It’s been nearly two weeks since Microsoft made its bid for Yahoo public, and we still aren’t very sure how this thing is going to shake out.
Sure, we’ve all got our opinions on how the wind will blow in the near future. Some say Yahoo soon caves to Microsoft. A smaller percentage think Yahoo will get to live remainder of the decade - and perhaps many years beyond - as a solo act. But this prediction thing we in the blogosphere like to occupy our feeds with isn’t a very promising science. Only the guys behind those so-called closed doors we consistently hear so much about can really tell us what we want to know. Alas, they don’t seem to want to talk.
Thus we speculate. And speculate some more. 12 days into the buyout battle, and we’re still thinking up new spin. Today, I add another few hundred more words to the proverbial pile.
Right now, it appears Yahoo is being hounded from all sides. February 1st marked Microsoft’s $44.6bn announcement. By Saturday morning, observers were screaming, “sold, sold, sold!,” hoping to pre-empt what was then deemed Jerry Yang’s inevitable acceptance speech. Which never came. Not Sunday. Not Monday. Not Tuesday.
Not until February 11th did the Yahoo CEO officially come out to the press with his denial of Microsoft’s offer, in which he essentially said, “Show me more money. A lot more.”
In the meantime, pundits chewed on some candy-coated rumors about the potential for additional bids from rogue parties, some of the names of which were so far out and so disassociated from the world of Web gigantism that they seemed meant to act only as white noise behind the slow-moving Microshoo story. Some even ventured the suggestion that Google, the brightest star on the tech scene, would collaborate with Yahoo to keep Microsoft at bay. (Google’s own Chief Legal Officer cited antitrust reasons for Google’s indirect intervention. Most opposition stems from the prospect of a Microshoo monopoly on webmail and Internet portal traffic.)
Yet those suggestions seem to ignore the fact that Microsoft has little or no real regulatory battles to expect from an attempted purchase of Yahoo. The only substantial barrier to a takeover of the company is the Yahoo board of directors. Which, as of this Monday, following Yahoo’s official refusal of Microsoft’s offer (pending greater financial incentive), some shareholders aren’t very happy with.