It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.
The cultures will never fit together. And the deal is too big. It’s not manageable. And it’s completely anathema to Microsoft. It’s totally out of character for them. It goes against everything the company has ever stood for.
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Psstt… On a related note… If you haven’t seen yet the Fake Steve Jobs address at the Crunchies 2008, (an “acceptance speech” he gave coz Apple didn’t send any representative at the event), you should. Hilarious.
Unless Yahoo management can find another bidder – which they apparently haven’t for two months – they are checkmated here. The stock dropped after-hours Friday on the news that Microsoft might lower the bid. If you are short and it opens lower tomorrow, I would be inclined to take profits before results of their big internal meeting leak out.. which could indicate acceptance. If they allow the bid to be lowered or withdrawn, management will ultimately be removed by shareholders anyway. Shareholders don’t give a shit about “the Borg” or ’90s techie credo.
Yes, Yahoo! will be taken over by MicroSoft. But if you use Yahoo! on a daily basis, you want to know whether MicroSoft will ruin the Yahoo! consumers’ experience, over time.
I have no YHOO position right now but I have entered some limit buys near 24, 22, & 20, each order being twice as large as the one above it, the idea being that the stock will collapse if MSFT drops the bid but then bounce back fairly quickly.. although YHOO put prices suggest a fairly low probability of that happening.
Also got long MSFT this morning.
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Well based on those deltas, prediction markets got it wrong again
 I’m pulling the buy limits above 20.. but still the existence of microsoft will imply some return on yahoo down there.
@Jason Ruspini: Prediction amrkets, by essence, can’t predict upset. Dixit Koleman Strumpf.