Will Ballmer buy a Yangless Yahoo?

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 18 November 2008 16:47

IT Industry - Market

Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang has been walking around with a target on his forehead ever since turning down a Microsoft buyout deal which was worth more than triple the current market value. With the inevitable Yang resignation now a Yahoo! reality, will Microsoft get back into negotiations for the struggling search company?

It has not been a good week for Yahoo! First iTWire reported how it is set to axe ten percent of the global workforce on December 10th, as share prices continue to plummet and buyers for the business continue to be in short supply.

Now Jerry Yang, the 40 year old co-founder and CEO of Yahoo! has announced his resignation. In a statement to Yahoo! employees, Yang says that "will always do what I think is right for this great company" and insists that while the step will be a difficult adjustment for everyone "I know it's the right move."

Critics, including shareholders, the Yahoo! board of directors and technology market analysts alike, will no doubt argue that perhaps he should have 'done what was right' at the start of the year when Microsoft was offering a staggering USD $44.6 billion for his company.

To put it in some perspective, that would have valued Yahoo! at around $31 per share. Compare and contrast with the share value of just over USD $10 now. At the time Steve Ballmer, renowned for saying some stupid things, actually said something smart: that the "combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders."

At the time, Jerry Yang was not listening. Are you listening now, Jerry?

Microsoft did not hang around, on the rebound from the Yang/Yahoo! rebuttal and bought into a rising star in the semantic search sphere instead. Powerset, a San Francisco-based company, specialises in natural language processing within search.

Someone else that Yang should have listened to was Yahoo! board member Carl Icahn who said at the time that "if the current board and management team of Yahoo! mismanage the company (and their recent track record is far from reassuring), Microsoft would be putting its money at risk and a great deal could be lost."

When Google pulled out of an advertising deal, that was indeed the case and the Microsoft buyout was back on the cards. But only as far as Yahoo! was concerned. Microsoft had left the building.

So will Ballmer and Microsoft come back to the negotiating table now that Yahoo! represents a bargain basement sale rather than a premium buy? I suspect it will, at least if Yang is true to his word.

In that statement to employees, Yang says that he will be "return to my previous role as Chief Yahoo and continue to serve as a director on the board." With Yang taking a back seat as far as the business of Yahoo! is concerned, Ballmer might just get hungry and bite once more.