Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

Yang to Ballmer: Baby come back

By Juan Carlos Perez , IDG News Service , 11/06/2008
Newsletter Signup
  • Share/Email
  • Tweet This
  • Comment
  • Print

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has a message for his Microsoft counterpart Steve Ballmer: Microsoft should buy Yahoo, and Ballmer only has to say the word and Yang will be sitting at the negotiating table.

"To this day I would say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang said during a keynote appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Asked by conference chair John Battelle whether Yahoo's asking price would be in the range it was in May, Yang said: "Oh no. At the right price, whatever the price is."

If those sound like desperate words, well, these are desperate times for Yahoo. It's embarking on its second round of layoffs of the year, this time looking to slash 10 percent of its staff. It is playing catch up in the social media revolution, belatedly trying to adapt its sites and services to be more like Facebook and MySpace.

A year ago its stock price closed at close to $27 per share: today it closed below $14 per share, no doubt making that final offer from Microsoft of $33 per share a very attractive one in hindsight.

Yet, for three months between February and May, Ballmer pursued Yahoo and got rebuffed, while Yang, in the eyes of his critics, seemingly tried to do his best to repel Microsoft.

He talked to News Corp. about possibly fusing with MySpace. He met with Time Warner about an AOL merger. He created an employee severance package that critics described as a poison pill. He sought a partnership with Google.

It was the possibility of a deal with Google that Ballmer cited as the straw that broke the camel's back and soured Microsoft on acquiring Yahoo.

Later, in June, Yahoo did end up striking a deal to run Google search ads and split the revenue, but intense scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice over anti-trust concerns prompted Google to back out this week.

Except for recent rumors that Yahoo might acquire AOL -- rumors that have again lost steam -- Yang finds himself without many options for a quick solution to Yahoo's woes. Microsoft is now no longer interested in acquiring Yahoo, and the Google partnership has collapsed.

As he has maintained since May, Yang told Battelle that the perception that he tried to sabotage the Microsoft bid to keep Yahoo independent is incorrect. At the time Microsoft walked away, Yahoo was still willing to negotiate and felt they were getting closer to an agreement.

  • Share/Email
  • Tweet This
  • Comment
  • Print
Partner Content

Explore the Ultrium Edge

The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.

Find Out More

Disk and Tape Square Off

Discover what disk and tape really cost and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization

Download this White Paper

Don't Fall for the Myths

The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.

Review this information

information examination

An examination of information security issues, methods and securing data with LTO-4 tape drive encryption

Read this analysis

Comments (1)
Login
Forgot your account info?

Yang groveling to Ballmer: no one is surprisedBy Microsoft Subnet on November 6, 2008, 10:42 amIt must be tremendously satisfying to Steve Ballmer to hear Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang publicly plea for Microsoft to buy Yahoo -- at a bargain basement price. The only...

Reply | Read entire comment

View all comments

Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed