Microsoft bids $45 billion for Yahoo

[MORPHEUSP]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Microsoft Corp. made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo on Friday, a deal that could shake up the competitive and lucrative market for Internet search.

The deal would pay Yahoo shareholders $31 a share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on Thursday.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, called the move the "next major milestone" for the software giant.

"We are very, very confident this is the right path for Microsoft and for Yahoo," he said.

Microsoft hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. Ballmer said that Microsoft has been in "off and on" talks with Yahoo for 18 months and said he called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Thursday night to tell him the bid was coming.

Microsoft made the bid early Friday. In a statement, the company said the offer allows Yahoo shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the software giant's offer consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock.

Shares of Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) shot up 50% at the start of trading Friday, while shares of Dow component Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) tumbled 4.5%.

In a statement, Yahoo acknowledged receipt of the offer and said its board would evaluate the proposal "carefully and promptly."

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have fallen far behind rival Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) in the lucrative field of Internet search. Yahoo's earnings and share of the online search market have badly trailed Google.

In a letter it sent to Yahoo's board of directors, Microsoft disclosed it had explored a Microsoft-Yahoo deal a year earlier, only to be rebuffed by Yahoo, which said at that time it was confident of the "potential upside" for Yahoo from operational changes it planned.

"A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved," Ballmer.

On Thursday, former Yahoo CEO and current Chairman Terry Semel, who opposed an earlier approach Microsoft made last year, resigned from the Yahoo board.

Yahoo announced Tuesday it would lay off 1,000 employees by mid-February, citing what CEO Yang described as "headwinds" facing the company. It also reported lower fourth-quarter earnings that still beat Wall Street's now modest expectations for the firm, but it gave a 2008 revenue forecast that disappointed analysts.


http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/01/tech...ex.htm?cnn=yes

[MORPHEUSP]

What Do You Think Guyss????

[FriendOfZeus]

Still not going to beat google.

[Jess]

أحدثت شركة مايكروسوفت العملاقة للبرمجيات والإلكترونيات ما يشبه الهزة في أسواق المال وقطاع التكنولوجيا في العالم الجمعة، بعدما أعلنت تقديم عرض من جانب واحد للاستحواذ على شركة "ياهو" المالكة لمحرك البحث الشهير مقابل 44.6 مليار دولار

ويأتي هذا العرض في وقت أثبتت الدراسات أن مايكروسوفت و"ياهو" حلا خلف "غوغل" التي حصد محركها البحثي أعلى معدل من المستخدمين في العالم، الأمر الذي أثر بقوة على أرباح "ياهو" التي سبق لها أن أعلنت نيتها التخلي عن قرابة ألف موظف بحلول منتصف فبراير/شباط المقبل



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Well i guess its a smart move from Microsoft after the results of the statistics that showed us eno Google is the best way of searching

[MORPHEUSP]

i mean 45 billlion dollars WTF!!!!! (fi 3alam 3am bet mout men el jou3 :P)

[xcoder]

Google is getting extremely strong in a very fast way and yahoo can do nothing in front of them.
All this is to beat google, but it's not gonna happen, as far i know google have huge projects to be launched in the coming few years that will make it the first unbeatable website. youtube is a good example, and maybe facebook soon

[MORPHEUSP]

facebook will never be good i predict that facebook is going down soon

[Kingroudy]

the UNBEATABLE

[duce]

did u notice that microsoft's bid can cover lebanon's debt?
well... one single company is willing to pay what a country could not afford...
sad times!