My new blog: Notes From Anywhere

Unable to kick the blogging habit cold turkey, I've set up a new home titled, Notes From Anywhere (current URL notes-from-anywhere.blogspot.com). Readers who are interested in my further musings on the challenges of mobility in our anywhere connected world should join in there. And oh yes, there will still be lots of thoughts on technology, marketing, iPhones, Macs, and anything else I can think of.

See you there!

Not so fast: Private equity and News Corp are interested in Yahoo too

Silicon Valley Insider claims that some private equity firms were just days away from a deal to buy Yahoo.com.. At the same time, Techcrunch says News Corp and some hedge funds are also interested.

We all did a bunch of interviews at Yankee Group about this yesterday (mine was on NECN), but this point was left on the cutting room floor in all cases: the Microsoft takeover of Yahoo is a hostile offer, not a deal. Both the price and the buyer is subject to change. And the fact that Steve Ballmer took the offer public suggests that Yahoo rejected his offer, not accepted it.

Despite the fact that Microsoft's actually has lowered its offer to Yahoo since last summer, Yahoo.com is a prime Fifth Avenue property in Internet real estate. No one should be expecting it to go cheap, nor should anyone expect Yahoo to jump at the first offer.

My bet is that CEO Yang will fight for ABM as the buyer -- Anyone But Microsoft. From his point of view, a private equity deal might be the best of all worlds, since it would allow Yang to take a longer (but more debt-ridden) view in turning the company around. This deal is far from done.

Technorati Tags: Jerry Yang, Microsoft, Private equity, Yahoo, Yahoosoft

YahooSoft: just AOL/Time Warner all over again

Microsoft buying Yahoo didn't make any sense as a friendly $50 billion takeover. It doesn't make any more sense as a hostile $45 billion deal, especially given the anti-trust examination and European scrutiny that would slow it down.

In many ways, this reminds me of the $182 billion AOL/Time Warner deal in 2000. The big exception: AOL was the leader in online access in 2000 and Time Warner was one of the leading media companies. Yahoo and Microsoft are #2 and #3 in online advertising market share, and their merger will leave them #2 with about 20% market share -- in a business where Google controls 65% of the market.

Technorati Tags: AOL, Microsoft, Time Warner, Yahoo, Yahoosoft