BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
16 Nov 2007

When Rupert Murdoch stunned Wall Street with a $5B offer for Dow Jones, he ensured that

- no one would get close to bidding for the venerable publisher of Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, and owner of Marketwatch.com

- and DJ’s board and shareholders would not be able to refuse the offer.

Should MSFT make a similar, open bid for Yahoo!?  Today the MSFT/YHOO storyline is getting more and more ink as MSFT is openly calling to becoming a #2 in online ads.

Yahoo! is at $26, midway of its $22-33 range that its traded at for the past 12-18 months, that means $30-40B in market cap… so if MSFT openly made an offer for $50B through a mix of cash and stock, would Yahoo!’s board (who I believe has introduced a poison pill) really be able to say “thanks, but no thanks?”

After all, as a YHOO shareholder myself, I don’t see what YHOO plans to do to hit $50B in market value, frankly.  I say that, even though I think YHOO is the best positioned online media company around. There is a disconnect between potential and reality right now.

As a web professional, I think YHOO + MSFT can actually work quite well when you consider how quickly technology and media are meshing and how much software and advertising are becoming intertwined.

As per culture?  Give me a break!  How many people at YHOO today were there in 1994?  How many MSFT people are not products of the Web and don’t live, breath and sleep Internet?

I don’t know, but if YHOO’s board remain impartial to a merger or sale to MSFT, maybe MSFT should take a cue from Murdoch after all?

Read our previous post on why YHOO and MSFT make a decent fit, here.