Yang breaks silence on Microsoft takeover
By Yi-Wyn Yen
PHOENIX — Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang knew exactly what was on everyone’s minds at the Interactive Advertising Bureau conference on Monday.
In their first public appearance since Microsoft’s hostile $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo, Yang and Yahoo (YHOO) president Susan Decker each gave a 15-minute speech about Yahoo’s online ad strategy to a crowd of 400 industry players. Yang then kicked off a brief Q&A session with a joke.
“Before you start, let me guess what your first question is. Does it start with an M and end with a T?” Yang said with a smile. Unsurprisingly, Yang, dressed in drab charcoal gray, brown, and black, offered little insight into Yahoo’s take on Microsoft’s (MSFT) move to acquire the struggling Internet portal.
“We can’t say a whole lot about the process that we’re going through,” Yang said. “We’re very focused. We’re taking the proposal that Microsoft has given to us seriously… It’s been a galvanizing event for everyone at Yahoo. Our board is spending a lot of time thinking about all the alternatives. It’s something that we need to think through carefully.” Borrowing from the same, carefully-worded key points, Decker also referred to the Microsoft deal as a “galvanizing force internally and externally.”
Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer two weeks ago because the board felt Yahoo was undervalued at $31 a share. Since then, Microsoft has ramped up its plans to takeover the company and has hired a proxy firm to help oust Yahoo’s board. And late Friday, Microsoft released an internal memo from Kevin Johnson, the president of Microsoft’s platform and services division, about how the company plans to integrate Yahoo.
Yang remained confident about the situation. “The number of people who talk to us about the industry and what it could mean, in either direction or either outcome, it gives me a lot of encouragement that Yahoo goes to the right place,” he said.
Yang reiterated his plan to turn Yahoo into a starting point on the web, a concept he promoted during a speech he gave at last month’s Consumer Electronic Show. Decker said that Yahoo would soon release a new feature that highlights “the best content from the web” to drive more traffic to the homepage as well as to its alliance of 500 newspaper websites. Social news aggregators like Digg.com and StumbleUpon (EBAY) already provide similar services where users vote on popular content and news of the day.
Both Yang and Decker tried to drum up excitement for a new ad platform Yahoo is working on that will allow marketers to buy display, search, video, or mobile advertising in a convenient one-stop shop. “We’re trying to revolutionize the online advertising industry,” Decker said. She did not say when the new platform would be available.
The only prediction Yang offered was that spending for online advertising will be bigger than television in five years. Marketers spent $21 billion in online advertising in the United States in 2007, according to the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers. TV ad spending was $162 billion in the U.S., and is expected to rise 3% in 2008, according to marketing firm GroupM.
Yang should take the deal and go with Microsoft. With Google owning as much of the online space as it does, I don’t see their place to call anybody else an online monopolizer. This deal will help bolster all companies involved financially and innovatively.
Just a thought. If there are no anti-trust issues with the Microsoft - Yahoo merger, then Google can merge with Apple right?
Goog-Ple will be a perfect fit. It will have an OS, a phone, mobile software (android),…. everything!
This will negate any advantage that Msft will derive from a merger with yahoo!
Go on Google, set the ball rolling.
Yahoo should wake up and take the deal. MSFT is likely to give them the best valuation of any likely acquirers.
Don’t forget that the MARKET VALUED YHOO @ less than $20 before this possible deal came along. It’s BEST price in the past 3 years is scarcely better than the standing offer. The truth is that Yahoo has frittered away their search market share to Google and they have failed to develop anything of value to a Web2.0-hungry user base.
They continue to rest on the laurels of their already-outdated applications — routinely missing opportunities to innovate and out maneuver their competition. But, alas, no.
MSFT should press forward unseating YHOO’s board - a group seemingly out of touch with the shareholder’s best interests.
The buyout of Yahoo by Microsoft would be a blunder of Herculean proportions. Indeed, discounting the contribution of stock, what could Microsoft not do with remaining 22 odd billion?
The Newcorp deal makes eminently more sense, has a comfortable valuation, and a realistic synergy. Who better than Yahoo to overhaul and promote the ugly, fugly, MySpace?
what I fail to understand is people’s irrational hatred toward Microsoft. I hope this deal goes through. Good competition can only help not hinder.
In the coverage and analysis of the potential Yahoo acquisition, I have been surprised no one has discussed the Xbox model which seems perfect for Yahoo inside of Microsoft. I have seen how MSN has been negatively impacted by getting sucked into the Windows/Office world while Xbox has thrived with its own technology, brand and culture (and physical separation from the main MSFT campus).
Having worked with or for both MSFT and Yahoo, the Xbox model is the only one I see working over the long-term in terms of keeping people, winning in the market, etc. Yahoo could maintain its brand/culture yet have the pressure taken off of it by the short-term Wall St. thinking. If there’s one thing you can say about MSFT, it is a long-term oriented org that has dogged determination…something Yahoo would benefit from.
The two of them can toy with the predictions or theories all they want, but in real terms they are simply holding out for a better pay cheque. Make the deal, collect your millions, and enjoy the million dollar estate, the boat, the cottage and all the luxurious assets you probably deserve.
Well, if Yahoo do say yes to Microsoft.
I will refrain from using any Yahoo service.
Yahoo fits and gels well with Google, which could be a right place and strategic partnership than with Microsoft, provided if bidding is considered genuinely.
Gerry Yang and Susan Decker appear to be in the wrong business - if they’re galvanizing, they should be in the zinc business. As it is they will probably look back, having rebuffed the deal yet again, and will say….any deal with Microsoft is in the zinc! Methinks it’s time to take the deal!
- Thunder, Storm in RIM’s forecast
- Big games don’t mean more profits for EA
- Craigslist files countersuit against eBay
- Runoff from RIM’s BlackBerry Jam
- Carl Icahn may rally a proxy fight against Yahoo’s board
- What Microsoft will do next
- Sprint’s best customers are hanging up
- The BlackBerry is in for a bruising
- Wall Street looks for a signal from Sprint
- Take-Two vulnerable despite $500M blockbuster
- Sprint is a living nightmare. When I... More
- Unfortunately, Apple has set the bar... More
- The Good and Bad. Fortunately, I am... More
- Unlike other posters here I believe R... More
- Sounds like ALL thunder and no lighte... More
- I hope Jerry Yang has been buying Yah... More
- It is hard to imagine a more poorly r... More
- If this report be true, then I can co... More
- I bought a quarter-million dollar apa... More
- All you people are ranting about noth... More






The recent EU fine against MS for monopolistic behaviour (charging too much to companies trying to develop MS-compatible software) is all most people need to know to hate them. Microsoft is no different than Bell Canada who made billions by being the only one truly ‘in the game’. I say good for Google! Keep the people first, not your pocketbooks!