http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080201/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_yahoo_antitrust

^^^ LMFAO!!!

Thats the best thing I have ever seen.

I don't even remember the last time I ever used Yahoo.

I want a search engine, I don't need front page celebrity news where Paris Hilton's diseased body goes or how to extract fluids from various meats.

Who uses Yahoo anyway?

totally off topic but they could use Britany Spears to film any additional scenes needed for the joker in The Dark Knight

Except playing that role requires talent.

Yahoo Games is the only thing I use it for, but I do know a lot of people use it for email, unfortunately >.>

Oh I dont know, she's about Joker Level Nuts at the moment.

Really do people care that much about this?

They'd probably just merge Hotmail with the yahoo stuff etc.

Or better yet tear it all down and start a new system with the old addresses.

Old people.

Where does it say hostile?

Yahoo, whilst not really the big name in search anymore still contributes a heck of a lot to the web as a whole. But it's unlikely this would change that much if bought by Microsoft.

I remember the days when Hotmail was an independent entity. Good times.

Leave Britney Alone...or else

They're blowing things out of proportion. As Andrew said, nowhere in thre article does it mention "hostile", alhtough it does mention that the bid by Microsoft was "unsolicited", meaning Yahoo wasn't the initially interested party.

Yeah, when I first registered it was still "HoTMaiL", so named because it contains the letters HTML.

Every time I hear something about Yahoo (such as it being one of the most visited sites on the internet) I'm just baffled. I've literally never used it's search (before Google I used MSN, AltaVista, metacrawler, etc) or email services. A few years ago I registered an account just to play games, which I use maybe three times a year. I keep thinking it's one of those sites people just don't care about anymore, but apparently a lot of people still use it.

Yahoo owns Flickr and de.icio.us.

Those are worth 44 billion... right?

ughhh i hope they dont screw up flickr

yahoo mail retards

From http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/299523

(emphasis mine)
In other words: Yahoo can accept it or not, Microsoft will do all they can to make it happen. Sounds like a hostile takeover to me.


Don't be so naive. You know damn well Microsoft will waste no time shutting down Zimbra, YUI, and anything else that conflicts in the slightest with any of their current products or services.

This sucks on many levels. Yahoo is a big contributor to many open source projects. Hell, they just announced they were hiring a developer to work full time on Firebug. Fat chance of that happening now. Rasmus Lerdorf works for Yahoo, expect to see him out of a job.

Anyone who says this is a good thing is a ****ing Microsoft shill.

OMG THE MAN MAN, HE'S LIKE BUYING EVERYTHING MAN. IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD ON INTERNET MAN

Stop being such a tinfoil hat wearing crazy.

Sure, last May counts as "just announced".

If Microsoft damages YUI and Firebug they instantly destroy all the goodwill they've built up with the leaders of the web standards community. Microsoft is in such a bad place right now with Internet Explorer that they cannot afford to compromise this relationship.

I'm not thrilled about the possibility of this takeover, but you're acting like a hysterical moron. You've ruined your credibilty in this thread just with your the ridiculously speculative title, the onus is on you to reclaim it rather than decrease it further.

I'm old, and I don't use Yahoo. Never cared much for it.

What goodwill? Microsoft, as a publicly traded company, has only one obligation: maximizing shareholder profits. Gaining the trust of the web standards community is irrelevant -- their product is in the dominant position, so they can specify "standards" as it falls in line with their corporate agenda. Does the word 'OOXML' ring a bell?

why are microsoft going after yahoo anyway, shouldnt the fact that yahoo is failing make them take a second to think about WHY it is failing. such as the fact that its seach engine page is CLOGGED with pointless images and clutter that slows it down, its games are filled with people who only want to cyber (seriously, when i made a dummy email address to play games there, nobody there actualy wanted to play games, most people just wanted to cyber, and i think that some people asked everyone in the hopes that they could find a female).

so personaly, i dont think that microsoft can do anything to make yahoo any worse than it already is.

Period.

Alpha1, if Microsoft is pursueing it, they see financial gain.

What will become of my Geocities homepage?!

Except perhaps that Microsoft will finally be the company that gets beat up.

Why did they think they could take on Google?

It's relevant if it increases long term profits.

The anti-Microsoft is strong in this one!

BTW, IE8 due out sometime mid 2008 is said to be a helluva lot more standards compliant than IE7.

I use yahoo for nothing but email and I'm very happy with it.

One of the motivations behind this is to try to increase their competitiveness against Google. It's not really an "omg take over Yahoo" thing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120186587368234937.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

That being said, however, it is "hostile" --

[quote=WSJ article]The offer, made in a letter sent Thursday by Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to Yahoo's board of directors, comes after Yahoo had resisted Microsoft's behind-the-scenes advances over more than a year. One person familiar with the matter said that Microsoft decided to "go hostile" with its bid -- ending years of internal debate over whether to buy Yahoo -- within the past few weeks after Yahoo ignored its latest overtures.[/quote]

Right now Google's dominating the search and ad markets, but MS has technology and Hotmail (which has a bit more than 5 times the number of users that Gmai hasl) and Yahoo has its web content (basically all the crap other than search), which is why MS is hoping that by adding its stuff to Yahoo's stuff it can gain some ground.

I could be totally wrong, but isn't it only a hostile takeover if MS were to buy 51% of Yahoo!'s shares, publicly? I don't think just offering them $x really counts.

Of course, I know nothing about how this stuff works.

No, you just need the board of the company being bid on to not want the deal to go through, basically.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover

Ah, alright then. Thanks.

Haha owned

Yahoo! is good for news (news.yahoo.com) because it provides multiple sources and I've just been using it for some time now.

Bite me for not using the proper source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_takeover

I studied these in strategic management last semester, this IS a hostile takeover.

Microhooyasoft