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Search giant and Internet pioneer Yahoo! is in the doldrums. People have been laid off and circling sharks sense a weakness. The mere fact of layoffs brought out the bloggers, putting forth ideas about who should buy Yahoo! and save it.
Microsoft Corp. stepped up. Microsoft offered Yahoo! $31 per share, a total of $44.6 billion. And Yahoo! answered, "No thanks." At SEO and Technology News Resources, blogger Filipina listed the reason why Yahoo! rejected the offer.
Here’s Yahoo’s reason it rejected the offer:
1. Yahoo thinks Microsoft is trying to take advantage of Yahoo’s weak stock price and is saying that Microsoft wants to “steal” the company.
2. Yahoo board member won’t consider offers below $40 a share, an extra $12 billion (quite the premium, considering the first offer was a 62% premium over Yahoo’s market value).
3. Yahoo is effectively stalling while it considers an alternative of partnering with Google (ironically, a point that nullifies the original point of Microsoft’s offer not taking into consideration “risks” of regulation, considering the risks of regulation are higher with Google).
4. Yahoo is hoping that Microsoft will not follow through with a hostile take over (even if Steve Ballmer said as much in his original letter). The reasoning here is that important engineers would not be willing to cooperate in a hostile take over, and regulators may be more easily convinced that this deal is anticompetitive if hostile.
Marianne at MLexperience said,
The tech drama continues this weekend as early reports of Yahoo's pending rejection of Microsoft's offer are published.
MS Stock is dropping as they get handily bashed at Flickr and bloggers everywhere, including yours truly, seem to go nuts over the whole deal.
Mairanne's mention of Flickr was good for a laugh. To understand it, you need to know that Flickr registration requires a Yahoo! ID. And you need to know that Flickr members and create "pools" where people gather photos from any Flickr members who posts a photo on a particular topic. Marianne linked to a new Flickr pool called Microsoft: Keep Your Evil Grubby Hands Off Of Our Flickr. One must assume that the folks who joined this Flickr pool are happy that Yahoo! said, "Hell, no, we won't go," to Microsoft.
LaSandra Brill took a look at the refusal to Microsoft from a marketing perspective in her blog, Marketing in a Web 2.0 World.
Think Yahoo is worth more than 44M? [Ed.: the offer is actually $44B.] Well, they think so which is why they will be officially rejecting Microsoft's offer tomorrow. I think this is a blessing in disguise for Microsoft because I don't see how two struggling companies equal a stronger one and Yahoo comes with a lot of baggage. As for Yahoo I think this may be the best offer they get as their downward spiral is not going to increase their market share with time.
Yahoo! isn't completely burning its bridges with Microsoft, however, According to the Wall Street Journal, the door is still open for further negotiation on the price.
Another Internet giant, Facebook, also made news this week when it was revealed just how hard it is to disconnect yourself from your profile on Facebook once it's published. According to a New York Times article,
While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely. Indeed, many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network.
Jean at Creativity Machine details her struggles to delete her Facebook account. First, she explained why she wanted to leave.
here are just a few of the areas in which Facebook takes the prize for worst practice.
1. I’m not the first to say this, but yes, Facebook is the antithesis of the concept of openness.
2. The Terms of
ServiceUse are a triumph of Kafkaesque surrealism and nasty, mean, trickery.3. Almost every means at the user’s disposal to make their experience of the site safer, more socially comfortable, and less irritating (turning off notifications, making certain content visible to certain friends, making your profile invisible to Google searches, etc) requires effort and knowledge on the user’s behalf. Which is one among many symptoms of utter contempt for the users. See 4.
4. Did I mention the Terms of Use?
5. Oh, and even
