Microsoft Offer to Buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion
Filed in: Microsoft, Yahoo! — February 2nd, 2008
Microsoft made an offer to acquire Yahoo! for $44.6 billion USD cash and stock on Feb 1, 2008.
Microsoft offers to pay Yahoo! shareholders $31 a share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on Thursday.
“We are very, very confident this is the right path for Microsoft and for Yahoo!,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive.
Microsoft allows the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock. Yahoo has acknowledged receipt of the offer and its board would evaluate the proposal “carefully and promptly”.
According to comScore, Google owns over 58.4% of the U.S. market, Yahoo has 22.9% and Microsoft is only 9.8%.
Yahoo! has a hard time this year and plans 1,000 job cuts in February 2008. The total returns of Yahoo dropped 32% in 2007.
More related news:
- Microsoft bids $44.6 billion for Yahoo
- Microsoft Offers to Buy Yahoo
- Why Microsoft’s Yahoo bid makes sense
[via CNNMoney]
Will Microsoft and Yahoo merged? What do you think?
Updated: “Now Yahoo is scrambling to figure out a response to the overture, but is looking for any other option but Microsoft.” [via AllThingsDigital]
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February 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 am
wow……this is big……this is not very good news…I would prefer 3 way war….in case two guys decided to work together.
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Another cunning ploy of Microsoft. So I guess the name will be changed to “MicroHoo” or “YaMic”.
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I think if the acquisition happens, it will benefit Microsoft more than Yahoo. Yahoo should look around for other players before saying yes to Microsoft. Microsoft needs Yahoo more. That’s why they are willing to pay $44 billion. Do we know of any other company that is able to pay such a large sum of money? Google I suppose!!!
February 2nd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
big enuff for us malaysian.
February 3rd, 2008 at 12:45 am
big! very big number! i cant wait for the result
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
This is a wise move by Microsoft as in internet world either you are BIG or you are out.
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Don’t forget that theres always a bigger fish.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:29 am
That gives some serious thinking for google to do. Its a good deal for microsoft but i am very interested to see what happens in upcoming months. will Google do anything about it?
February 4th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
why buying a company for 44.6 billion just because they wanted to compete against google?
if im google, with the current strong IT team, i think its possible to develope new google operating system to fight against MS liaw…
Syahid A:
fast fast pergi register domain name “MicroHoo” or “YaMic” lohh…maybe billy gates wana buy frm u offering 44.6billion…ringgit :p
February 4th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
It’s a technology war in year 2008!
–blog for dream–
February 5th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
is there any benefit for me from the deal
i only use bloggers…
somebody update me
February 5th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
hmm at least Uncle G’s monopoly will face new competition
and maybe YMC will bring new source of income hopefully
February 5th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
This is going to be a big hit, keep us posted liewcf.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Interesting to know the outcome. I don’t think this will be big threat to Google anyway.
February 7th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
good move for microsoft and also yahoo share holder….i dont know what will happened if only two big players left in this industry…can you all tell you imagination to me…
February 9th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
February 10th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
yerp.steve balmer even said they are on track! dem,they are very serious considering buying yahoo.i hope that wont happen.now we have msn-google-yahoo.imagine later on we only have google as the ONLY rival to microsoft.oh no!~
February 11th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I thought I read somewhere they already rejected the offer. They said the offer $ underestimate them.
February 14th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Yes the offer was rejected, my guess is that this is only the beginning of the courtship by Microsoft.
Both Yahoo & MSN cannot compete with Google individually and Yahoo is worth far more to Microsoft than $44bil. But even combined, they don’t have a product to counter Google Adwords.
February 14th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I think ms might offer even more to buy yahoo soon. I do agree that MS offered too little for the yahoo founder/investors to give up so much.
No harm for M$ to offer 10x more for yahoo in consideration of the latter potential and future earnings.
Unless of course the purpose was to get rid of yahoo. Buy it and remove it.
February 17th, 2008 at 1:15 am
If I were MS, I won’t buy yahoo at all. As Larry said, even if they combined, they can’t compete with Google as well. May as well use the money for other stuff (e.g. hire more creative ppl to implement more creative products).
February 17th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Hi ChampDog, from my research it sems that Yahoo is market leader in the so-called Display Ads segment (ie banner & flash/multimedia ads). If combined with MSN they are a powerful force. There is a post on my blog about this:
http://www.netallianz.com/gallery/2008/02/09/online-advertising-continues-its-intense-growth/
The MS move is more an aggressive than defensive one. They are trying to block off Google in a fast growing area. Meanwhile Google is experiencing slow down in Adwords growth, which may explain why a lot of publishers are complaining about declining Adsense PPC
February 18th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Throughout the past two years Google has been on a huge exapnsion drive. Microsoft has realised this and instead of attempting to but up smaller entities it has just decided to grab the biggest fish - Yahoo.
I guess its time to show Google who is the bigger cat in this business