It’s Official: Microsoft buys Yahoo and Google buys Facebook
Posted on April 1, 2008 at 9:23 am
Holy crap! It looks like it’s a done deal. Last night Yahoo agreed to be acquired by Microsoft for $47.2 billion, only $2.6 billion more than Microsoft’s original offer on Jan. 31st. This is huge news!
Image Source: ABCNews
There have been many speculations circling around about the buyout for the last two months and what it would mean for Google and the rest of the Internet if it happened. I guess we can stop guessing and just start praying!
According to Kevin Johnson, the president of Microsoft platform and services division, "The acquisition with Yahoo will better position Microsoft in the Web advertising market, as well as provide a strong platform for the delivery of Internet-based services to consumers and business users".
Even though Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang opposed the acquisition, he said today, “Being part of Microsoft will let the Yahoo vision reach further than we could have done on our own. And we will provide Microsoft the engine it needs to deliver on its Web-based services vision.”
Yang will be joining Microsoft as "chief Yahoo" and all employees that Microsoft decides to retain will be offered an Xbox 360 game console and a Zune music player as tokens of appreciation. I guess they are getting something useful out of it!
Google, of course, was completely against the deal and fought against it, but it looks like they didn’t really care too much about Yahoo anyway because they announced that they are going to buy FaceBook in an all out cash and stock deal worth a whopping $25 billion!
Technically, Zuckerberg explained, Google is purchasing 98.4 percent of Facebook, leaving Microsoft with 1.6 percent ownership. The comments by Schmidt are pretty funny, here’s what he said at the press conference:
“With the acquisition of Facebook, users will be able to take advantage of OpenSocial applications across all the major social networks on the planet,” he said. “We’ll be able to incorporate Facebook apps directly into Android, our new mobile operating system. And, frankly, we were losing too many of our top people to Facebook. So now they’re all back where they belong. Forever.”
It’s just getting more and more nuts! Google apparently is now focusing on social networking as the newest platform holding a promising future for advertising. They will also be integrating OpenSocial applications into FaceBook and integrating FaceBook applications into Android, Google’s new mobile operating system.
What’s your opinion on the whole Microsoft Yahoo acquisition and Google Facebook deal?
» Filed Under Industry News
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By the way, happy April Fool’s Day! Hopefully, you were tricked after reading this post and the associated posts from InfoWorld. Sorry if you had gotten excited!
April Fool!
“And, frankly, we were losing too many of our top people to Facebook. So now they’re all back where they belong. Forever.”
Thank you – this one is the only first April post that actually made me laugh today.
Gee I got worried. Got me on that one
Geesh…you got me!!!
Even Google tripped me earlier this morning…with their new ‘feature’ called “Gmail Custom Time”. Neways, that’s on the lighter side
I’m glad some people fell for it! I’ll admit myself, when I first read the headline from InfoWorld, I believed it too!
Well, umm.. i am fooled. The title looks pretty convincing.