Yahoo’s Talks With Microsoft Conclude; Google Search-Ad Deal Coming
The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that a search pact for Yahoo and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is imminent. The news was first reported by TechCrunch, which says the announcement is scheduled for 1:30 PM PST this afternoon (after market on EST); the Journal is hedging its bets so far on the actual announcement.
Google and Yahoo have left the door open for a search deal all along, despite suggestions of anti-trust issues. Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt told Fox Business News Wednesday: “You are presuming that there’s an issue there. If there were an issue, it’s perfectly possible that you can do commercial deals that look like outsourcing deals which are not exclusive and where industry structures allow everybody to win. If you look in the automobile industry and lots and lots of industries like that, you have suppliers who supply other people. So if there were a deal, it would be based on those sorts of principles.”
Meanwhile, WSJ also reports that talks with Yahoo has concluded its talks with Microsoft on any kind of deal, and that MSFT was not willing to pay $33 a share it offered earlier. MSFT pulled its offer to buy Yahoo last month, but the two companies have been talking since then, on various subsets of the original deal offer. Yahoo’s shares are down about 13 percent.
Update: Yahoo has officially announced the conclusion of talks with MSFT…the relevant part: Yahoo’s “discussions with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) regarding a potential transaction—whether for an acquisition of all of Yahoo! or a partial acquisition—have concluded. The conclusion of discussions follows numerous meetings and conversations with Microsoft regarding a number of transaction alternatives, including a meeting between Yahoo! and Microsoft on June 8th in which Chairman Roy Bostock and other independent Board members from Yahoo! participated. At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo!, even at the price range it had previously suggested (emphasis ours).”
“With respect to an acquisition of Yahoo!‘s search business alone that Microsoft had proposed, Yahoo!‘s Board of Directors has determined, after careful evaluation, that such a transaction would not be consistent with the company’s view of the converging search and display marketplaces, would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo! stockholders.”
Update: Reports emerging that Microsoft is still interested in a “alternative transaction” but not in rebidding for all of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). More to come.
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