Well the deal is off, for now. All I can say is Yahoo (YHOO) should have taken the deal. Yahoo does many things well, but monetizing their properties and making money is not one of them. Microsoft (MSFT)
on the other hand does not usually deliver a great initial product (look at most of their software releases), but they do continually improve their product and in the end create a very profitable model. So with Yahoo stock value dropping in the range of 30% today, they will need to do something fast to prevent the massive shareholder lawsuits, including mine, that will be coming. I never bought Yahoo, I bought Overture stock. If you remember, Overture really perfected the pay per click advertising model. Yahoo bought Overture and did their magic of making it difficult to do business with them and also not being very profitable. So where does Yahoo go from here? Option 1 - oustource their pay per click to Google (GOOG), this would work and would further solidify Google as the dominant player in this space. Option 2 - sell to a big media player, like AOL/Time Warner, Wow - that's a great idea. Option 3 - go back to Microsoft and do this deal. It would be good for the industry to have two strong players in this space, it would be good because Microsoft, although hated by many, does know how to run a profitable business and lastly, because Yahoo is running out of choices. And no matter how arrogant us tech types can be, the final decision on Yahoo will be by their shareholders.
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