“That seems sort of like trying to keep a wild animal from eating you by covering yourself with feces.
It might make awful sense for about a second, but it’s just a bad, bad idea. First, it’s unlikely to work — and, second, it’s just pathetic.”
To save itself from Microsoft’s jaws, Yahoo! considers buying AOL, the fallen leader of the consumer Internet. Crudely but accurately stated by Techdirt, the idea is to cause Microsoft to give up the chase, turned off by the smell. Complications piling upon an already convoluted deal. More incompatible systems, more hostile cultures, more risk of customer going “elsewhere”, meaning Google. To say nothing of added anti-trust scrutiny and talent flight.
But Microsoft isn’t any saner. Steve Ballmer wants the deal really badly: he’s willing to get in bed with Rupert Murdoch. News Corp’s wily patriarch got snookered into buying MySpace only to find the epicenter of social networking moving to Facebook.
Wait, there is more: Yahoo!, the deposed Internet king, wants to outsource search to Google. Better search results get a higher price for Yahoo! ads. According to our favorite Internet Bubble repentito, Henry Blodget, the putative outsourcing deal is worth $5 per share to Yahoo!
So….
First, this mess shows again how far Silicon Valley is from Wall Street. Yahoo’s management, led by its founder Jerry Yang, opposes the deal: It will kill the company they care so much about. Never mind the years of mismanagement, delusion or neglect, never mind the sinking market share, the number one position lost to Google, the bad decisions made by the board of directors, the string of CEOs, Tim Koogle, gone, Terry Semel and his Hollywood connections, gone, Sue Decker and her consultant-speak memos, out of sight…. Is this really about the company, about shareholders? Or is it a few people trying to keep their phallus extender?
Speaking of Wall Street, all shareholders want is for the pain to stop: they lost 50% between January 2006 and January 2008, right before Microsoft’s offer at a 25% premium. How can they trust management’s promises to right the ship when the rosy predictions came as a reaction to the ogre’s appetite? Now, if Yahoo’s posturing results in Microsoft adding another 10-15% to their opening offer, I take back the sarcasm: management played a weak poker hand well, the bluff worked. In “real life”, we’re told, Jerry Yang is a good poker player….
Still on shareholders, those owning Microsoft shares aren’t so thrilled. They don’t distrust the directors and the CEO, Steve Ballmer, but they don’t see what the board sees either, that cloud computing spells the end of the Divine Earnings Stream, profits from desktop applications, mainly Microsoft Office. Microsoft shareholders see the short-term threat of the messy acquisition, not the longer term trouble with Google becoming the new Microsoft in the cloud.
Second, I wonder if there is another bluff taking place. Let’s assume Ballmer and his advisers hadn’t expected this much hostility. They now see the deal as substantially riskier than planned, they want out. Microsoft secretly welcomes Yahoo’s intransigence, postured and real. Ballmer doesn’t raise the offer and hopes Yahoo won’t budge. The deal dies of a “natural” death. Yahoo’s fault.
We’ll know soon whose bluff worked. –JLG
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