NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Microsoft Corp. made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo on Friday, a deal that could shake up the competitive and lucrative market for online advertising.The deal would pay Yahoo shareholders $31 a share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on Thursday.
CNN Money is saying that this will make Microsoft the number 2 service behind Google, but I have to ask; Who cares?
Yahoo! just laid off 1,000 employees this week. They've been in a steady state of decline across the board. A buyout would make Microsoft bigger, but I don't know about better.
This move seems very familiar.
Anyone remember when this one cell phone company bought this other one? And then they lost millions and millions of customers, billions of dollars, a CEO and a few key execs?
I think that the Sprint/Nextel debacle (Woops! I wasn't planning on calling them out) should have taught us something; you can't improve your company by simply buying another one. Unless you're willing to address the underlying issues that caused you to fall behind the competition, that's where you're going to stay; behind.
UPDATE:
Microsoft has indeed bought Yahoo!. I'm not very optimistic, but if for no other reason than the possibility of more layoffs, I hope that I am proven wrong.
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