Microsoft tries to woo Yahoo

[Operational]

On Friday February 1st Microsoft, the world?s biggest software company, made a $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo!, an ailing internet giant. The proposed deal, which would transform the software and internet-services industries, values Yahoo! at $31 a share, a 62% premium over the closing price on Thursday.
...
?Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition,? he wrote. Combining Yahoo!, the number two in search and advertising, with Microsoft, the number three, would provide a stronger competitor in an industry where scale provides a huge advantage.

Google currently handles 66% of searches on the internet in America, compared with 21% for Yahoo and a mere 7% for Microsoft (through MSN and its new search engine, live.com). Strikingly, over the past year both Microsoft and Yahoo have seen their share of searches decline while Google's has gained.
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Microsoft is desperate to grab a bigger share of the online-advertising market because many of its software products are being challenged by free, advertising-supported services offered by Google. The company is also worried that Google?s dominance in search and advertising allows it to dictate terms to advertisers, and gives it an unfair advantage over its smaller rivals. This is a bit rich coming from Microsoft, a convicted monopolist in operating-system software, which has also been known to squeeze out smaller competitors, but its anger that it has had to endure years of scrutiny by regulators, while Google has been left alone, is genuine.
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Microsoft shareholders are likely to be less enthusiastic: integrating the two companies would be a mammoth task, and Microsoft has never made an acquisition on anything approaching this scale before.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10632491&f

They are both being beaten soundly by Google so it wouldn't surprise me if this went ahead. I like Google and its services so the Yahsoft/Microhoo search would have to be clearly better for me to change my homepage and email.

 

[Llama]

that's a big f**king amount of money :|

 

[Dekstar]

Man I SO should have bought shares in yahoo.

 

[Krynn72]

Hah, microsoft is scared of google. I still think that now would be a most opportune time for google to come out with an operating system.

 

[Beerdude26]

Hah, microsoft is scared of google. I still think that now would be a most opportune time for google to come out with an operating system.

GoOSe?

 

[noisebleed]

now i hope they integrate some yahoo messenger features into msn.

 

[Acepilotf14]

But, Yahoo and live.com aren't very good engines for finding what you want. They just don't have enough results.

 

[Cavalry]

But, Yahoo and live.com aren't very good engines for finding what you want. They just don't have enough results.

This


yahoo and live focus too much on their precious news and video area.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Which nobody cares about. While google lets the public do the work for them (youtube).

Bill Gates must be bricking it about now.