The story everyone focuses on now is obviously Yahoo’s breaking off talks with Microsoft and entering an advertising partnership with Google instead. In trying to make itself more relevent through acquisition, Microsoft got the worst case scenario that was possible and drove Yahoo to Google.
Yeah, so the big winner here obviously is Google. The partnership with Yahoo allows it to grab an even bigger share of the online advertising market (assuming the deal can gain approval from the government). As for Yahoo, it did ok, too. It once again fended off Microsoft’s overture (though this may not be the end of it) and, for the immediate future, could boost its revenue from the deal. Best yet, the deal allows Yahoo to have a lot of control how Google’s ads are displayed. I say that’s not bad at all.
But what do Steve Ballmer and Co. have to show for after all the drama that went down over the last few months? Not much. They announced to the world that they desperately needed help to compete with Google and couldn’t pull off what was their master plan. Sad. Very sad. What were they thinking anyway?
I’ve sided with Yahoo from the beginning. I’d very much like to see them remain as an independent company. A lot of people are on Yahoo’s case for destroying shareholder value. Whatever… There are many positions you can take in looking at this whole thing. I don’t know why Michael Arrington keeps bashing Yahoo and Jerry Yang (see here and here). Is he among the shareholders losing money now??? How about see this from the perspective of the end users? Or from the perspective of the rest of the Web industry? Do we really want Yahoo under Microsoft’s control at all? (I know I don’t.)
Arrington says execuitive level departures now are because these execuitives don’t feel there’s a future in Yahoo anymore. Well… if Microsoft didn’t decide to mess with Yahoo in the first place and subsequently put Yahoo in a really difficult position, would they feel this way?
Anyway… especially considering some of the exit clauses in the Yahoo-Google deal, Microsoft’s continuous posturing publicly (which kind of signals they may still have desire to deal with Yahoo after all) and the upcoming shareholder meeting which involves a proxy fight with Carl C. Icahn (the asshole “activist” investor, as I’d call him), a lot more can still happen and this remains very very intersting…
