Fred Business News - Google proved to be the final straw that broke Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's back.
After weeks of threatening Yahoo that the software giant would attempt a hostile takeover if the company refused its bid, Ballmer explained Saturday why he decided to withdraw his offer for the Internet portal. He was walking away because of his archrival Google.
Yahoo would become "undesirable" if it formed an alliance with Google, Ballmer said in a statement. Last month, Yahoo had outsourced some of its search advertising results to Google in a two-week trial. The Internet portal said it was considering a long-term partnership with Google and that a deal could be announced as early as next week, a source familiar with the matter said.
Yahoo did not specify if it would continue to pursue the plans with Time Warner or Google that it had pursued in the last three months. Said Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang: "With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users."
In a letter to Yang, Ballmer gave five reasons why he decided to quit pursuing a bid. First, a Google-Yahoo tieup would encourage advertisers to use Google as opposed to
Ballmer said there were a host of other problems. Yahoo would suffer an engineering brain drain. There would also be regulatory issues that Microsoft would not be willing to "inherit." Microsoft has argued that a Yahoo-Google deal would give the two a 90% dominance in search advertising, and make an acquisition difficult to pass through regulators.
Source: Cnn.com
About Fred: Fred is president of The I Team Organization. With a back ground in agriculture Fred has lead many successful business ventures.
