Microsoft Pulls Yahoo! Offer
Old news at this point, but on Saturday Microsoft pulled their offer to purchase Yahoo!. The offer is rumored to have gone a few dollars higher than the original $31 per share, but Yahoo! wanted $37. Feeling that valuation was too hight, Microsoft took its balls and went home.
Now it’s pretty much up to Jerry Yang and the current management team to prove their worth - to turn around the company. Which sadly, is basically what all the Yahoo!-philes been hoping would happen for over a year now.
Sure, Yahoo! has made some bolder moves since the Microsoft bid - Buzz, planning to unify all their properties under one social network, decent earnings, and the advertising experiment with Google. But all of this stuff has to begin showing results starting yesterday.
Personally, I’m glad Microsoft didn’t get its hands on Yahoo! but if the stock fails to recover, Microsoft may return a few months from now and buy Yahoo! for less than before. It’s now arguable that Yang and the current team is incapable of turning around the company and preventing that from happening.
One totally plausible move: Yahoo! fires Yang and a new CEO is brought in to reinstate some fresh management to lead a competent turn around. The current leadership’s inaction got them into this mess and it took this Microsoft offer to spur them into action - that’s not leadership. Jerry Yang reminds me of Gil Amelio lording over the confused and near-death Apple Computer.
They need a Jobs-like figure to come in, redefine what Yahoo! does exactly, and cut the stuff that isn’t taking them toward that goal. When Jobs took over Apple, he refined the product line to an easy to understand product matrix and controversially killed distracting projects like the Mac clones and the Newton. The same streamlining would benefit Yahoo!, with its myriad properties of dubious value.
Unfortunately Steve Jobs is already at Apple and has no interest in Yahoo! - despite having a cash stash approaching Microsoft’s.
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