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Saturday, February 02, 2008
According to a source at Techcrunch, News Corp. is trying to put together a syndicate to launch a bid for Yahoo. But I tend to agree with Paul Kedrosky's and Mathew Ingram's take, that Microsoft's high bid means it's already headed off potential rival bids. Yahoo is worth more to Microsoft than to any other company, and especially to hostile bids by opportunistic hedge funds.
Yesterday, I reminded you that I advocated a News Corp. bid for Yahoo in 2001. Back then, it would have been cheaper -- YHOO traded at a split-adjusted $9-10, in the depths of the dot com bust.
In related news, I agree with Louise Story's take in the NYT -- this deal would create more, not less, competition in search and display advertising. Recently, Google had been enjoying a situation whereby it had no serious competition. A Canadian ad buyer quoted in this Globe and Mail story, implying that three players currently makes it an ad buyer's market, is missing the point, which is that two players would be more competitive than three in this case, particularly given that Google is set to become even more powerful with the acquisition of DoubleClick.
Finally: check out the great piece in SEL where we get words right out of the MSFT horse's mouth as to the benefits of scale in this industry.Labels: microsoft, news corp, yahoo
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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