Microsoft to buy Yahoo

[Trippy]

It's a side-effect of having the largest email user base. I couldn't tell you which service actually has the most active users/traffic.

[Abagadro]

Yahoo is my home page actually. I like it's set-up for checking on the news quickly.

[Miasma]

I use it for my homepage too, I really like it even though I didn't like the recent changes they forced on us.  I can see my mail, various news services, comics, most clicked on pictures, stocks, dictionary, weather, calendar and more all on one page.

[Tale]

What does Yahoo even do anymore to make them worth anything? Serious question.

News is also huge on Yahoo because it licenses everybody else's news - all the wire services and many other sources. It doesn't produce any news itself. So everyone uses Yahoo News to link to, and it comes up in searches all the time too.

Remember, web ads are charged per 1000 clicks (read this). Each web page serves ads. The more clicks you are getting, the more times the ads are being shown to people, and that equals money. With all the page views added together, Yahoo US is the number one site on the Internet, serving billions and billions of pages, and there are individual Yahoos in every country, many of which are their nation's top website (it has done particularly well in Asia). Yahoo is also number two in search behind Google - it doesn't have a very large share, because Google is so dominant, but being number two means it's the alternative for search ads and search marketing, which are huge. Yahoo also owns Flickr.

Basically it has everything, so it gets traffic. You might not be arriving through their front page, but everyone clicks on something that is on Yahoo. Problem is, I think, many people are unaware they are visiting Yahoo (as opposed to knowing they are "Googling"), which has been bad for perceptions of what the company does and therefore probably the share price - perhaps that is why they insisted their company was worth more than the offer.

[Tale]

Pre-Market: 22.82 -5.85 (-20.40%)  May 5 8:17am ET

[Trippy]

That's a long ways away from the $37 a share they were asking for.

[Tale]

Meanwhile Google: Pre-Market: 600.01 +18.72 (3.22%)  May 5 8:26am ET

[HaemishM]

But I mean, what are people going there FOR? Google has something close to a monopoly on the search engine biz.

Yahoo Fantasy Sports is pretty big too.

[ahoythematey]

I go to yahoo to check on local movie times.

[Viin]

AIM is #1 IM.

Anyways, this is interesting. I know Yahoo! doesn't want to merge with MSFT, they would rather sell out CHEAP to someone else than for extra $$ from MSFT.

The comment about retaining important, good employees is also interesting, as I think a lot of them have already left Yahoo! or at least looking. As more and more bids/buyouts get involved, more and more employees will be jumping ship. No matter what happens Yahoo! won't be the same as it use to be.

I expect some serious talks between Yahoo and TWX to happen regarding folding Yahoo! into AOL (or vise versa) as TWX would love to dump AOL for a stake in the large share of online marketing that Yahoo+AOL would make. Still not Google-sized, but much better than either one of those by themselves.

Edit: If you want to know traffic, Comscore is typically the service used to measure traffic to sites and thus the "potential" advertising revenue those sites can generate. There's not any place (that I can find) that just lists out the sites, but you can usually find them referenced in press releases. Like this one: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2184

[Tale]

Looks like there are some big bets on someone still buying Yahoo, or something. It climbed from the opening $22 and only fell to $24.37 (from $28.67) despite 280 million volume traded, so there's a lot of buying at relatively high prices still going on. Remember, Yahoo shares were trading in the high teens before Microsoft made its original bid.

[stu]

Some believe gentlemen prefer blondes. Yahoo goes with the brunette.

Brunettes are where it's at afterall.