Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere!
Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters and the WOW Technology Minute. It?’s Web News Monday and here?’s what shaping your Web world this week.
Most likely, you?’ve already heard that Microsoft has placed a hostile bid for Yahoo. If you?’ve been in the field for awhile then this probably doesn?’t come as a surprise to you since this has been rumored for a long time.
Since Web professionals and the customers we serve are most likely to be financially impacted by this announcement, I?’ve been monitoring the press coverage and the blogs to determine if this is a good thing for WOW members.
Here are the high level of the points to think about:
According to reports, Yahoo will reject the bid today. The NY Times reports that one person involved in Yahoo?’s deliberations suggested that “the sum of the parts are worth more than the whole,” arguing that its various pieces like Yahoo Finance, for example, could be sold to a company like the News Corporation for a huge premium while Yahoo Sports could be sold to a company like ESPN.
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., says that it’s really the first of many more consolidation steps for the computer industry. Every new industry starts with a few crazy innovators, who are followed by thousands of entrepreneurs engaged in a fierce Darwinian competition. Some of those entrepreneurs build large companies, but as the new industry that has been created matured, few of them make it to the finish line.
The New York Times, also quotes Google, seeing the potential deal as a direct attack, went much further. Its chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, placed a call to Yahoo?’s chief, Jerry Yang, offering the company?’s help in fending off Microsoft, possibly in the form of a partnership between the companies, people briefed on the call said.
The New York Times also reports that “Google?’s lobbyists in Washington have also begun plotting how it might present a case against the transaction to lawmakers, people Executives at rival companies were less optimistic about such a breakup strategy. “No one can get to a $44 billion price,” one executive at a major media company said, “even if you split it into a dozen pieces.”
In other news, the Associated Press reports that “some analyst wonder if its worth the while citing investor doubts whether the benefits outweigh the potential management distractions, sagging employee morale and other headaches. The investor backlash has reduced the Microsoft?’s market value by more than the 40 billion a sum roughly equal to the current value of the Yahoo bid. “
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