Microsoft announced tonight it will not be going forward with its plan to buy Yahoo, after it was clear the two sides could not agree on a price, and Steve Ballmer elected not to risk his entire career on the deal.
Here are some links about the news:
Here’s Microsoft’s press release announcing the decision. It’s clear that Microsoft raised its offer to $33 (effectively adding $4 to the deal, based on stock value, or $5 billion, and Yahoo wanted another $4, a total of $10 billion over the original offer, which Microsoft believed was unworkable.
Now with the deal off, it looks like Yahoo could announce a deal to give its ad business to Google as early as this week. Perhaps Microsoft plans to let Google get Yahoo, and thus almost the entire market, then try to bury their big competitor under an avalanche of antitrust complaints.
Microsoft Sends “Put Up or Shut Up” Message To Yahoo
Microsoft is sick of Yahoo dragging its feet on MS’s proposed acquisition of the internet company, and has published a stern letter from CEO Steve Ballmer to Yahoo’s board. The letter basically says that Yahoo has had plenty of time to make a decision, and Microsoft wants them to either make a deal or face a hostile takeover. Considering the dragging its feet caused Yahoo to be in this weak position, it should surprise no one that they can’t even lose gracefully.
Data Corruption Bug Fixed in Next Home Server Update The Home Server blog has announced that they have come up with a fix for the data corruption bug that has plagued Home Server users in certain circumstances. Since they are working on Power Pack 1 for Home Server, due for public beta testing next month, they are including the fix with the Power Pack in order to ensure everyone gets it.
Open XML Becomes International Standard
The members of the ISO voted 75% to 14% to approve Microsoft Office 2007’s Open XML file formats as an international standard, removing the barrier erected when the IBM-backed ODF format did the same thing two years ago. The two file formats are now on a level playing field, ensuring that government agencies will choose the better (and more cost-effective) office suite, not the one with ISO certification. ISO controls Open XML now, not Microsoft, and can change any part of the spec, with Microsoft forced to change Office to comply.
Another 11-Cent Dividend Coming To Microsoft Shareholders Microsoft has announced yet another dividend for shareholders, another 11 cents for those invested in the company. Shareholders as of May 15, 2008 will get their dividend on June 12. This will make $4.72 returned to shareholders over the last five years, just over 16% of the stock price.
Silverlight-powered MLB Site Has Disastrous First Week
Baseball season started last week, and the launch of Major League Baseball’s new Silverlight-powered MLB.tv site, where you can pay to watch live games on your computer, had a terrible opening day. With fans paying $20 a month or $120 a year to watch games only on their computer (almost as much as you’d pay to watch a higher quality version on cable or satellite), they were understandably peeved at not getting what they paid for. Now word on whether the problems were on Microsoft’s side or MLB’s, but having such a high-profile launch go bad isn’t a good thing for Microsoft’s important Silverlight technology.
Ribbon Joining Windows 7 User Interface
The Office Ribbon, one of Microsoft biggest software design innovations of recent years, is getting promoted to Windows. The Office UI element will be built into the Windows 7 platform, available for all software developers to access and use in their applications. Quite the vote of confidence, but when you’ve got something good, you should spread it around. Read more about it at Long’s blog.
Xbox Does April Fools Joke Microsoft’s Xbox division sent out an email to all users, informing them of new products from Xbox. They included a wireless helmet, Xbox: The Board Game, a wood-paneled Xbox, and a weather-proof portable Xbox. Also for April Fools Day, Long Zheng “revealed” the lost Windows Vista sounds, uploaded as a collection of Windows 98 sound packs.
Windows Mobile 6.1 Official Launched
At CTIA, Microsoft officially showed off the long talked about Windows Mobile 6.1 update. It includes a new version of the mobile Internet Explorer browser, complete with support for Adobe Flash, Silverlight, H.264. There’s also a new Getting Started Center, the ability to handle more things from the home screen, better touch screen and small screen UI features and other updates.
Microsoft Videos Launching Microsoft has launched a beta preview of Microsoft Videos, a new Silverlight-powered video site that collects the many videos Microsoft creates. Whether you’re an IT pro or developers looking for technical videos, or a gamer looking for video game videos, or a consumer looking for videos about the latest software and Media Center stuff, it’s all there are running in glorious Silverlight.
40% Of Vista Crashes By Major Graphics Chips Proof is out that it is the graphics processor industry that is ruining computing. Data from Microsoft shows that 40% of crashes in Windows Vista were caused by graphics drivers from ATI and NVidia, with 75% of those NVidia’s fault. Since Vista was released, those two companies have been the most negligient in serving their customers with decent drivers, and everyone is suffering as a result. I wish Intel got serious about graphics, because ATI and NVidia have lost any goodwill they had with me an many other users.
How To Reclaim Space Lost To Vista SP1
If you installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1, there are files sitting on your hard drive from the install that you can just go ahead and junk. Unless you’ve got a mission critical program that doesn’t work under SP1, you have absolutely no reason to want to uninstall that, so all that space should just be freed up right away. To run the SP1 cleaner, open a command prompt (you may need administrator right) and type “vsp1cln.exe”. I got back 790 megabytes, your mileage may vary.
Zune Engraving No Longer Free Microsoft has ended the roughly five month free period for buying a Zune with free engraving from ZuneOriginals.net. If you want a Zune “tattooed”, laser engraved with some pretty cool designs, it’ll cost you $10 for a simpler design or $15 for a full on “Artist Series” design (plus the cost of the actual Zune).
Gatineau Renamed adCenter Analytics
Microsoft’s Project (codename) Gatineau finally has grown up to a real product name: adCenter Analytics. The new name reflects the strong link between Analytics and adCenter, as well as the fact that Analytics was created to help adCenter advertisers do a better job getting conversions out of their ads. The beta was also refreshed, removing the $5 signup fee, adding importing of adCenter/AdWords/Yahoo data, a tree map view of site traffic, period comparisons and more.
Microsoft Fifth Biggest User Of H-1B Visas BusinessWeek has a list of the companies that have received the most petitions for H-1B visa approval, used to allow foreign professionals to stay in the United States and hold jobs. The fifth company on the list is Microsoft, with 959 petitions in 2007 alone, a number that explains exactly why Microsoft is continually petitioning the federal government to allow more visas than the current 100% full system allows for. Google is #16 with 248, IBM is #40/184, Oracle #92/113, and Yahoo is #105/108.
(via Digg)
Microsoft Produces Limited Edition GTA IV Xbox 360 Microsoft has released a very limited stock of Grand Theft Auto IV Xbox 360 Elite consoles, 500 to be exact, complete with a GTA IV design on the side panel and a briefcase full of peripherals. The consoles are individually numbered, so you know how limited of an edition it is, and the briefcase has wireless controller, ChatPad, headset, camera, remote, and charge kit.
Vista Service Pack 1 Released Microsoft has finalized the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, putting the major update to Vista in the hands of users. Some users are getting it pushed to them via Windows Update, and if you don’t have it yet, just go here to download the standalone 434 megabyte installer for 32-bit versions of Vista. This link will get you the 64-bit version.
If you aren’t getting Vista SP1 through Automatic Updates, and are not even getting it offered as an option, it is likely because your computer is failing a number of prerequisites. One of them is driver compatibility, and since Sigmatel audio drivers aren’t worth crap on Vista, practically anyone with one of those chips in their systems won’t get SP1 without installing it manually. Read more here.
Microsoft Launches AdCenter Community Microsoft has launched AdCenterCommunity.com, a website for its growing AdCenter advertiser base to to learn about ways to run better ad campaigns, with niche-specific blogs, user forums, and other community features. The community offers advice on the AdCenter API, Analytics, and represents an effort by Microsoft to distinguish itself from Google AdWords, which has notoriously poor communication with with its advertisers.
Mac Office 2008 Gets Updated Microsoft released a patch for Office 2008, fixing problems that could cause Office programs to crash or otherwise stop responding. It also improves security, keeps restricted users from having unauthorized access to Office program files, fixes a blank page printing problem, fixes font substitution issues, adds support for secondary displays, and many other fixes and improvements.
Microsoft’s List of Potential Yahoo Board Members
If Microsoft winds up completing its effort to buy Yahoo through a hostile takeover, they’ll need to nominate a full new board of directors. A part of that list has leaked out, naming four of the ten executives Microsoft may place on the board. They are:
Edward H. Meyer - former CEO, Grey Advertising
John Chapple - CEO, Nextel Partners
Tom Freston - former President, Viacom
Jaynie Studenmund - Former CEO of eHarmony
Yahoo is reportedly finally holding talks with Microsoft, having a meeting to let Microsoft explain its offer and put some of its vision forward. Even if Yahoo doesn’t want to give in and except Microsoft’s offer, the offer may be impossible to ignore, especially if Microsoft raises the amount it is willing to pay. With other potential buyers dropping out, it’s certainly something they should consider.
Virtual Earth Implemented in Flash
Like Windows Live Maps? Like the compatibility and ease of Flash applications? Then you’ll like that AFC Components has added the Virtual Earth API to its UMAP control. You can see Virtual Earth embedded right here:
Sony PS3 for $100 Off
If you are looking to go with a Sony PlayStation 3, you might be glad to know that the SonyStyle store is offering $100 off the purchase of a 40gb PS3 with a new Sony card, making it just $300. That’s a good enough deal even if you find Sony as evil as many do, just to get a good Blu-Ray player and a small number of decent exclusive games.
Novell Free To Sue Over Long-Dead WordPerfect The Supreme Court has ruled to allow Novell to go ahead and sue Microsoft for alleged antitrust infractions involving WordPerfect, which Novell sold 12 years ago. Novell is complaining that Microsoft used its Windows monopoly to depress sales of WordPerfect, resulting in the product dropiing in value from $1.2 billion in 1994 to $170 million in 1996. Novell only owned WordPerfect for two years, and much of the failures of WordPerfect that allowed Microsoft Word to trounce it in the marketplace occured before they bought the product, but the case is apparently strong enough to go trial. We’ll see if it’s strong enough to actually win.
OneCare Gets Marketing Campaign
Microsoft has a new marketing slogan for Windows Live OneCare, its all-in-one security suite. The tagline is, “Don’t Worry, We Took OneCare Of It” and the ads typically featuring some nasty virus it “took OneCare” of. You have to read it a few times before the sentence makes sense, but the ads are cute. I’m pretty sure I saw one of these ads in the Post yesterday.
Flash Coming To Windows Mobile Microsoft has licensed Adobe Flash for Windows Mobile. Specifically, Adobe Flash Lite will be built into Internet Explorer Mobile in future versions of WinMobile as a plugin, so webpages with Flash should, for the most part, work as intended. That means full YouTube for Windows Mobile users, even as Apple complains that Flash doesn’t work on its devices. Boo hoo. I’d look forward to seeing Flash in Windows Mobile 7, but that’s pure speculation.
Become a Windows Mobile Fan on Facebook
Facebook has a feature that lets you become a fan of entertainers, celebrities or politicians, but apparently you can be a fan of a product as well. You can now become a fan of Windows Mobile and show your love for the platform. I’m in. Just head here while signed in to Facebook and click “Become a Fan”.
Live Spaces Loses 15% Of Visitors
Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft’s once high-flying social network/blogging platform, slipped badly in the last year. It’s still technically the biggest blogging platform around, but it failed to keep up with MySpace and Facebook, its real competitors, losing 15% of its unique visitors in the U.S. in the last 12 months. Live Spaces lost 1.4 million unique visitors, coming half a million of LinkedIn, which rose 271% last year. Guess the buzz on Live Spaces is over, and Microsoft has some work to do to keep the rest from leaving.
Bill Gates on Running A Good Startup
A student at the University of Waterloo stood up and asked a question of Bill Gates during a roundtable breakfast at the University (no, it was not a Q&A session, she just really wanted to ask), wondering how he had the courage to start Microsoft at 17. Gates answer says a lot about how he values his employees, and could be a good lesson for startups.
At 17 I didn’t have much to lose. I promised my parents that I would go back to university if things didn’t pan out. But I did worry about all those people who had spouses and children. They depended on the business succeeding. That’s what worried me at night. So I made sure that I had enough money in the bank to pay everyone’s salary for a year if none of my customers came through. That’s how I got through it. Eventually there came a time, though, when we needed to hire 30 people, and that was a real crisis. I really didn’t want to expand without a financial safety net in place. Ultimately, I compromised and said yes, go ahead and hire. But I want to know immediately when the increased revenues offset the costs of paying everyone a year’s salary … that way I could sleep again.
TechCrunch reports that Microsoft is in discussions with email startup Xobni about a possible purchase of the company. Xobni makes a really useful plugin for Microsoft’s Outlook, which creates a profile for every person you interact with and displays statistics and history based on whatever you are looking at. Xobni shows all past conversations with a contact, threaded conversations, past attachments, people in common, and email usage statistics, all using only information gleaned from analyzing your inbox.
Essentially, Xobni creates a social network around Outlook, and could be built to support more platforms. Xobni’s has a lot of buzz since it launched five months ago, and it’s easy to see why Microsoft might buy it. TechCrunch said Microsoft first offered $20 million and was rejected, but they’re back at the table, presumably with a larger offer.
Microsoft has yet again re-organized its corporate structure and re-shuffled many of its executives, continuing to strike the right balance needed for a successful $264 billion company. The re-org is complicated, but Mary Jo Foley has all the details if you don’t mind spinning your head around a few times, Exorcist style.
The bullet points:
Seven corporate VPs were promoted to Senior Vice Presidents. Chris Capossela was put in charge of the Information Worker Product Management Group; Kurt DelBene, the Office Business Platform Group; Antoine Leblond, the Office Productivity Applications Group; Andy Lees, the Mobile Communications Business; Satya Nadella, the Search, Portals & Advertising Group, S. Somasegar, the Developer Division; and Bill Veghte, the Online Services & Windows Business Group
Veghte, who used to run Windows, now has Windows client, Windows Live MSN and Search under his purview, the biggest promotion in the bunch.
aQuantive CEO Brian McAndrews, also a Senior VP, is not mentioned in the re-org. Mary Jo says that’s because many are saying he is going to run Yahoo when Microsoft gets it.
Roz Ho, who used to run the Mac Business Unit and has been running some secret Mobile and Entertainment Division project, is now corporate VP of Premium Mobile Offerings, and will lead the new Danger, Inc. team.
The New York Post is reporting that a mutiny is underway in Yahoo’s boardroom, with concerned Chairman Roy Bostock turning on CEO Jerry Yang’s resistance to Microsoft’s proposed takeover. If Yang successfully weasels out of Microsoft’s grasp, some of the board is worried that shareholders will sue, especially if Yahoo’s moves are motivated more by some emotional need to keep Yahoo independent than the more important financial need to keep Yahoo from going dead broke.
According to one source close to the situation, “The emotional part of Yang would rather do anything but sell to Microsoft, but he doesn’t have the cards to come up with a value-creating, competitive alternative for shareholders.”
“While Yahoo!’s board has a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder returns, running the risk of derailing a deal is dangerous to Yahoo! shareholders,” said Jefferies analyst Youssef Squali.
For now, Bostock and other board members, such as billionaire Ron Burkle, are leading the fight to force Yahoo’s old guard to do whatever is necessary to ensure the company has a healthy future. Opposing them are Eric Hippeau from Softbank and Robert Kotick, the CEO of Activision.
(via Valleywag)
Yahoo’s board is trying any port in a storm to find a way out of getting bought by Microsoft, looking to partnership deals with Google and News Corporation. Yahoo’s attempt to outsource its search business to Google in return for the financial stability to hold off Microsoft appears to have failed, with Google backing out to avoid mounting antitrust concerns, but an eight-month old News Corp deal is moving again.
Under the old deal, News Corp would deal MySpace and IGN to Yahoo in exchange for 30% of the company’s stock (stock created by a secondary public offering), valuing MySpace/IGN at $12.3 billion and the new Yahoo at $49 billion. The new deal would likely offer News Corp 19.9% of Yahoo, or $10-11 billion, with the 19.9% number chosen for some really scummy reasons: Any deal under 20% of the company doesn’t need to be approved by shareholders.
While the job of a company’s board is supposed to be to create shareholder value, Yahoo’s ruling class has made it clear that they want to save the current incarnation of the company, whether or not that is good for investors. This proposal would deal away almost a fifth of the company, specifically designed to sneak in beneath rules designed to protect shareholders.
If Yahoo’s board wants to make it clear to investors that it doesn’t have their best interests in mind, this deal would do it. If Microsoft pushes ahead for a hostile takeover, Yahoo shareholders are going to have some really good reasons to side with the Redmond giant.
According to Valleywag, the MySpace deal is being held up by disagreement of the value of MySpace, which makes sense. If MySpace was worth $12.3 billion eight months ago, when Yahoo was less desperate, would it really be worth $2 billion less now, when Yahoo’s board wants it more than anything?
Yahoo is rumored to be looking for alternatives to stay out of Microsoft’s clutches, and Wall Street is not happy. The rumors say that Yahoo has started up merger talks with Time Warner’s AOL unit, or rather restarted them, desperate for anything that doesn’t involve selling the company for an amount Yahoo says seriously undervalues the company. Yahoo may be playing Microsoft for more money, either out of a desire to profit or so Jerry Yang can go out with some pride.
A source close to Yahoo!’s thinking told The Times: “All they [Microsoft] are trying to do is pick off the company on the cheap. They’re trying to steal it. And the board is not going to let that happen. They have gone for a valuation that reflects the five-year low of the stock.”
The source added: “It would have to be in the 40s to start talking, and we would have to get over regulatory issues. It would have to be an offer that would give Jerry Yang something to stand on a podium and smile about.”
Wall Street is already getting mad at Yahoo’s delay tactics and posturing. Investors in Yahoo are saying they are sick of losing their money, and are looking to cash out with the Microsoft offer, whether or not it is actually good for the company. That’s bad news for Yahoo, because it means that regardless of what it does, investors are likely to get pissed off and turn on the company, that is unless Yang can pull a brilliant rabbit out of his purple hat. If Microsoft does go hostile, early indications are Steve Ballmer will find all the votes he needs to takeover the Yahoo board.
Yahoo’s board voted to reject Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer to buy the company. The board rejected the offer, saying it “massively undervalues” Yahoo, and thinks that Yahoo’s investments in Panama will eventually pay off and remove the need for the company to be bailed out, at least at that price. Most believe that the company will agree to a sales at $40 a share, $12 billion higher than the original $31 offer.
The problem for Yahoo is that investors want Microsoft to buy the company, and if the Yahoo board manages to screw this one up, the market will make them suffer. There are only a few possible scenarios left for the embattled internet company:
Microsoft increases its offer to match the $40 level. That would require $56 billion, half cash, half stock. Microsoft was already going to borrow about $10 billion, now it’ll have to pick up $15-18 billion in cash, plus give up an additional $6 billion in stock. It’s a lot of extra money, and Microsoft may balk. Luckily, there’s always option two:
Bargain the price down. Microsoft wants $31, Yahoo wants $40? You don’t have to be King Solomon to think up $45.5 per share. That’s mean an even $50 billion, and extra $3 billion in cash to borrow and $3 billion in Microsoft stock to give to Yahoo shareholders. Perhaps a little more manageable.
Or, Microsoft could go hostile, and bring the $31 offer to Yahoo’s shareholders. The shareholders are freaked at the idea of Microsoft quitting on them, since they bid up the share price and stand to lose a lot as the stock tanks after a withdrawn offer. A hostile takeover bid would put Microsoft in charge of the terms, getting the price it wants and kicking Yahoo’s board to the curb. The company stockholder meeting, later this Spring, will be the site of a showdown.
Finally, Microsoft could quit. The stock price will fall at least ten, possibly fifteen dollars. Heads will roll on the board as shareholders demand someone pay the price. The turmoil of the event rocks the company and sends even more employees for the hills. And, just as things seem at their worst, Microsoft offers to buy the company… for $27 a share.
Some other things to note: Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo has sent its own stock price down four and half dollars since the offer was made, costing the company over $40 billion off it’s own market cap. That means, until the stock recovers, Microsoft will have lost something like $80 billion, plus.
One other problem: Since Microsoft’s offer is half for cash, half for stock in Microsoft, that means that as Microsoft’s shares decline, so does the offer. With the stock portion now down the $26.64 per Yahoo share, the full offer is $28.82 per share, making it worth $41.46 billion, down over three billion dollars. If the price decreases further, Microsoft will either save money, or have to increase it’s offer either way.
You can use the MSFT-YHOO bid calculator to determine the difference between Microsoft’s original offer and the current price, based on market fluctuations.
Neatorama has a look at the evolution of various tech company logos over the years, including Microsoft, Apple and Nokia. I’m shocked at the hyper-detailed awful logos Apple and some others started with, especially how different it is from Apple’s normal minimalism.
(via Scott Beale > Twitter)
By the by, I’ve started posting updates to both my blogs to Twitter, as well as using Twitter finally as a quick communications medium. I was adverse to using Twitter, until I saw how easy it was to post to it and read Tweets in Outlook with OutTwit. If you’d like to get updates and communicate with my on Twitter, go ahead and start following me.
Frank Arrigo got to tell his son’s Second Grade class at a Job Fail what it’s like working at Microsoft, and Alfred Thompson sent him some interesting stats about Microsoft’s campus. Enjoy:
18,573 Average number of customers served in cafeterias daily
2637 slices of pizza consumed per day
7,464,456 cans of soda consumed per year
7,899,660 cans of juice consumed per year
3,520,536 cartons of milk consumed per year
2300 passengers ride the MS shuttles everyday
10,500 phone calls come into the Microsoft switchboard everyday
We’re talking about 30,000 cans of soda and 30,000 cans juice per average workday. Jeez!
Josh Kopelman is running an ad campaign on Facebook that targets Microsoft employees who may be looking to leave the company to run their own startup. He ran the campaign three months ago, with a grand total of zero takers, and the same ads are now running with a surprisingly high click through rate. Does that mean that Microsofties are looking to leave, panicking at the idea of working for a Microsoft/Yahoo hybrid?
There are a number of reason’s Josh’s ad could be getting so much attention. First off, Facebook’s ad system has been getting a lot better, and is targeting well enough to perform better. When he first ran the ad, the ad system had just launched, and was filled with bugs and bad decisions. All ads are probably performing much better these days.
Also, the new year just started. There are a million reasons that employees might want to leave Microsoft after the new year, including vested options, re-evaluating their place in the company, new year’s resolutions, and, yes, the Yahoo acquisition. Some (and I mean a very small number proportionally) Microsoft employees are redundant in a post-Yahoo world, destined to be replaced by Yahoo employees who do good work on Yahoo’s successful products.
Others are probably panicking at the acquisition price and the debt Microsoft will be taking on. I’m sure there’s a fear that $44.6 billion, and at least $10 billion in debt, plus billions in integration costs and thousands of new salaries will sink the company. If all those fears add up to 15 out of every 1,264 Microsoft employees leaving the company, it’s not great, but it’s something the company can live with.
After all, Microsoft can just replace them with Yahoos.
(via Fred Wilson)
Yes, ESPN fans will recognize that as the news ticker at the bottom of the screen on the sports channel. What does Microsoft Yahoo have to do with sports? Nothing! It’s just such big news, everybody’s talking about it.
Microsoft has picked up Greg Linden, one of my favorite geeks and the guy who created Findory and Amazon.com’s recommendation engine. Greg’s biggest strength comes in the form of personalized services, as both at Amazon and Findory he designed websites that learned from user behavior and improved what was shown to the user in extremely effective ways, first with books, then with news and blogs.
Now, as Principal Research SDE at Microsoft’s Live Labs, Greg will be working under Gary Flake’s Labs group on something we probably won’t hear much about for awhile, given the secrecy around those guys. I’m hoping he’s bring personalization to Windows Live Search, putting his killer algorithms to the biggest test, and maybe that some form of Findory can live on at Microsoft.
I’m very excited about what Greg could bring to Microsoft, and I know I’m not the only one. I talked to some sources at Microsoft, and while they couldn’t tell me what he’s working on (because they have no idea), they did say they were excited and anticipating something special. Few guys can design software that just works, works extremely well, and actually ship it when needed, and Microsoft now has one of those guys, and hopefully knows how to use him.
Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo isn’t cheap. In fact, the $44 billion offer is more money than Microsoft actually has, so the company is figuring out how to pay for it. The offer, as it stands, is for half cash, half stock, so Microsoft needs $22.3 billion in stock, and $22.3 billion in cash.
The stock is based on Microsoft’s closing price on January 31 of $32.60, so we are talking 684,049,080 shares, or just over 2/3 of a billion shares of Microsoft stock. If I understand how to read a stock summary (and I don’t, so correct me if necessary), Microsoft holds 1.3 billion of its own shares, so giving Yahoo almost half of those would still leave the company with plenty for its own purposes.
As for the cash, Microsoft has $21.076 billion on hand, but CFO Chris Liddel says it “could” use all of its money to cover most of the $22.3, which pretty much means it won’t. I’d expect Microsoft to spend half its cash, or 10.538 billion, leaving another $11.762 billion to cover the rest. Liddell says the company will borrow money, the first time it has done that.
Luckily, Microsoft’s a pretty healthy company. The company pulled in $5.8 billion in cash in just its last quarter, so give it a year, Microsoft could pay off that debt and still have plenty of spending money. Yahoo is profitable too, and hopefully, under Microsoft, even more profitable, so Yahoo is definitely something Microsoft can afford.
That question out of the way, we just have to wonder if Microsoft can make this work, turn Yahoo+Windows Live into the Google killer it keeps hoping for.
