Ballmer says Yahoo buy still makes sense
The Microsoft Blog — ... at a conference that buying Yahoo still would make sense. "We offered $33 bucks (for Yahoo) and it's $11 today," Ballmer said. "It's clear Yahoo didn't want to sell. They probably still think it's worth more than $33 a share. I still think it makes sense for their shareholders and ours." And with that, Yahoo's stock was no longer valued at $11. Here's the chart: Yahoo's stock is now up more than 11 percent at $13.05. Update, 11 am: A Microsoft spokesman says: "Our position hasn't changed. Microsoft has no interest in acquiring Yahoo!; there are no discussions between the ...

Apple could buy Dell outright; Mac-maker has more cash on hand than Dell is worth
MacDailyNews — Apple could buy Dell outright; Mac-maker has more cash on hand than Dell is worth Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 08:40 PM EDT On October 6, 1997, in response to the question of what he'd do if he was in charge of Apple Computer, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell stood before a crowd of several thousand IT executives and answered flippantly ...

Intel slams Apple iPhone, says use of ARM processors bogs down device
MacDailyNews — Apple could buy Dell outright; Mac-maker has more cash on hand than Dell is worth Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 08:40 PM EDT On October 6, 1997, in response to the question of what he'd do if he was in charge of Apple Computer, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell stood before a crowd of several thousand IT executives and answered flippantly ...

Data portability startup Gnip takes $3.5M second round
VC Ratings — Web developers' data management platform Gnip Inc. has closed a $3.5 million second round of funding from its insider investors, a well-connected group that includes Foundry Group, First Round Capital and SoftTech VC. Gnip was founded by repeat entrepreneur Eric Marcoullier, whose prior startup MyBlogLog Inc. was backed by SoftTech's Jeff Clavier prior to its January 2007 sale to Yahoo! Inc. [YHOO] The startup, whose name is "ping" spelled backward, quietly took in $1 million in March. Gnip's messaging and data portability ...

Jerry Yang to step down as Yahoo CEO
The Microsoft Blog — ... . The news ends an embattled tenure for the Yahoo co-founder, who took over as CEO in June 2007, replacing then CEO Terry Semel. The story is now familiar: In February 2008, Microsoft offered to purchase Yahoo. Under Yang's leadership, Yahoo rejected the offer, holding up for a better deal. With Yahoo's stock trading at $10.63 today, that decision now looks unwise. At one point, Microsoft had offered $33 for the company. An ad pact Yahoo negotiated with Google to boost its revenue also fell apart several weeks ago. Here's what Yang had to say in a statement: Having set ...

Yang’s Stepping Down Adds $1.8 Billion To Yahoo’s Market Cap
TechCrunch — ... That’s approximately how much the market capitalization of Yahoo’s stock went up this morning, with the first trade after last night’s announcement that Yang would be ...

Jerry Yang: Bad at Bussiness or Politics?
Technology Liberation Front — Yahoo! has seen better days, but it’s still a profitable company with a market cap of $16 billion, something that many tech companies that began in the 1990s can’t say (mainly because they no longer exist).  Even though Yahoo! continues to be a profitable company, it is no longer viewed as an innovator, which is hurting its stock value immensely.  It’s also hard to say exactly what Yahoo! does, even its employees and executives can’t figure out what the company is all about. All of this added up to yesterday’s resignation of Jerry Yang. Yang’s tenure at the helm ...

Former Athenahealth, RelayHealth Leaders Form Startup Maria Health, with Venrock Headlining Investor Group
Xconomy — IT, Life Sciences, VC Ryan McBride wrote: A powerful anecdote about the ills of U.S. health care this past election season was about President-elect Barack Obama’s mother, who struggled to navigate the medical system while suffering from cancer, which ...

Apptera gets $10.5M for mobile ads
VC Ratings — ... also announced that it has named former Yahoo! Inc. [YHOO] sales executive David Kamstedt to its board. Kamstedt was also an exec at Wired Digital, Overture Services Inc., which was acquired by Yahoo! for $1.8 billion in 2003, and AltaVista Co., which had been acquired by Overture. ...

Clearwire Closes WiMax Merger, Entellium Goes on Sale, Microsoft May Yet Buy Yahoo Search, & More Seattle-Area Deals News
Xconomy — Roundup, deals, acquisitions Gregory T. Huang wrote: Despite the Thanksgiving holiday, it was a fairly busy week for deals in the Northwest. Some big companies reared their heads (or at least were reported to) in software, wireless, and biotech, and other deals are in the ...

Microsoft Hires Head of Online Services from Yahoo
Xconomy — Internet, employment, people Gregory T. Huang wrote: Redmond, WA-based Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced it has appointed Qi Lu as president of its online services group, which encompasses all of the company’s online search, advertising, information, ...

Yahoo Shareholder Urges Search Deal With Microsoft
InformationWeek - All Stories And Blogs — One of Yahoo's largest shareholders has urged company leaders to sell its search business to Microsoft. Ivory Investment Management , which has 21.4 million, or 1.5% of Yahoo's shares, sent a letter Wednesday to Yahoo's board of directors urging them to move quickly to shore up a deal with Microsoft. As time passes, both companies allow Google to expand its advantage in the search market, Ivory said. "This deal would offer Microsoft the unique opportunity to immediately gain critical mass to better level the playing field with Google, while it would simultaneously allow Yahoo to both receive a ...

Yahoo Reports Losses Related To Costs, Stock Rises
InformationWeek - All Stories And Blogs — Yahoo shares rose in after-hours trading as the company reported a loss of $303 million, or 22 per share, in Q4 of '08. In Q4 of '07, Yahoo earned $206 million, or 15 per share in the final quarter. The loss covered over $500 million worth of one-time charges, the company reported during an earnings conference call Tuesday. "We performed well in a challenging operating environment," Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen said. The company reported spending about $137 million on severance and reorganization. It laid off about 1,500 employees last month, reducing its work force from 16,000 in Q3 to 13,600. Yahoo also reported $488 ...

Borealis Ventures: The Real Venture Capitalists from New Hampshire
Xconomy — VC, IT, Life Sciences Ryan McBride wrote: Philip Ferneau says that it’s pretty funny that the movie “Wedding Crashers” follows the exploits of two bachelors who decide to keep up appearances at the wedding of complete strangers by posing as ...

Yahoo, Microsoft on Speaking Terms Again: Report
Wired: Epicenter — Yahoo and Microsoft began talking about a search and advertising partnership weeks ago and apparently met in person last week, All Things D reports. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has been decidedly cool in public to even resuming limited talks with Microsoft after the botched merger deal last year that lead to her replacing Jerry Yang in the corner office. But now several sources tell All Things D that contacts are being made at various levels. According to a variety of sources, the talks between the pair ... and other execs at both companies are preliminary and wide-ranging, focused on ...

Yahoo Shares Down Amid Report Of Layoffs
InformationWeek - All Stories And Blogs — Yahoo's shares were down in midday trading Wednesday, six days ahead of the company's Q1 earnings report, as media reported the company is planning another round of layoffs soon. Yahoo representatives declined to comment on a New York Times report citing unnamed sources and a "confidential" plan to lay off Yahoo workers on or before Tuesday. The layoffs would be the first since Carol Bartz took over ...

Yahoo Shares Down Amid Report Of Layoffs
TechWeb — Yahoo's shares were down in midday trading Wednesday, six days ahead of the company's Q1 earnings report, as media reported the company is planning another round of layoffs soon. Yahoo representatives declined to comment on a New York Times report citing unnamed sources and a "confidential" plan to lay off Yahoo workers on or before Tuesday. The layoffs would be the first since Carol Bartz took over ...

Flickr Founder Calls Nuked User 'A Dick'
Gawker Comments — @lostinto: It's not privately owned. It's publicly held. [finance.yahoo.com] Hands

AdReady Powers Yahoo Display Ads
Xconomy — Internet, deals, Advertising Gregory T. Huang wrote: Seattle-based AdReady has teamed up with Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) to deliver self-serve display advertising for the Sunnyvale, CA-based Internet giant. Financial terms of the partnership were not announced. ...

Microsoft Hires Three New Internet Execs
Xconomy — IT, Hires, Search Eric Hal Schwartz wrote: Redmond-WA-based Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is not letting the economy slow it down, hiring three new executives focused on Web search and Internet from Sunnyvale, CA-based Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), according to a report ...

Reports: Microsoft and Yahoo Close Search and Advertising Deal, Will Announce Today
Xconomy — deals, Internet, Software Gregory T. Huang wrote: It might all turn out to be anticlimactic. After a tumultuous year of on-again, off-again talks to strike an Internet search and advertising deal, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) ...

It's Official - Microsoft to Power Yahoo! Search
SEO and Tech Daily — After almost a year of talks, at one point with Microsoft seeking to acquire all of Yahoo!, word came a short time ago that the deal that has been hinted at for the past week, is done. ...

Yahoo Stock Drops Big
paidContent — ... ) deal announced this morning. Yahoo’s stock is down more than 10 percent this morning, erasing all of its gains since reports that a deal was imminent surfaced on July 16. Microsoft’s ...

Traders reward Microsoft, punish Yahoo for deal
VentureBeat — ... “This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry,” Carol Bartz said in her prepared statement about Yahoo’s agreement to turn over the bulk of its search and advertising business to Microsoft. Day traders don’t seem to agree. YHOO shares have dropped more than 10 percent from yesterday’s price. Yahoo’s drop is part of a larger trend: The entire ...

Inside the Microsoft-Yahoo Deal, and the Future of the Search Competition with Google
Xconomy — deals, Internet, Search Eric Hal Schwartz wrote: Microsoft and Yahoo officially announced this morning that they had reached a search engine and advertising agreement. Amid intense speculation, and after more than a year of disagreements over minor and ...

Ballmer On The Microsoft-Yahoo Deal: 'Nobody Gets It'
paidContent — Yahoo’s stock continued to drop Thursday—and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer took time to defend the deal from Yahoo’s perspective at a meeting with analysts at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters: “On the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) side, this is the one that stuns me, that people haven’t figured out. Yahoo gets 88 percent of search revenue,” he said. “They have zero percentage COGS (cost of goods sold) and they have no R&D expense… Did they sell their search business? No. They get ...

Inside the Microsoft-Yahoo Deal, Covance Buys Merck’s Rosetta Lab, Delve Teams Up with Akamai, & More Seattle-Area Deals News
Xconomy — Roundup, deals, Partnerships Gregory T. Huang wrote: Last week’s heat wave did nothing to slow the deal announcements in the Northwest. We saw plenty of action in software, Internet, and biotech. —The big news was the Internet search deal finally ...

Microsoft Sells Razorfish, EnerG2 Scores Stimulus Funds, Tekmira Teams Up with Alnylam, & More Seattle-Area Deals News
Xconomy — Roundup, deals, acquisitions Gregory T. Huang wrote: The big news of the week was Microsoft’s sale of Razorfish to Publicis (see directly below), but there were a few other important deals in software, biotech, and energy. —Microsoft’s online ...

DivX and Yahoo Settle Suit
Xconomy — online video, Internet, Lawsuit Bruce V. Bigelow wrote: DivX (NASDAQ: DIVX), the San Diego video codec developer, says it has settled a lawsuit with Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) over an advertising agreement that triggered some turmoil at DivX last fall. ...

Chipmaker Sequoia Communications Out of Business, DivX Settles Yahoo Lawsuit, Connect Proposes Venture Initiative, & Other San Diego BizTech News
Xconomy — Roundup, Semiconductors, deals Bruce V. Bigelow wrote: San Diego wind turbine maker Helix Wind made some more acquisitions, and out-of-business chipmaker Sequoia Communications arranged to sell its equipment in an online auction tomorrow. So it was a good news, bad news ...

Chipmaker Sequoia Communications Out of Business, DivX Settles Yahoo Lawsuit, Connect Proposes Venture Initiative, & Other San Diego BizTech News
Xconomy — Roundup, Semiconductors, deals Bruce V. Bigelow wrote: San Diego wind turbine maker Helix Wind made some more acquisitions, and out-of-business chipmaker Sequoia Communications arranged to sell its equipment in an online auction tomorrow. So it was a good news, bad news ...