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Posts Tagged “
Yahoo
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yahoo raid
Corporate greenmailer Carl Icahn, some old dude who was stupid enough to buy a lot of shares of Yahoo on the premise that Microsoft would buy the company after it said it wouldn't, wants four seats on Yahoo's board. Yahoo only prepared to reward his intelligence by offering him two, Kara Swisher reports. Why so stingy? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clear the dead wood out of the boardroom. Make room! Our nominees for the axe:
More »
The Yahoo board members we'd most like to see fired
Corporate greenmailer Carl Icahn, some old dude who was stupid enough to buy a lot of shares of Yahoo on the premise that Microsoft would buy the company after it said it wouldn't, wants four seats on Yahoo's board. Yahoo only prepared to reward his intelligence by offering him two, Kara Swisher reports. Why so stingy? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clear the dead wood out of the boardroom. Make room! Our nominees for the axe:
More »
exits
Insidious exodus dynamic grips Yahoo
When Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang became CEO last year, BusinessWeek found a senior executive to anonymously sing his praises. "I was so wrong," that source now tells the magazine. "This thing can be saved, but not by the current management team." That executive is now gone from the company — our money is on BusinessWeek's source being the ever-chatty Brad Garlinghouse. Plenty of Yahoos are trying to join him. One tech recruiter said he gets several Yahoo resumes a day. Even if Yahoo turned itself around, the appearance that Yahoo is a sinking ship likely already outweighs reality, said Stanford behavioralist Roderick Kramer: "Once there is even a perception of an exodus, the dynamic becomes insidious and takes on a life of its own." (Photo by Misserion)
search
Yahoo is Google's bitch, with or without search
Why is Jerry Yang clinging so desperately to Yahoo's search business, when Microsoft has made no secret of its willingness to buy it for billions of dollars? Sheer stubbornness, it seems. Heather Hopkins, an analyst at traffic-trends researcher Hitwise, has run the numbers, and found that Yahoo Search, while a decent standalone business, doesn't contribute much to the rest of Yahoo. Google accounts for far more traffic to almost all of Yahoo's properties. Ah, but perhaps that's where Yang's stubbornness comes from. More »
Corporate Raid
Reeling Yahoo board talks AOL merger, prepares to give Icahn board seats
Yahoo continues to hold merger talks with Time Warner, discussing a deal that would fold AOL into Yahoo and give Time Warner a minority stake in the new company. Another morning, another round of share-price stimulating rumormongering in the Yahoo saga. If the deal sounds familiar, that's because Yahoo sources first leaked the idea back in April. You're hearing it again because Yahoo shares dropped into the teens two days ago. We don't expect Yahoo-AOL to happen, if only because Microsoft is also said to be interested in AOL and its got a lot more cash and pride on the line. In other Yahoo rumormongering: Reporter's reporter Kara Swisher reports that Yahoo is prepared to avoid a nasty proxy fight with Carl Icahn by giving him two seats on its board. Problem is Ican wants four. Swisher thinks the two will come to an agreement because neither side wants a media-friendly, share-crumbling fight at the company's annual media. Because its not at all too late for such concerns.
yahoo raid
Microsoft still pushing Icahn onward in proxy fight
After selling Yahoo entirely to Micosoft, corporate raider Carl Icahn's second choice for Yahoo was for it to outsource search advertising to Google. That happened. And since then, Icahn's been awfully quiet, even as he's putting forward a slate to unseat Yahoo's current board of directors. Is Icahn content to sit back and watch his slate lose? Not according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports that he and Microsoft are still working in cahoots: More »
stocks
Wall Street Journal makes Yahoo more expensive for Rupert Murdoch
The Wall Street Journal's report that Microsoft is looking for partners to dine on Yahoo's carcass à la carte — a group which includes Journal owner News Corp., whose media-mogul boss, Rupert Murdoch, has long flirted with swapping MySpace for a chunk of Yahoo — triggered after-hours trading that boosted Yahoo's stock well above $21 a share, keeping it from dipping below the $19 it was trading at before Team Redmond's initial buyout offer was announced. We can only hope the story was sourced better than TechCrunch's earlier stock-boosting rumor.
antitrust
Yahoo, Google deal officially being investigated by DOJ
"What is Yahoo's incentive to continue to compete?" That's the question Clinton-era Federal Trade Commission competition policy director David Balto asked of the search advertising deal between Yahoo and Google. And that's just one of many questions that will be asked by the Department of Justice now that officials have opened a formal investigation into the deal, according to unnamed sources cited by the Washington Post. More »
mergers
The five weeks Yahoo wants us all to forget ever happened
In a presentation filed with SEC earlier this week, Yahoo's board tried to convince Yahoo shareholders that "the record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition." But Yahoo shareholders don't buy it. You shouldn't either. Why? Remember the five weeks between when Microsoft made is offer public on February 1 and March 10, when Yahoo execs finally agreed to meet. One major shareholder tells us:More »
deals
Microsoft looking for a third to get in on the Yahoo action
Microsoft's latest plan: acquire Yahoo's search business and convince either Time Warner or News Corp to snatch up the rest. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock had a meeting scheduled Monday to discuss the plans, but Ballmer called it off at the last minute, reports the Wall Street Journal. Yahoo sources took the cancellation to mean Ballmer couldn't persuade News Corp's chairman Rupert Murdoch or Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes to do the deal. They're probably right about Bewkes. Word has it he's hoping Yahoo will buy Time Warner's AOL, not the other way around. As for Murdoch, he's been willing to hand over MySpace for Yahoo stock since at least last year, but perhaps like us, he's wondering why anyone would make a move for Yahoo shares right now, when they don't seem to be going anywhere but down. (Photo by xamad)
recommendations
Jason Calacanis says ex-AOL CEO Jon Miller is the man for you, Yahoos
Before creating the world's most comprehensive list of videogame cheats, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis worked at AOL under then-CEO Jon Miller. Calacanis joined AOL only after it bought Weblogs Inc. from him for $25 million and since Miller led that acquisition, eventually invested in Mahalo and now sits on the company's board, Calacanis is naturally a little biased in his feelings toward Miller, whom Calacanis considers a mentor. Still, when we heard talk of Miller as a contender to be Yahoo's next CEO, we figured Calacanis's opinions would at least be entertainingly biased. Our email exchange: More »
real estate
Fox Interactive's $350 million new offices
Poor Yahoo can't even keep tenants at the Yahoo Center in Santa Monica — Fox Interactive Media will be moving all 2,000 of its Los Angeles-area employees to the as-yet-uncompleted Horizon at Playa Vista office park in Playa Del Rey. The deal, which Peter Levinsohn calls "the biggest deal in LA real estate in 25 years," is worth $350 million according to sources cited by the Los Angeles Times. The planned complex, situated between Culver City and LAX, will also host a retail complex, making it easy for FIM employees to buy the products with the paychecks funded by the advertising for those products, thereby completing the great Southland circle of life.
yahoo
Yahoo shares drop below $20 for first time since Microsoft bid
The last time Yahoo shares traded before Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced an offer to buy Yahoo, they cost $19.18. Today, for the first time since that offer, Yahoo shares sank below $20 to a low of $19.59. Even with the credit markets a complete mess, if Yahoo shares drop much further, we could soon wake up to news that some private equity firm tech's thriving investment banking sector borrowed enough cash to take Yahoo off the market and clean house — with or without Jerry Yang's consent.
Google, Yahoo start to search Flash
Adobe has begun work with Google and Yahoo to enable their search engines to index Flash content. What that means for the rest of us: more whizbang Web site designs on e-commerce sites that previously stuck with HTML in order to remain searchable. [PaidContent]
Adobe has begun work with Google and Yahoo to enable their search engines to index Flash content. What that means for the rest of us: more whizbang Web site designs on e-commerce sites that previously stuck with HTML in order to remain searchable. [PaidContent]
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It isn't broken, it's reorged
With Jerry Yang and company trying to pick up the pieces, shattered glass might be a better analogy than "systematic rot," but it's been used before. Have a better analogy? The best one will become the new headline. Friday's winner: "Affirmative... I poked one. It was dead." by godospoons. (Photo by Jerry Paffendorf)
jerry yang
Yahoo CEO tries to convince shareholders Microsoft never wanted to merge
Perhaps you remember the morning of February 1, 2008, when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made public his intentions to purchase Yahoo at $31 per share. Or maybe you recall Ballmer's angry letter on April 5, demanding Yahoo answer to Microsoft's offer. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board of directors would prefer you not. According to a shareholder presentation the group filed with the SEC — part of its campaign against Carl Icahn's alternative slate — Yahoo's board wants Yahoo shareholders to believe that "the record casts doubt on whether Microsoft was ever committed to a whole company acquisition." More »
100-word version
One Yahoo's rant on reorgs, outsourcing search and "Yahoo's best era ever"
After a week of more reorgs a frustrated Yahoo emailed Fortune's Adam Lashinsky. At a thousand words or so, it's the sarcastic and vitriolic rant of a madman. It drove Lashinksky to ask: "Does Yahoo’s board have the slightest idea what’s up at Yahoo?" Read the best bits in just 100 words, below, and you'll know the answer: No. More »
blogging for dollars
