Yahoo’s market cap is now at $17.53 billion, which has to make one wonder if perhaps a foreign company, a private equity firm or some outfit with some cash will swoop in and grab it.
While a lot of analysts and pundits have suggested that Microsoft would or should surely jump into the fray–now that AOL and Yahoo are talking merger more seriously, and especially since Yahoo’s stock has dropped in the $14 range–don’t count on it.
In fact, in what has to be the most Zen-like approach it has ever had, sources close to Microsoft’s thinking actually hope that the talks to combine the Time Warner unit and Yahoo will work out, which could give the software giant another shot at nabbing the search business from the pair.
Yahoo and Google have agreed to delay their online search ad partnership to give the Justice Department more time to evaluate the deal.
Spokesmen from both Yahoo and Google confirmed the delay.
Although Google execs have been especially adamant that the arrangement was going forward no matter what, the move is not surprising, given the increasing opposition to the deal involving the No. 1 and No. 2 online search leaders.
To be fair, the whole market was dragged down today due to worries about a deepening recession. But Yahoo’s ever-decreasing share price has got to have the company and its investors mighty worried.
Hitting lows not seen since the dot-com doldrums of 2001 and 2002, Yahoo closed at $15.58, down $1.38 or 8.14 percent, giving the troubled Internet giant a market cap of just $22.08 billion.
Yahoo will begin testing out versions of its new main homepage to a minuscule number of users starting tomorrow, employing a design that more significantly allows users to customize the starting page in a way that essentially amounts to a kind of My Yahoo-lite for everyone.
Making such a shift will also be a big perceptual deal for Yahoo, which needs to prove it has remained current and open, especially compared to faster-growing rivals like Facebook.
Thus, making a success of its new design is critical, and Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang has been touting the idea that Yahoo must be the “starting point” to the Web for users.
Okay, BoomTown arrived late to Yahoo’s media event to show off its “open” strategies across its properties (I had a most excellent excuse in that it was my youngest son’s very first day of school).
So it was kind of jarring to hear Yahoo Media Group head Scott Moore talk about an email demo about adding social elements that had preceded his presentation, which he had not seen himself.
“I always think of the media properties the sexy [part of Yahoo],” said Moore. “But that kind of made mail sexy.”
Sexy email! Yahoo is saved!
After the news broke that former Microsoft exec Joanne Bradford was headed to Yahoo as the head of its U.S. ad sales and more, I got to talk to both her and her new boss, Hilary Schneider, on the phone this morning about the move.
Bradford left her job as national ad sales chief at Spot Runner, where she arrived just six months ago, to take the position of SVP of U.S. revenue and market development at Yahoo.
Once burnt, twice shy?
I suppose that’s the reason Microsoft is not loaded for bear and headed back down to Sunnyvale to make another play for Yahoo right now.
Not even after Jerry Yang orchestrated activist Carl Icahn’s defenestration by inviting him on the board at Yahoo, where he will be 100 percent silenced.
Not even after the stranger-than-fiction shareholder miscount (oops–we thought no meant yes!).
Not even after Yahoo stock’s consistent flirting-with-the-teens price.
Yesterday–in a patented playbook move–some top Microsoft execs didn’t miss a chance to slap around Yahoo over its shareholder vote debacle, letting it be known to industry insiders (on the very loud QT, of course) that the Internet company knew full well that its biggest investor, Capital Research & Management, was going to vote a large number of shares against it.
In essence, Microsofties are arguing that knowledge of a major investor’s dissatisfaction should have prompted Yahoo to question its unusually positive voting results at its annual meeting on Friday and ask the outside voting tabulator to recheck its numbers before officially releasing them.
While BoomTown is careful to consider the sources here–the collapse of Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo has left quite a bit of acrimony between the pair–they actually might have a point.
Talking to Yahoo shareholders as if they were particularly thick and surly teenagers, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock articulated his umpteenth defense of the board’s handling of its dealmaking with Microsoft.
“I’d like to take you back–with all the hoopla, all the publicity that has surrounded the company, I think there has been a great deal of misinformation,” said Bostock about Yahoo’s dealings with Microsoft over the last year, speaking at its at its annual meeting this morning.
Thanks, Roy–glad you finally cleared things up!
Oh, BoomTown loves a delicious irony.
Kevin Johnson–who yesterday announced he was leaving his job as president of Platform and Services Division at Microsoft to become CEO of the network infrastructure company, Juniper Networks–was the point person on the software giant’s failed bid to acquire Yahoo.
Unfortunately, Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang rejected him and the rest of the Microsoft team over and over again in a very public fashion.
But who will be Johnson’s most immediate Internet neighbor be when he takes up residence, presumably at Juniper’s Sunnyvale, California, headquarters at 1194 North Mathilda Ave.?
Um, Yang!
Could the new and improved Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang actually manage to beat back the proxy fight being waged against him by activist investor Carl Icahn?
It increasingly looks that way, with only 12 days to go until Yahoo’s annual meeting on August 1.
But exactly which Yang will be running Yahoo, if he does win, is probably the most important question shareholders need to ask.
Would that be the seemingly energetic Yang of the past two weeks, invigorated by the battle with Icahn and his new best friend and Yahoo foe, Microsoft?
Or will it be the other Yang?
If you want to get to the heart of the truly dysfunctional relationship between Yahoo and Microsoft, consider the alleged 24-hour deadline that Yahoo claimed Microsoft and its sidekick, activist investor Carl Icahn, gave the company to respond to its most recent search proposal.
I say “alleged,” because like in all things related to this takeover mess, the pair disagree on exactly what that meant.
Frankly, it’s enough to make former President Bill Clinton’s definition of what “is” is make sense.
Before we get to this disagreement, here are the terms of the new Microsoft/Icahn joint deal to take control of Yahoo’s seach business, according to numerous sources from both sides.
When sources at Microsoft last week told BoomTown that it was going to use Carl Icahn as a kind of messenger for a new ad search proposal, I thought: Uh-oh.
And tonight, like clockwork, Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s latest bid to buy its search and ad search business, which was delivered in conjunction with the billionaire activist investor, who is waging a proxy fight against the company.
Why? Well, it’s kind of like sending Pepé Le Pew to a garden party.
Sources tell me the bid included a $20 billion ad search revenue guarantee over 10 years, as well as other small improvements on Microsoft’s previous proposal.
Still, Yahoo turned up its nose at it.
Scott Moore, who runs the Yahoo Media Group, sat down with BoomTown at the company’s Santa Monica headquarters last week to talk about the future direction of content at the company.
While the Media unit has had its ups and downs over the years about exactly what it should be–such as the controversial Hollywood-esque Lloyd Braun strategy–one thing that Yahoo has consistently done well is to aggregate and distribute its own and others’ content.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
