Microsoft and Yahoo potential deal

Microsoft has just made an offer to buy Yahoo in a effort to intensify its presence on the internet already dominated by Google. It’s kind of funny that such an offer is made a couple of days after I wrote my article Why Google succeed where Microsoft fails.

Microsoft is offering $31 a share for the internet company, in a cash and share combination for investors. This is valuing Yahoo at $44.6bn and is offering a 62% premium compared to Yahoo’s share last night’s closing price of $19.18.

There’s still possibilities of the deal not taking place as it’s only a proposal and it’s not the first time Microsoft and Yahoo talk about such a transaction. But now it seems to be made a bit more seriously than usual. I guess we’ll see in a couple of days where this proposal leads.

It’s definitely in the best interest of Microsoft to acquire Yahoo because they really struggle to beat Google. Yahoo is also falling behind Google in term of search engine but they offer a great alternative to Google in term of News/entertainment/Search/Finance/etc. We have to remember that according to Alexa, Yahoo is still the number 1 in terms of traffic and that’s an interesting thing for Microsoft who is in position 4 and 5 with msn.com and live.com. That would increase their presence significantly.

I personally don’t see it has a good news if it was to happen simply for the good reason that Yahoo was a really good alternative compared to Google and Microsoft. They had a different perspective about the web than Microsoft and Google and that wasn’t bad. If it happen it will come down to a Google vs Microsoft war and I don’t like it. It’s nothing personal with Microsoft or anything but I felt pretty good with having three option: Live, Yahoo and Google.

Anyway, we’ll see where the deal goes I guess!