Microsoft once tried and failed to buy Yahoo outright in 2008. Now the company is reportedly in talks with some private equity firms to help them financially with their own bids to purchase Yahoo.
Re/code reports that Microsoft's talks with possible Yahoo buyers are in the early stages. The idea on Microsoft's side is that it wants to keep the current solid working relationship with Yahoo with whomever buys the company. Microsoft still has a multi-year deal with Yahoo to provide a large portion of their search engine results via Bing:
"Preserving its current status is important to Microsoft, said sources, which is why it has been mulling the financing of possible Yahoo buyers, who will have to come up with billions of dollars in cash to be competitive. "If Microsoft put in a billion, it would cost them almost nothing," said one investor who had spoken to the company. "It's a minor thing and it buys them a lot."
Yahoo announced in February that it was "exploring additional strategic alternatives" which is business lingo for "We are up for sale." However, Re/code says there is some doubt that Yahoo will go through with any acquisition deal as the company's board of directors has not made much headway in the process. Also, there are reports Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer does not want to sell off the company and instead favors continuing with her own efforts to turn Yahoo around.
Reader comments
Microsoft will reportedly help other companies purchase Yahoo
All my well wishes go to Microsoft. Proud user for One year.No regrets so far.
Still remember when AOL was the king of being online. Them and Compuserve.was where i spent alot of my time. Me and my 300 baud modem. Life was simple then.
I think it would be good for Microsoft to buy Yahoo but, leave it alone. With Yahoo's financial future no longer in question they disable all of the products and services which are currently unsuccessful and re-release them at a later time and instead simply focus on core products and services.
They should be working on add free search of their own not relying on Bing and having their own maps
Spamhoo filled my ex-boss' laptop with crapware that could not be removed from Chrome! It cost me several hours to et rid of it! That's tell's me to stay AWAY from both!
Haven't purposely used Yahoo since the Netscape days. Bing sometimes shows Yahoo Questions(?) with user generated answers from 2007 when I ask Cortana a question. The answers are usually awful with a max of three likes.
I wish that we could turn back time to the good ole daaaaaaayyyysssss. I think Tyler Joseph (Twenty One Pilots singer) meant the days when Yahoo, AOL, and MySpace were the internet when he says good ole days. And I couldn't agree with it more
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The "Good Old Days" were before businessmen laid eyes on the damn thing and it belonged to the people who created. Everything after that was just a series of progressively blander re-inventions.
Wait... Yahoo search results are provided by Bing??
About half of then are.
Yes you didn't know that. Yahoo has been using Bing for quite some time
I never used Yahoo. Generally, I stay away from companies with goofy names. Makes me feel stupid using them.
Once upon a time I used Yahoo as my home page. It got so bad due to the 'tabloid' feel of the articles that I stopped using it.
"A small loan of a billion dollars" ;)
Yeah. Microsoft doesn't want this company to go in "other" hands ,ch ch scgroogle, same thing with nokia.
I used to use Yahoo every day, but it seems like they just gave up a couple of years ago. The site is a mess, and most things look like they didn't put any time into them.
they did spent a few millions to redesign their logo.
If Microsoft bought Yahoo, they should dump all those BGR, Forbes, and Motley Fool articles and sponsored ads from the Yahoo home page. It just looks like a low budget tabloid these days.
I agree. So true.
I agree. Something simple like Bing or Google. Yahoo is garbage now. There is nothing that will save them now. They should have accepted the buyout in 2008. Good riddens to Yahoo it's only your own fault.
Money can't buy them love.
Yahoo has turned into a flaming dumpster of garbage. I had it as my home page for several years. During its last round of terrible updates, they made it so you could ONLY like stories in your news feed, where as you could previously dislike to hide certain topics you had no interest in. Ever since that change, I changed my home page to my e-mail inbox, and I no longer go to that hellhole, expect for fantasy sports (which is really because of a lack of a solid alternative, rather than because they do good work).
How about invest them dollars for Yahoo on building quality apps for your OS. The core OS apps I love but come on Facebook is nowhere near other OS quality. Concur Expense App for a company who says they want to focus the line on business... Sucks. Biggest blow is this Windows Central app on my Android device is better than on WM10
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Yeah why doesn't Microsoft fix the indie Windows Central app for UWPW10. Those bastards.
Genuine question (as I am currently not infected with Android) what makes the Android app "better" than the Windows UWP app?
They would have gotten more had they agreed to the Microsoft deal years ago. I'm sure they would not get as much now.
I miss yahoo messenger used lot in 2000.
LOL that is a damn bot/spam/malware pile of crap.
Me too. Guess was better than fb Orkut days. But now fb rules.
Depends. Whatapps with over 900 million users, is the ruler on messaging. And as Facebook owns them, then it is kinda Facebook. But its probably not the Facebook you meant, i.e. actual messaging on Facebook.
Skype has 300 million users.
Yahoo messenger was crap even back in the days, it was always MSN Messenger. Microsoft were so stupid to discontinue MSN Messenger.
Marissa Mayer is a disaster.
I second that emotion!
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Proudly rocking my Lumia 1520!
Beat me to it, nothing she has done has helped the company thrive.
yes, she brought so much nonsense things... I stopped yahoo mail since they stopped sync contacts and calendar... I heard that the email also becoming crappier than ever!
No one could have fixed Yahoo. I don't agree with some of what she did, but Yahoo has lost its cool factor forever and no one is going to fix that.
How the mighty has fallen
Seems to be happening a lot recently.
~ Sent from my Lumia 730
Yahoo is a sinking ship and had investment if they're buying it for the search engine. As much as I hate google and don't use it, they are king of search.
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I wish they'd try to buy again. Whatever it takes to be a larger force against google.
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No. Yahoo is following the same path as AOL and MySpace. MS would be much better off investing that money into something else, particularly in their own R&D and break/fix.
And getting new people for windows 10 mobile's development
Yeah, but their multi billion dollar purchase of failing Nokia went so well!
They definitely shouldn't...Yahoo isn't half as relevant as it used to be...especially in the consumer space...
"reportedly" -- fix headline
Beat me to it!