Microsoft could acquire Yahoo: What do you think?

Jesse — Fri, 04 May 2007 19:41:00 GMT

If you ever wanted to see a perfect storm of hyperlinked news, today’s revelation that Microsoft wants to talk to Yahoo about a merger is it. For those who haven’t already been deafened by twitter exclamations and email flurries, let’s walk through the news thus far. That bastion of responsible news reporting The New York Post, broke the story this morning. Apparently when Google picked up DoubleClick last month, the big heads here in Redmond decided it may be time to ante up in the acquisition game, and reopened a longstanding dialog with Yahoo. The ever-anonymous ‘sources’ were sure to include a $50b price tag, as well as reminding us that combining the search advertising shares of MSFT and YHOO would represent 27 percent against GOOG’s 65 percent.

David Kaplan of paidContent.org chimed in early, echoing the NY Post article, as well as reminding everyone of Jerry Yang’s avoidance of Microsoft products, and how much an acquisition could close the gap between Microsoft and Google. Reuters also covered the story with this choice quote from Peter Lobravico of Wall Street Access: “You can’t find a stronger buyer than Microsoft and while it would spur a lot of political and regulatory noise, everyone knows in the end that the deal would go through.”

Scott Beale picked the right graphic for Laughing Squid’s coverage, and also highlighted the 18 point jump in Yahoo’s stock on news of the negotiations. He also pointed out Eric Schonfeld’s post at The Next Net, which notes that the deal would have an air of desperation, and that, “The culture-clash of two companies could undermine any financial gains a Microsoft-Yahoo merger could produce.” Some astute opinion came from Henry Blodget at Internet Outisder, who recommends the two companies join, and then for Microsoft to spin off a Yahoo-MSN organization.

This questions raised by this morning’s news are far more interesting than the coverage of it, given that very little has actually transpired. So what are the questions then? What are your wildest fantasies about how a Microhoo/Yahsoft would exist, and what sort of combinations could make the new company insanely great?

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Microsoft could acquire Yahoo: What do you think?