Big Yahoo shareholder: There are few alternatives to Microsoft bid

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Geez, are you even kidding???

YHOO has *many* options! Bill Miller & Legg Mason have an obvious stake in seeing to it that there is just one option...so that they can profit! What kind of journalism is this? Try enumerating some of the many other options, instead of giving these faux opinions a forum!

YHOO has gobs of parts that are tapping its resources and not returning value in a unified way. Just off the top of my head I can think of several options for YHOO to tranform that stew:

1) Break up the parts: certain parts do not fit well with the others (Personals, Answers, Fantasy Sports).

2) Better integrate the parts & monetize: they have been trying. But the design of some individual parts is lacking (again, Personals). It could be done, but they need a visionary...there's so much in the stew that there doesn't seem to be a plan at the moment. They have some great parts that are very popular (Answers comes to mind) but which have not been monetizable due to their current form of existence.

3) M&A with someone other than Microsoft.
a) eBay for example (how about a local date auction? lol...sounds funny, but so did "speed-dating", and it is very popular now). eBay can offer PayPal for micropayments of various Yahoo services. It's alot easier to monetize things like Answers that way - you can get someone to pay 0.25 for a question they need answered one time, than to pay $15 per month for service, then need to cancel.
b) Amazon? Right now, they sell stuff. But they depend on users to have other email addy's to send notifications to. There could be plenty of synergies there for selling Yahoo services, and for AMZN, to have a broader-based portal, of which some main features are its various stores - integrated life view, with your calendar, email, etc...your calendar could remind you of certain dates and that you should go to its stores to buy a gift for someone on whatever day. Endless other integrated possibilities.
c) Old Media - this is a biggie. So many old media - newspapers, magazines...have some type of online service. How many wouldn't like a better footprint? You come to their portal, which has their headlines, among other things...plus your email and search. Searching the news is a biggie. The oldies need the ad revenue - NYTimes, for one, found out that the subscription news model doesn't work on the web. They'd love Yahoo's footprint.
d) Mobile Player - lots of the momentum is on the mobile space. GOOG knows this...hence Android. Would it be so surprising to see a big mobile player (MOT? Nokia? Samsung?) snatch up YHOO? Not at all. A few of these are also big enough to counter-offer M$, whose cash hoard isn't looking as large as it once did - it's going to the bank for help to finance its offer. The Mobiles would love ownership of Yahoo's large user base, and to be able to translate that to instant user base on their mobile platforms.

Few alternatives, my eye. I'm just thinking of the top...there have to be people closer to some of these businesses that see even more opportunities than I can. So please...give us some real meat!! Not just some guy spouting who clearly has a vested interest!!

Posted by: techboy_z   Posted on: 02/12/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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