Archive: June, 2008

Microhoo is not going to happen. This time, it’s officially over.
The deal Yahoo! repeatedly turned down was killed by a press release issued by Yahoo! earlier today. Though deader than a doornail, the defunct deal saddled both firms with chains as heavy as those Marley’s ghost carried. Buckets of blood have been spilled on the floor and ill-will stalks the great halls of finance and tech. The fallout is coming and after such a protracted and intensely acrimonious battle, that fallout is probably going to be ugly. Today, we start to learn what real days of reckoning look like.

This is not a good day to hold share in Yahoo!. If you live in Europe, it started OK but quickly started to degenerate just after noon when Yahoo! announced the conclusion of talks with Microsoft. The smart ones who had their broker’s number on speed dial might have stood a chance. They can be counted among the lucky.

20 minutes from now, Yahoo! and Google are going to issue a joint announcement, likely regarding a partnership of some sort or another. While details remain sketchy at this moment, rumour suggests that Yahoo! will be outsourcing Yahoo! Search Marketing (their PPC arm) to Google. Others suspect the deal will be far larger with Yahoo! ceding all their search business to Google.

Yahoo! shares took a nose dive today, falling close values not seen since the pre-Microsoft offer days back in January. Shares are trading (at the time of this posting) at $23.52/share, down 10% from this morning’s opening valuation of $26.33.

The announcement is coming soon so expect an update.