Inspired no doubt by this week’s news that Yahoo’s CEO is stepping down — and the uncharacteristic jump in stock value that greeted the news — Channel Web today published a very informative summary of the recent tribulations of Yahoo. (more…)
Yahoo, who has already turned down a number of buy-out offers from Microsoft this year, has reportedly changed its tune after last week’s implosion of the search ad partnership deal it had hoped to make with Google.
Today, despite earlier eleventh-hour attempts to adjust the deal to make it work, Google walked away from its proposed search ad partnership deal with Yahoo.
Writing for Reuters international news agency today, Franklin Paul reports that, despite numerous rebukes over the course of this past year, Microsoft is still interested in partnering with Yahoo in some capacity.
Just how far-fetched is this idea? Well, Yahoo’s shares jumped as much as 17 percent when investors heard of Microsoft’s comments — which could very well lead to a return to the negotiating table, especially in these rocky economic times, when standards may be a bit lower than usual. According to the story, Yahoo’s gains later amounted to “about 12 percent” after Microsoft released an official statement indicating that it was not specifically interested in buying Yahoo.
Still, 12 percent is a healthy bump, especially given Yahoo’s poor performance as of late. From the article:
Since talks broke off (in July), Yahoo shares have plunged to a 5-1/2-year low of $11.37, weighed by concerns over the outlook for Web display advertising, as major advertisers such as banks and automakers cut back spending.
“We offered 33 bucks not too long ago and it’s 11 and a half. So I don’t know what price might have got the job done,” [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer said, responding to a question from Gartner analyst David Smith on whether Microsoft might take another stab at buying Yahoo now that its stock price is so low.
“It’s clear that Yahoo did not want to sell the company. It did not want to sell when we offered 33 … They probably think it’s worth at least 33 today.”
Yahoo declined comment. Its shares rose to as high as $13.73 on Thursday, before settling at around $13.16 in late trading on the Nasdaq.
“Our position hasn’t changed. Microsoft has no interest in acquiring Yahoo; there are no discussions between the companies,” a spokesman for Microsoft said in a statement.
Microsoft shares were up 3.6 percent at $23.48.
Despite the market’s excitement, any pursuit of new talks would be impeded by several issues, including Yahoo’s severely depressed stock price and the poor outlook for the advertising market due to the weak economy, analysts said.
“The larger issue is strategic fit,” Cross Research analyst Richard Williams said. “Microsoft clearly has spent money and changed its focus to ‘build’ rather than ‘buy.’
He added that for businesses driven by advertising, such as Microsoft and Yahoo’s Internet operations, it is the wrong time for a deal with markets reeling and consumer confidence plummeting.
“Going into a recession is about the worst time to buy an advertising firm,” Williams said. “It’s hard to know how hard they are going to be hit and how low they are going to go.”
Recently on the Live Search Blog, Microsoft Program Manager Jeremiah Andrick put the question out there for the entire webmaster community: “What [can we] do to improve our development stack (Windows, IIS, ASP.Net, Silverlight) so they are optimized for SEO by default”?
Andrick goes on to open up the floor to some acknowledged areas of difficulty:
* Bad default settings - What settings are poorly configured by default? What should the correct setting be (e.g., IIS using 302 redirects by default)?
* Too hard - What is possible, but simply too hard to do? If this is done well on another platform, that would be helpful to know as well (e.g., rearchitecting the link structure on a site while not breaking the links of the old site).
* Limited capabilities - Are their capabilities that we just don’t have, but would really make your lives easier as SEO-savvy web developers (e.g., need to have multiple URL entry points into silverlight application)?
* Bugs - What just doesn’t work right today (e.g., URL rewriting in ASP.Net using 302’s to redirect links)?
We have to applaud this effort by the company to open up a dialogue with its customers. Direct feedback of this nature is good for Microsoft, and great for the thousands of people who use its products. And so far, Microsoft personnel have done a solid job of addressing the comments they receive.
So, hey, this is your chance, everyone. We know a lot of you use Microsoft platforms, and this is a great opportunity to let them know what improvements you’d like to see. Click here to check it out for yourself, and take advantage of the info exchange.