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Comment by chollida1 | Hacker News Reader

Many years ago Microsoft was trying to purchase Yahoo for $45 a share. Every company has their Yahoo moment, where they consider making an over the top purchase offer for a company, that in hind site looks like a terrible idea.

I'm not sure how far the talks went, though given that this is just coming out now, I'm guessing they didn't go very far. Would be interesting to know if the offer is still actually on the table like the article hints at.

This is the price you pay for giving up all voting rights. If Evan doesn't want to sell no sale, no matter how good of an offer is on the table. With voting rights atleast someone can hold the CEO's feet to the fire to make them consider the idea.

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The MS-Yahoo stories misses the fact that MS was trying to buy Yahoo with its Alibaba stake.

The Yahoo that was sold recently did not include the Alibaba stake. This is where the key value of Yahoo lies.

If you break it down, the Yahoo Alibaba + Yahoo Japan stake + Yahoo's final selling price equals Microsoft's $45/share offer

At the time, most of the share value was in Yahoo's core business. If this was Microsoft's way to buy a stake in Alibaba, it was a very expensive way to do so.

And the Alibaba stage was bigger back then.

It's sad Yahoo chose to throw in the towel and spin itself off as an internet company rather than use the Alibaba stake to resuscitate.

I'm not Marissa's biggest fan (and have made a few comments here against her), but the spinoff was not her first choice. In fact, there was an original plan that would have spun off Alibaba and a small part of Yahoo (Yahoo Small Business, I think) and kept the core business going. Activist investors weren't very receiving of that idea though.

Source: I was at Yahoo back then.

Ehh, no point in throwing good money after bad.

A business is a business, and if you lose it makes sense to admit it.

Jerry Yang made a magnificent bet... one of the best investments ever in Alibaba. I don't think he's received enough credit even as Yahoo has been wound down.

I don't think they had a choice. I think Marissa tried her hardest to save the company. after some amount of time activist investors started to get in the way, and push an Alibaba sale.

> If you break it down, the Yahoo Alibaba + Yahoo Japan stake + Yahoo's final selling price equals Microsoft's $45/share offer

Actually, if mayer didn't sell a huge chunk of alibaba stake, the BABA stake by itself would be worth 120% of microsoft's bid.

YHOO owned 25% of alibaba. Alibaba is worth $400 B today. Microsoft's offer was $45 billion for YHOO.

Hadn't been keeping track of Alibaba. The stock has doubled in the last one year. That's pretty incredible

The reason they don't stop is that sometimes, rarely, the ridiculous acquisition is in fact a really, really good idea. Ten years ago, Google acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion. That was a Good Idea.

It's hard to believe people still bring this up when the reality is that it would have been a very successful acquisition for Microsoft had they actually purchased Yahoo.

Google has (semi-)inadvertently dodged a few "bad acquisition" bullets. Groupon comes to mind...

> Many years ago Microsoft was trying to purchase Yahoo for $45 a share. Every company has their Yahoo moment, where they consider making an over the top purchase offer for a company, that in hind site looks like a terrible idea.

That bid was terrible for YHOO shareholders. You do realize YHOO owned a ton of alibaba stock and yahoo!japan stock right? The alibaba shares alone that yahoo owned is now worth more than the $45 billion offer by MSFT. That's after Mayer foolishly sold off a huge chunk of alibaba shares a few years ago to go on her buying spree.

If steve ballmer had managed to buy YHOO, it would have been one of the greatest deals in history.

YHOO owned 25% of alibaba ( which is worth about $400 billion today ). YHOO also owned Yahoo!Japan which was worth $10 billion.

If MSFT bought YHOO back then, we would be calling Steve Ballmer and MSFT a genius today.

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