Microsoft's insulting offer for Yahoo search
Microsoft offered $1 billion to take Yahoo's search business off its hands, along with a buyback and other details. Henry Blodget has a detailed financial analysis of why Yahoo walked. But why spend all that effort? Rumor had had Microsoft offering $21 billion for Yahoo's search business a few weeks ago; it had already offered to pay $44.6 billion for the whole company. The $1 billion figure was a nice, round deliberate insult — a way for Microsoft executives, so desperate to get their hands on Yahoo's search business a few months ago, to say that they thought it was virtually worthless now. Microsoft's offensive intent was transparent; Yahoo walked, and took Google's less-complicated, less troubling deal instead. Is further analysis needed?