Well, i was expecting to hear this. According to Microsoft’s press release, it seems that they are thinking again at the acquisition of Yahoo! Inc.

“In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo!”

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The company announced only 48 hours after Microsoft dropped its bid that it would be willing to negotiate for a sub $37 price and that it would be happy to reopen talks with Microsoft. According to Chairman Roy Bostock’s declaration from the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo’s stubbornness on the $37 dollar price was a trick to get a bit more money out of Microsoft.

“Listening to shareholders is very important but you’ll get lots of points of view…we think a fair value for the company is $37. It was not a take-it-or-leave it statement.”

Well, that’s not all. Yahoo is having some serious problems with its largest shareholder, Capital Research Global Investors, one of the most respected investment institutions on Wall Street.

Gordon Crawford, a portfolio manager with the firm remarked in the WSJ article, “I’m extremely disappointed in Jerry Yang, I think he overplayed a weak hand. And I’m even more disappointed in the independent directors who were not responsive to the needs of independent shareholders.”
In regards to Bostock’s claims of shareholder support he challenges, “I would love to know who these shareholders are. It?s none of the ones that I talked to today. Everybody I talked to would have sold their stock at $34.”
He continues, “I?m hoping that there is such an outpouring of outrage that the board is embarrassed into revisiting this thing, but I?m not optimistic about that.”

Now that the share’s price has dropped to $34, we’ll have to wait and see if Microsoft shows any interest in the company after it made up its mind to reject it. It is possible to see another offer very soon…

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Time have passed and the battle for Yahoo’s aquisition is now over. Microsoft is tired of receiving negative answers at their offers. After several negociations and offers, the two companies were unable to come to an agreement and Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer had announced the following :

“We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo! and the market as a whole, said Ballmer. ?Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo! was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees.”

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” Ballmer added.

So, Ballmer decided to offer a long and wordy letter to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang regarding his decision to withdraw the offer. Here’s what Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock declared :

“From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft?s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view,” said Bostock. “Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making.”

I have to admit that not every day someone says no to Microsoft, and Yahoo may see this as a victory against the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

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“We believe we have made a very fair offer to Yahoo. Now it is up to the Yahoo board to decide.”

That’s what Microsoft’s Kevin Turner declared at a news conference in Mumbai. The goal of the conference was to discuss regarding the launch of strategic initiatives with India’s HCL Infosystems.

As we might have expected, the topic of the discussion shifted back to Microsoft and Yahoo drama.

“The bid is a tactic and a strategy towards becoming a world class digital advertising company. With or without the acquisition we are committed to becoming a world class digital advertising company,” continued Turner.

Microsoft’s CEO , Steve Ballmer had announced that if Yahoo won’t accept its offer within 3 weeks, he might lower its offered price of $42.4B USD. But no! Yahoo is still refusing any offers.

It’s a well known fact that Lifetime has never shown a man in any of their movies. They use cardboard cutouts. Let’s see what the future has in stores.

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The motto of the program is “search. out loud” which tells us that we should prepare our voices if we want to find relevant results. The pronunciation must be clear and loud. Well, sounds easy enough. Along the vocal search, the application will also come with a predictive text feature. Yahoo! Search box will be placed on the Windows Mobile Home Screen because the idea is to be able to launch a search without t opening a web browser.

In fact, it’s a simple idea but as Yahoo! declared, it’s very hard to get device manufacturers and mobile operating system developers to include its search bar in the idle ares of their products. This mobile service is expected to be rolled out in the Q2 of this year.

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“Those 16 deals will give us roughly 40 percent coverage of all subscribers in those countries,” Yahoo’s top mobile executive, Marco Boerries, said in a phone interview.

While Google unveiled their plans by offering software to create a new class of Internet-ready phones, Yahoo is racing to attract a lot of Internet services delivered via mobile phones subscribers. Telecom carriers and ISPs (internet service providers) are looking to capture a chunk of a market that research firm Gartner Inc sees generating advertising sales of $12.8 billion by 2011.

“We have a clear goal to lead the market. The goal is to exceed 50 percent.” Boerries declared that are more deals to come.

Seems that Yahoo partnership deals will be unveiled on Tuesday at an industry trade fair located in Macau. This deals include three Indian carriers: Aircel Ltd, BPL Mobile and BSNL; two Malaysian carriers: DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd and PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk two Indonesian carriers: Hutch 3 and PT Indosat Tbk, along with PCCW Mobile HK Ltd of Hong Kong and Starhub Ltd of Singapore.

I’m sure that the key moment in this asian expansion was the release of Yahoo OneSearch Internet service for mobile phones. Until now , The Silicon-Valley brand has struck deal with 20 mobile operators worldwide and the best example is the contract with Telefonica SA of Spain, that covers up to 100 million phone subscribers in several European and Latin American markets.

Yahoo won’t stop here, that’s sure. They developement will continue and their profits will defenetly grow. What do you think about this expansion ? Feel free to comment.

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This is the first financial report of the company since cofounder Jerry Yang replaced Terry Semel as General Director. Yahoo, however, warned that the 2007 sales will be lower then the initial estimations, as Yahoo continues to brawl with its arch-enemy, leader in the search engine industry: Google. Yahoo stocks went down Tuesday with an approximative 4%, after it increased by over 3 % in the Nasdaq transaction.

Yahoo, with its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, has announced 1,7 billion dollars worth of sales in the second quarter of 2007, an appreciation of 8 % compared to the same period of last year.

Yahoo has posted sales of 1.24 billion dollars, with the exception of the revenue generated by advertisement, which the company divides amongst its partners , in appreciation with 11 % compared to the same period of last year.

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After the ideea of Gmail, Yahoo! Mail introduced in the new version the Yahoo chat. Some of the users can already chat in real time with their e-mail program.

This will be a serious attack for the meebo.com or other related sites, because their popularity will decrease on account of the new mail integrated chat option.

This new embed instant messenger technology will be fully applied over several months.

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main concern for the Yahoo’s employees. The giant portal now plans to develop almost 100 entertainment sites especially for a single topic such as movies, celebrities, games and television shows.

As you might know, Yahoo currently owns a special page designed for the Nintendo Wii fans that provides quick access to news, photos, videos and other useful information about the game console. The company aims to create 100 more similar services for multiple products, announcing only 6 of them: Harry Potter, The Sims, Halo, The Office, Lost and The Transformers.

“We don’t connect the dots for our users around those brands,” Broady said. “Brand Universe is designed to fix that problem. What we are really trying to do is create environments where fans of brands can hang out when they are online. Among all the entertainment categories, hopefully, we have found 100 willing partners, but if not, we’ll move on to other brands,” The Financial Express reported.

The Yahoo employee sustained all the topics will be announced next week while all of them will be available by the end of this year. Although the products will attract an impressive number of visitors, the giant portal plans to share the revenue with the brand owners to avoid potential problems caused by the copyright infringement.

If you want to preview the numerous products planned by the giant portal, you can visit the Nintendo Wii page available on this link.

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The group announced that in the first quarter of 2007 they stipulate a lower bussines figure,as for the whole 2007.?

The operational profit was reduced due to high marketing expenses and the shares distributed to the Yahoo! bosses,ammount that in 2006 incresead by more then ten times,up to 425 million dollars from 52 million in 2005.

The Yahoo! group is currently in a ? reorganization stage as a sequel to the presure exerted by their direct rival,the Google group ,wich in the last time recorded substantial succeses especialy by buying the extremely popular video website:YouTube.

It’s estimated that Google will exceede in 2007 its rival,Yahoo! regarding the marketing operationsin the USA,recording revenues of 4 billion dollars,against 2,9 billion obtained by Yahoo!, comparing to the previous year when the 2 groups were equal,according to a study made by the Marketer institute.

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