http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080201/nyf040.html?.v=101 Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share Friday February 1, 6:30 am ET Transaction valued at approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock; Provides 62 percent premium to current trading price for Yahoo! shareholders; Combined entity to create a more competitive company while providing superior value to shareholders and better choice and innovation for customers and partners
when bill gates put 60% premium on a company like this, what does that say about US equities? this can be a catalyst to drive the market to much higher levels.
I have seen Internet users saying they will quit using Yahoo if MS got it. I'm one of them. And what does this mean to Radhat and MySQL? (MySQL now owned by Sun) . Since Yahoo use them if I remember correctly. Will MS replace them with Windows & MS SQL?
Speaking from the perspective of a software engineer: I highly doubt it. Choices like what software platform to develop for and what database to use are huge decisions that aren't made lightly by a company of Yahoo's size. Here's some info on the effort that went behind Yahoo choosing PHP for development: http://public.yahoo.com/~radwin/talks/php-at-yahoo-mysqluc2006.ppt. Databases share some core features, but differ in a number of places around the edges, and if Yahoo is currently taking advantage of anything specific to MySQL (based on my experience with MySQL, chances of this are good), migrating to MS SQL would cost a lot of engineering time.
MS purchase of Yahoo at 62% prem, when Yahoo already overpriced? This may prove to be similar to the Ebay purchase of Skype. on steroids