{"id":2491,"date":"2008-06-14T23:54:14","date_gmt":"2008-06-15T03:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=2491"},"modified":"2008-06-14T23:54:14","modified_gmt":"2008-06-15T03:54:14","slug":"i-think-microsoft-is-bluffing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/06\/14\/i-think-microsoft-is-bluffing\/","title":{"rendered":"I think Microsoft is bluffing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My friend Kara Swisher at All Things D seems convinced that Microsoft has shelved its offer for Yahoo for the last time, since a number of senior Microsoft executives &#8220;close to the dealmaking&#8221; told her they have walked away from the table <a href=\"http:\/\/kara.allthingsd.com\/20080613\/microsofts-not-bluffing\/\">for good<\/a>, and have no interest in acquiring the troubled Internet giant &#8212; not even if Jerry Yang is ousted as CEO, or the stock drops below $20. I have no doubt that sources told Kara that, since her contacts are usually impeccable. But I think they (even <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/news\/newsfeeds\/articles\/djf500\/200806131818DOWJONESDJONLINE000877_FORTUNE5.htm\">this guy<\/a>) are still bluffing, and are ready to pull the trigger on a Yahoo deal.<\/p>\n<p>Why do I think that? Unlike Kara, I have no inside sources at Microsoft with knowledge of a deal. But I can&#8217;t help but think that if an acquisition of Yahoo made any sense whatsoever at $33 a share, how could it not make even more sense at $23 a share? (I&#8217;m <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/06\/13\/AR2008061301377.html\">not the only one<\/a> who thinks so) Presumably Microsoft saw synergies between Yahoo&#8217;s search business and its own that made a takeover look worthwhile, or it wouldn&#8217;t have pressed so hard to get a deal done. So what has changed? Not much &#8212; except that Yahoo&#8217;s stock <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2008\/06\/14\/hey-microsoft-how-bout-we-do-that-first-deal-you-offered\/\">has tanked<\/a> and the company needs Microsoft more than ever.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Yahoo has cozied up to Google and sold the soul of its search business. But the Google search deal isn&#8217;t exclusive, and there isn&#8217;t even a &#8220;kill fee&#8221; if Microsoft acquires Yahoo and then tells Google to take a hike. And I have to think that seeing Google get its hooks into Yahoo has to make Microsoft want the company even more.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend Kara Swisher at All Things D seems convinced that Microsoft has shelved its offer for Yahoo for the last time, since a number of senior Microsoft executives &#8220;close to the dealmaking&#8221; told her they have walked away from the table for good, and have no interest in acquiring the troubled Internet giant &#8212; &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/06\/14\/i-think-microsoft-is-bluffing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;I think Microsoft is bluffing&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}