Microsoft’s Ballmer Says Phooey To Yahoo Buyout
- If an ancient writer was alive today, he might post something like this to his Twitter account: “Hell hath no fury like a software giant scorned.”
For much of the year, it looked like a proposed advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo would bring vitally needed liquidity of about $800 million to Yahoo. The economic downturn hit Yahoo particularly hard, with online advertisers moving away from banner ads to Google’s more cost-effective text-based ads.
Late last week, however, the U.S. Department of Justice said it opposed the advertising deal because it would hurt consumers by reducing competition between the largest online advertising companies. Google and Yahoo tried to restructure the deal to placate federal officials, but when they were unable to do so, Google dropped the partnership idea.
Microsoft — a White Knight?
The collapse of the deal with Google shone a harsh and unflattering light on the decision by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang in May — after three months of courtship — to reject the advances of Microsoft and CEO Steve Ballmer. At the time, Microsoft was willing to pay $33 per share for Yahoo, $6 more than the stock’s high price in 2007. Yahoo’s share price was around $12 on Friday.
Not surprisingly, Yang has a renewed interest in a buyout by Microsoft. Speaking at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Yang made an open-ended offer to reopen negotiations with the folks in Redmond.
“To this day, I have to say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo,” Yang said. “I don’t think that is a bad idea at all — at the right price, whatever the price is, we are willing to sell the company. We were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate a deal, and we felt that we weren’t that far apart. But at the end of the day they withdrew and they since have been very clear about not wanting to buy the company.”
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