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Feb. 15, 2008

Many observers are now saying that Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Yahoo could affect a small segment of the wireless content spectrum, but probably not enough to cause any harm in any significant way.

Microsoft’s first offer was for $42.1 billion.

Yahoo's CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang said "but now Yahoo’s management board, along with our financial and legal advisers, believes that Microsoft’s offer substantially undervalues Yahoo and isn't in the best interests of our stockholders.”

Apparently, Yahoo is now currently shopping for alternate partners, such as News Corp., Time-Warner or even rival Google, officials said recently in various published reports.

Whether Yahoo is serious about finding a different partner or if it’s just trying to get a better offer from Microsoft remains to be seen.

Many say there could be short-term changes. Roger Entner, senior v.p. of IAG Research said “I think it would be probably a little bit tougher because everybody is dealing with Microsoft in a very cautious way, because of the experience everybody had on the PC side.”

Entner added "still, I think in the big picture, it shouldn’t make much of a difference, at least in the wireless segment anyway.”

If the acquisition materializes itself, any impact on the wireless side would take time to evolve, but would only make minor waves.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo now have mobile versions of their search portals, which also provide access to news and popular applications such as games and social networking.

The deal could potentially affect independent software developers whose mobile programs are tied to Microsoft’s or Yahoo’s websites, and could eventually hinder a bit their own developers' efforts.

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Source: Microsoft.

    This article was featured on Business 5.0.