Do the ad agencies care which way this Microsoft-Yahoo merger goes? One exec tells us that, like the rest of us, he just wants "it done just to get it over with" — if only so the two companies can speed their way to irrelevancy. The exec explained it doesn't matter which way the deal goes. Yahoo and Microsoft disappoint clients separately, he says, and they would disappoint clients together:
Unable to come to terms even about coming to terms, Steve Ballmer and Jerry Yang have been reduced to negotiating via the Wall Street Journal. The latest update: Microsoft may, repeat, may launch a hostile bid for Yahoo as soon as Friday; Yahoo is awaiting Microsoft's decision. Microsoft might offer as much as $33, to appease Yahoo shareholders who think its original bid is too low, but those same shareholders want something in the range of $35 to $37. Yang, despite his public noises about selling Yahoo if offered its full value, does not seem to want to sell at any price. Does no one else see the grand joke here?
As soon as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer makes his next move, Yahoo could announce a plan to serve Google ads against Yahoo search results, the Wall Street Journal reports. Yahoo and Google tested such an arrangement in April and it went well enough that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang believes a longer term deal will appease shareholders enough to keep Yahoo independent.
The California State Controller's Office shows that Microsoft owes Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang $3,008.46 in unclaimed dividend checks. The software giant has apparently been mailing the checks to Santa Cruz instead of a Yahoo office in Santa Clara. Is that why Yahoo hasn't yet responded to Microsoft's bid? [Forbes]
Mark Hamburg, pictured here accepting a Photoshop Hall of Fame award, on being hired away from Adobe to work on user experience at Microsoft: "Given that I find the current Windows experience really annoying and yet I keep having to deal with it, this opportunity was a little too interesting to turn down." [News.com]
The future of the way people consume information is going to change in the next 10 years dramatically. We are committed to leading. We are not today leading. We've got very talented bright people. But there are some structural things in the industry that make it hard to make rapid progress. We need to gain scale. Yahoo accelerates scale. Gets us more advertisers, gets us search. Yahoo's not a strategy. It's a part of a strategy. I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth and I won't go a dime above. We've got three big options: the friendly deal, an unfriendly deal, [or] simply to walk away. If Yahoo doesn't happen there's a number of other things we'll look at.
Microsoft's board yesterday gave CEO Steve Ballmer "broad discretion" to decide on his own whether Microsoft should raise its offer for Yahoo, initiate a proxy fight for the company or walk away, the Wall Street Journal reports. That means if Ballmer makes the wrong call, it could cost him his job. Ballmer took over day-to-day operations from Bill Gates in 2000 and lately, things haven't gone well for the company. Vista is broken and the latest rumor is that a new operating system, Windows Seven, won't come out until 2010. And, despite Microsoft's push into online advertising, including a $6 billion buy of aQuantive, Ballmer's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo is an admission that Microsoft's strategy has failed. Microsoft still only commands a mere 9.4 percent of the search engine market. We think he should walk away, but doing nothing carries its own risks. If Ballmer blows it on Yahoo, would anyone blame Gates for wanting to leave the company in better hands before he retires this summer?
Who are "the Yawns"? They're the young and wealthy but normal. Be-sweatered Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is their patron saint, according to Robert Frank of the WSJ's Wealth Report. This boring single-prop set prize their charity foundations, recycled t-shirts and charity bracelets as their favorite status symbols. They drive hybrid cars. And the pandemic is spreading, reports the AP's Evelyen Nieves. She profiles San Francisco's Rik Wehbring, for an example. A perfectly healthy "37-year-old dot.com millionaire" Wehbring, despite his wealth, limits himself to living on $50,000 a year. Nieves reports he "doesn't own a television, his mp3 player cost $20 ("and it works just fine") and he drives (when he drives) a Toyota Prius."
A tipster writes:
At last, an explanation of the Bush Administration's misbehavior that will resonate in Silicon Valley: It's all Microsoft's fault. Ars Technica details how switching from an IBM Lotus email system installed under Clinton to a Microsoft Exchange server made it impossible to store White House emails systematically. The archiving system was operated manually, and Bush appointees nixed efforts to upgrade it. CIO Theresa Payton says that the White House is now working on a new system, but knowing the ways of both Washington and enterprise software, what are the chances it will be done before we have a new president?
In this excerpt from Eric Schmidt's interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, the Google CEO explains that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger would "eliminate consumer choice, particularly in electronic mail, instant messaging — things where they would have 80 or 90 percent market share." As an alternative, Google has proposed the idea of serving its ads against Yahoo's search, giving it control over 80 percent of the search advertising market. But that would eliminate advertisers' choice, not consumers'. So it's cool.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is willing to offer $33 a share for Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal reports. Major Yahoo shareholders however, want $35 a share. The Yahoo board is said to be holding out for an offer in the high $30s. Meanwhile, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang continues to negotiate an alternative deal with Time Warner that would merge AOL and Yahoo and give Time Warner 20 percent control over the new company.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has scheduled a "town hall" meeting for Microsoft employees tomorrow at 9 a.m. The subject of Yahoo will probably come up, but why would Microsoft employees beyond executives care?
During proceedings in a shareholder lawsuit against Yahoo's board, Microsoft lawyers said that the company has set aside $1.5 billion to retain Yahoo employees. This cash is separate from a Yahoo board-approved severance package that guarantees two years' pay to anybody laid off after a change in control. Already, two-thirds of our readers said they would prefer to see Yahoo merge with Microsoft instead of AOL. Sources confirm the sentiment is similar inside of Yahoo. (Photo, "Free Man's Prison," by code_martial)
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer plans to do something today — or sometime soon after — about Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal and its News Corp. cousin BoomTown report. Neither publications knows what. The Journal, reporting that "Microsoft's Next Move on Yahoo is Imminent" says that Ballmer has a slate of 10 directors and 3 alternates lined up to replace Yahoo's board. The Journal also reports that Ballmer's options include — but are not limited too — walking away from the deal, filing for a proxy fight or announcing the slate. BoomTown's Kara Swisher confirms that something should happen today or in the future. "What exactly that move will be is still unclear," Swisher writes. "But sources said it could come sometime after the stock market opens tomorrow."
Former Fox Interactive exec turned venture capitalist Ross Levinsohn only needs to finish the paperwork to become the biggest name on Microsoft's list of 10 nominees to replace Yahoo's board, TechCrunch reports and BoomTown confirms. The high-profile rubber-stamping position should suit Levinsohn's ego just fine.
