Yahoo

Yang e-mail reaches out to Yahoo employees

Wonder what Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang and the company's nonexecutive chairman, Roy Bostock, said to the troops on Friday, after Microsoft launched its unsolicited $44.6 billion bid?

Here's the text of the e-mail they sent to employees, which the company filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Subject: more on today's news...

-CONFIDENTIAL-

fellow yahoos:

since we talked to you this morning, there's been a lot of media coverage and industry chatter about microsoft's unsolicited proposal to acquire yahoo!. we know you've been hearing and reading a lot about this. that'… Read more

Yahoo axes music service, strikes deal with Rhapsody

It's been a tumultuous few days for Yahoo--you know, with that takeover bid from Microsoft--but the company continues to shake things up internally, too.

On Monday, the company announced that it will discontinue its Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription service and will transfer its customers to RealNetworks' Rhapsody service.

In mid-2008, Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers will be guided through an in-browser process to convert their music libraries to Rhapsody's service. For a limited time (length unknown), they'll be able to keep paying Yahoo's subscription fees, which cap out at $8.99 per month, before being required … Read more

Microsoft is "committed to openness," snickers its general counsel

Wow. Microsoft is nothing if not brazen. When you think of Microsoft you normally don't think of these words, at least not together, yet these words came from Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith, in response to Google's complaint that a Microsoft and Yahoo! tie up would be bad for the Internet:

Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the Internet.

Microsoft? Committed to openness? Microsoft has been committed to destroying openness over the years, and Brad Smith has played an integral role in that strategy, defying the US Justice Department and the world's consumer. I think highly of Brad, but I find this guile to be galling in the extreme.

Google is exactly right in calling out Microsoft's cheek:… Read more

Microsoft lashes back at Google

UPDATED: 6 p.m.

Nu-uhhh.

That's a one word summary of Microsoft's statement Sunday rebutting Google's statement earlier in the day that said Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo could raise antitrust concerns.

"The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising," Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith said in a statement. "The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet."

Smith argues that Google already has three-quarters of the paid search market and about … Read more

Google warns on Yahoo-Microsoft

Google's top lawyer has penned a letter outlining a number of concerns it sees if Microsoft's bid for Yahoo goes through.

In the letter, "Yahoo and the future of the Internet," Google chief legal officer David Drummond says that Microsoft's offer "raises troubling questions" given the company's monopolistic past.

"This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another," Drummond said. "It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Drummond warns that Microsoft could attempt the same things it did … Read more

Google calls Microsoft's 'hostile' bid for Yahoo troubling

A Microsoft-Yahoo merger could threaten the openness on which the Internet is based, a Google executive says.

Microsoft's $44.6 billion "hostile" bid "raises troubling questions," writes David Drummond, Google Chief Legal Officer, expresses cynicism in a blog posted on Sunday

"Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies--and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets," he writes. "Could the acquisition of … Read more

Microsoft + Yahoo!: A sign that Microsoft's best days are past

The New York Times hits the nail right on the head: If Microsoft were at the top of its game (as its numbers suggest), it wouldn't need to acquire Yahoo!:

...[Iif its proposed acquisition of Yahoo signals anything, it serves as a confirmation that Microsoft's glory days are in the past. Having failed to challenge Google where it matters most -- in online advertising -- it has been reduced to bulking up by buying Google's nearest but still distant competitor. In many ways, the company has become exactly what Bill Gates used to fear the most -- sluggish, bureaucratic, slow to respond to new forms of competition -- just as I.B.M. was when Microsoft convinced that era's tech behemoth to use Microsoft's operating system in its new personal computer.

of course, just as with IBM, becoming "sluggish, bureaucratic, [and] slow" is not to say that Microsoft is going out of business any time soon. Rather, it's just to say that Microsoft's glory days of market innovations are well past it (not that anyone was doubting this - when is the last time it really did anything innovative?).

But Microsoft can't be happy about failing miserably to compete in the 21st Century, as the Guardian notes, choosing instead to preserve its 20th-century gains:… Read more

News Corp.-Yahoo: More of a bad idea

If Rupert Murdoch decides to start a bidding war for Yahoo--that's the rumor du jour on Silicon Alley Insider--then we've truly entered the realm of the bizarre.

Not that it can't happen. I've been around this industry too long to underestimate the potential for bad decision making. Ego and daring often trump sound judgment. I won't devote more space revisiting the litany of corporate bungles that were originally hailed as strategic coups by the business elite. You can read my position on the wisdom of a Yahoo-Microsoft combination in my Friday column (click here). … Read more

Yahoo says Microsoft bid review may take time

For those wondering how long Yahoo may take to respond to Microsoft's unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover bid, Yahoo says don't hold your breath.

In a brief FAQ posted to its Web site, Yahoo says it is "undertaking a deliberate review process" and warns it could "take quite a bit of time."

Yahoo said its process "will include evaluating all of the Company's strategic alternatives--including maintaining Yahoo as an independent company."

That could include pursuing bids from other companies, Yahoo said. "That process will take some time, but the Board … Read more