Yahoo will remain an independent company but Carl Icahn will be helping to lead it. The story of the failed sale of Yahoo to Microsoft is officially over, it seems. The enterprise is best served by having multiple strong cloud contenders in the market place building out services and competing for business ... Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. While Microsoft would have benefited from owning Yahoo, the company just posted $60 billion in revenue and can afford to carry a weak online advertising business for a while.

Read more

So now Microsoft is reportedly in buyout talks with AOL. Its original offer for Yahoo made sense at the time, but it is curious that Microsoft is so interested in '90s era Internet companies. A Microsoft/AOL combo would hardly be a threat to Google. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Fark ... these are the types of Internet companies that Microsoft should invest in. And rather than owning and dominating, how about investing and collaboration? That's the key to the Internet today. What would Microsoft even get with AOL? Seems as if it would be an insignificant user/ad base and maybe even a lot of aging infrastructure.

Visit the Microsoft Subnet home page for more news, blogs, podcasts.

If billionaire Carl Ichan has his way, the new board of Yahoo would be put together expressly to sell Yahoo to Microsoft at a price that is both good for the shareholders and fair to Microsoft. For all that Microsoft has said it doesn't want Yahoo anymore, this is a circumstance that would work. Now that every armchair analyst, blogger and Wall Street pro has analyzed this deal from every angle, most would agree that if Yahoo came under Microsoft's wing, this would be good for both companies, and perhaps good for Internet advertising as a whole, giving Google some genuine competition. Is it good for Yahoo employees? Probably a better option than watching the company's leadership drive the company out of business while reaching for pie-in-the-sky revenue growth.

Read more

At this point, how much of an impact will a combined Microsoft/Yahoo even have on the overall software market? Yahoo has been losing talent in a mass exodus. It would simply be a matter of Microsoft taking out a competitor. But we'll wait and see. Continuous news reports based on unnamed sources claiming the two remain in talks will continue, at least until Yahoo's board has been kicked out, or has won its proxy fight. Is anyone even rooting for Yahoo anymore?

Visit the Microsoft Subnet home page for more news, blogs, podcasts.

It is good for Yahoo's shareholders that Carl Icahn has stepped in to try to represent their interests. Icahn wants the Yahoo board to simply announce that Yahoo is for sale (and for a nice, tidy $49.5 billion, too). But would this even work? Why should Microsoft buy the company at this point -- especially at a premium price? Microsoft would tick off its own shareholders with a move like that, especially now that it is moving toward simply getting an interest of some sort in Yahoo's online ad sales -- the only thing Microsoft really wants.

Go to the Microsoft Subnet home page for more news, blogs, podcasts.

Billionaire Carl Icahn doesn't lose these kinds of fights very often. While Yahoo's board denies that it adopted a poison pill strategy, it seems unlikely that Icahn will have much trouble convincing fellow shareholders that the board was looking after their interests by pushing away Microsoft. But, if Icahn's board takes over, will Microsoft come back with another offer for Yahoo?

Is Icahn really undertaking this hostile takeover to turn Yahoo over to Microsoft? Or will he demand something else for shareholders? Still, in all of the back and forth, Icahn is the only one that has taken action to look out for the interests of Yahoo shareholders (except, perhaps, Microsoft, which offered them a premium price.) READ MORE.

Go to the Microsoft Subnet home page for more news, blogs, podcasts.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang may be relieved that the company he founded didn't wind up in the hands of Microsoft -- its polar opposite in corporate culture. But Yang can't expect all of the stock holders to be happy. And indeed, some of them are making their misery immediately apparent. True, lots of folks out there are rooting for the underdog, Yahoo, and pointing to Yahoo's amazing strides in social networking. The fact is, it is a publicly traded company that makes its money on advertising revenue. And most of the market is going to Google, who, by the way, also knows a thing or too about the power of social networking.

Read more

This isn't surprising. Steve Ballmer announced over the weekend that Microsoft would not be pursuing a hostile takeover of Yahoo and that the two companies could not agree on a price that made sense for Microsoft. This story recaps how Yahoo jumped into hyperdrive in its efforts to regain its former luster and generate new opportunities for itself.

Read more