Back In January 2006, the big rumor spreading around was that Microsoft was on the verge of buying Yahoo.
The rumor was the Microsoft bid 80 billion dollars for Yahoo, and that Yahoo turned it down.
In May of 2007, when Yahoo was trading around 28, the rumor resurfaced driving Yahoo up to $32 a shares based on the rumor that Microsoft was going to offer $36-38 a share.
Now 8 months later Yahoo is trading at $19 a share approximately, one-half of its rumored offer of last year.
So why shouldn’t MSN buy Yahoo?
If it made sense 8 months ago it should still make sense today.
Look for these rumors to heat up in the next couple of weeks and this time it may actually get done.
Tim says
I think msft would do better buying 40billion of great domains and develop them out…look at business.com and dictionary.com etc
admin says
Tim
I agree but they have never have done it. Neither has Google or Yahoo. All three have said they have no interest in buying domains.
They have all three had representatives at various traffic shows and all three have said it’s not in their corporate model and they are not going to acquire domains.
Therefore if that is out of the question, then buying Yahoo would seem to be the best move for them
Greg Nelson says
I would love it is MSFT bought out YHOO and not just as a shareholder looking to recoup value. If they could merge their ad platforms and gain greater share of paid distribution, it would be a big push for the combined entity. We actively market on YahooSM and MSN AdCenter, but neither (not even new Panama) work as well as AdWords for ease of use.
As far as quality of traffic, we see solid ROI on all platforms…it comes down to metrics and your economics as much as the platform, but purely from a Ad platform stance, both companies would win if they merged and integrated the ad platforms well while boosting distribution to the advertiser at even less work to that advertiser.
MSFT should buy YHOO. The valuation is cheap (dollar wise) and MSFT is on a roll with their cash cows.
Peter @ Domainer's Gazette says
you called it.. just read this report this morning:
Microsoft offers $44.6 billion for Yahoo
Associated Press
Published on: 02/01/08
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2008/02/01/microsoft_0201.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab
Tim says
ok “admin” your mynew hero 🙂
admin says
Thanks
Guys
Now we will have to see if this will be good for us as domainers or not.
More on this to come
Conor Neu says
Heck of a call and uncanny timing. The first thing I thought when I saw the news this morning was that I am going to start investing in any new rumors you write about.