The latest twist to the infamous Microsoft bid to takeover Yahoo! is that Yahoo! is now caught in the cross-hairs of two warring camps of tech giants and their allies.
On the one hand, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is believed to be considering joining Microsoft in its bid for Yahoo! -- which means Internet giant Google may soon have a formidable rival in the form of News Corp's popular social networking Web site, MySpace. Whereas on the other hand, Yahoo! is believed to be closing in on a deal with Time Warner's AOL unit -- another big contender. To top it all, just yesterday, Yahoo! announced plans to test Google search ads alongside its Web Search services.At this stage, the specifics of how -- if at all -- a deal between Microsoft and News Corp would play out, are not known. On the side there are rumors as well -- that Yahoo! has now regained some of the negotiating momentum it appeared to have lost with Microsoft.
Yet experts like UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter have been quoted by Reuters as saying that neither an AOL deal nor a plan by Yahoo! to buy back a chunk of its shares has enough funding to satisfy shareholders clamoring for a deal worth at least Microsoft's existing offer of $31 a share.Meanwhile, Yahoo!'s talks with Time Warner are believed to be getting near a deal that would fold AOL's business -- excluding its legacy dial-up Internet access operations -- into a combined Yahoo! company; Reuters quoted an unnamed person familiar with the talks as having said. The source said such a deal would value AOL at $10 billion, adding that Yahoo! would receive cash from Time Warner in exchange for 20 percent of a combined Yahoo!-AOL. Other sources confirmed the outline of the discussions without providing further details.
If Microsoft does get News Corp in on its bid for Yahoo!, the combination of Yahoo!, MSN, and MySpace would indeed act as a formidable competitor to Google. The Yahoo!-AOL combination too, if it comes through, would be significant. Actually, either of the combinations have the potential to fundamentally change the Web. But as of now, they remain -- a lot of pent up moves for consolidation -- that's that!
On the one hand, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is believed to be considering joining Microsoft in its bid for Yahoo! -- which means Internet giant Google may soon have a formidable rival in the form of News Corp's popular social networking Web site, MySpace. Whereas on the other hand, Yahoo! is believed to be closing in on a deal with Time Warner's AOL unit -- another big contender. To top it all, just yesterday, Yahoo! announced plans to test Google search ads alongside its Web Search services.At this stage, the specifics of how -- if at all -- a deal between Microsoft and News Corp would play out, are not known. On the side there are rumors as well -- that Yahoo! has now regained some of the negotiating momentum it appeared to have lost with Microsoft.
Yet experts like UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter have been quoted by Reuters as saying that neither an AOL deal nor a plan by Yahoo! to buy back a chunk of its shares has enough funding to satisfy shareholders clamoring for a deal worth at least Microsoft's existing offer of $31 a share.Meanwhile, Yahoo!'s talks with Time Warner are believed to be getting near a deal that would fold AOL's business -- excluding its legacy dial-up Internet access operations -- into a combined Yahoo! company; Reuters quoted an unnamed person familiar with the talks as having said. The source said such a deal would value AOL at $10 billion, adding that Yahoo! would receive cash from Time Warner in exchange for 20 percent of a combined Yahoo!-AOL. Other sources confirmed the outline of the discussions without providing further details.
If Microsoft does get News Corp in on its bid for Yahoo!, the combination of Yahoo!, MSN, and MySpace would indeed act as a formidable competitor to Google. The Yahoo!-AOL combination too, if it comes through, would be significant. Actually, either of the combinations have the potential to fundamentally change the Web. But as of now, they remain -- a lot of pent up moves for consolidation -- that's that!
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