MicroTechXP

Microsoft Corp is evaluating its bid for Yahoo Inc because the Internet company may have lost value since Microsoft made its offer, people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The news, sent Yahoo shares down more than 5 percent in extended trade.
After weeks of silence, recent comments from various sources to journalists suggest the software maker is hardening its stance and pushing Yahoo for action. The sources told Reuters that Yahoo has lost key personnel, making the company less valuable, while generous severance packages it handed out to executives and full-time employees in the case of a takeover have made it more expensive. [Reuters]

Yahoo Inc said on Tuesday that it supports a program by archrival Google Inc to develop applications for social networks and will help create a joint foundation to keep it alive.
Google launched its OpenSocial network in November to lure developers already creating popular Web applications on social networks like Facebook.
Yahoo, Google and News Corp-owned MySpace said on Tuesday they will create the OpenSocial Foundation to maintain a neutral, community-governed forum for developing applications. It will be set up as a non-profit entity, with assets to be assigned to the new organization by July 1. [Reuters]

Google continued to increase its share of the U.S. search market in February, widening the gap that Microsoft hopes to fill by buying Yahoo.
In February, Google’s share of core searches by U.S. Internet users rose to 59.2 percent, up from 58.5 percent in January, according to figures from market research company comScore.
During the same period, Yahoo’s share slipped to 21.6 percent, from 22.2 percent a month earlier, while Microsoft’s share slipped to 9.6 percent from 9.8 percent.
AOL is clinging to a 4.9 percent share, while Ask saw its share rise slightly to 4.6 percent from 4.5 percent in January. Worldwide, the number three search engine is China’s Baidu.com, behind Google and Yahoo but ahead of Microsoft’s MSN-Windows Live. [WashingtonPost]

Google Inc, the world’s leading search engine, said on Monday it was concerned about the free flow of information on the Internet if Microsoft Corp were to succeed in acquiring Yahoo Inc.
Last month, Microsoft proposed buying Yahoo in a deal originally worth $44.6 billion, but Yahoo’s board has rejected the offer, saying it was too low.
“We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft,” Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters.
“We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I doubt it would be.”
Schmidt pointed to Microsoft’s past history and “the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone”, but he did not elaborate.
Last year, a European court upheld a landmark 2004 decision that Microsoft abused the near-monopoly power of its Windows operating system to damage competitors, along with a 497 million euro ($695 million) fine. [Reuters]

Microsoft and Yahoo met on Monday to discuss Microsoft’s takeover offer for the Internet company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The meeting was said to be the first since Microsoft made its unsolicited offer for Yahoo, worth nearly $42 billion, on January 31. Yahoo rejected the offer as inadequate last month. The session was intended to allow Microsoft to present its vision of a combined company, and Yahoo executives mostly listened, the Journal quoted one of the sources as saying. [Reuters]

AOL and Yahoo! are said to have held talks as the search engine considers potential deals to help it evade the clutches of Microsoft.
Advisers from Time Warner-owned AOL met with representatives of search engine Yahoo! to see if a deal is workable, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
The talks with internet firm AOL come after Yahoo!’s rejection last week of Microsoft’s offer to buy the company for 42 billion US dollars (£21.4bn).
Among the other suitors for Yahoo!, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is thought to have offered to buy a 20% stake in Yahoo! in a deal that would see Yahoo! swap shares for a clutch of online assets, including social networking site MySpace. Mr Murdoch has ruled out making a full bid.
Details of the discussions involving AOL and Yahoo! remain unclear, although a potential sticking point could be Google’s small stake in AOL. Anti-trust laws would make any deal involving Google and either AOL or NewsCorp difficult, the newspaper report said.
Microsoft’s approach came a year after the two companies held talks over a possible tie-up to challenge Google, although Yahoo! rejected the proposals at the time because it hoped to reap benefits from an overhaul of the business.
But Microsoft warned on unveiling its offer that the competitive situation had not improved and that it believed a merger was the “only alternative” to challenging Google’s dominance.
The software giant wants to offer a credible alternative to Google through the tie-up, offering greater choice to advertisers, increasing research and development spending and stripping out overhead costs.
It has also hinted at a hostile bid by reserving the right “to pursue all necessary steps” to win over the firm’s shareholders if the deal is opposed [MSN News]

We’re fairly certain we haven’t heard the last of this Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo! — or Google’s plans to intervene — but it looks like round one has Yahoo! saying “no thanks” to Microsoft’s $44.6 billion buyout offer. Apparently some of the number crunchers inside Yahoo! feel like the n umber is too low of a valuation, while others want to get tied up with Google to improve search revenues — which some seem to think might have some antitrust implications. Pah, “antitrust implications.” At least Microsoft remembers when men were men, and monopolies were monopolies. [NYTimes]

GLOBAL giants including Apple and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp are believed to be considering rival bids for the internet company Yahoo, which has received a $44.6bn (£22.6bn) offer from Microsoft.
The conglomerate InterActiveCorp was another company named as a potential bidder for Yahoo, which is said to be unwilling to give in to Microsoft without a fight.
After Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer made the offer in a letter on Thursday, it emerged that Yahoo had rejected a similar takeover attempt by Ballmer’s organisation a year before.
Yahoo chief executive and co-founder Jerry Yang is understood not to be Microsoft’s greatest fan, and would be prepared to line up another ‘white knight’ rather than concede to Ballmer. [Scotsman.com]

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A source familiar with Yahoo Incorporated’s strategy suggested that the company may consider a business alliance with Google Incorporated, as an alternative to Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover proposal. Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft’s bid, that source said. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt called Yahoo’s chief executive Jerry Yang to offer his company’s help in any effort to thwart Microsoft’s bid. Details of what conclusions the two men came to have yet to surface.
At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said. In other words, it is quite possible that Yahoo’s efforts to find an alternative bidder could simply be a measure to pressure Microsoft to boost its bid. At the end of the day though, there is still no information of an alternative bid being placed, be it from Google, News Corporation or yet another company. I’ll try to stay on top of things as more information becomes available. [Reuters]