 Microsoft Chief Executive Officer, Steve Ballmer |
Microsoft has announced it is dropping its bid to acquire one of their Internet competitors, Yahoo, after a three-month courting effort by Microsoft.
Microsoft chief executive officer, Steve Ballmer notified Yahoo chief executive officer, chairman and co-founder, Jerry Yang via a letter that Microsoft was dropping their bid for the Sunnyvale, California based search engine giant.
In a press release from Microsoft, Ballmer said, “Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal”.
Microsoft withdrew its bid effort after raising their bid from $44.6bn to $47.5bn, which works out at $33 per share, however Yahoo were waiting for a bid of around $53bn, which was more than Microsoft were willing to pay.
Microsoft had previously wanted to takeover Yahoo in-order to compete with Google, the market leader in online advertising. The online advertising market was worth $40bn in 2007 and will rise to an expected $80bn in 2010.
Some observers, however, are speculating that the bid withdrawal could just be another tactic in their attempt to acquire Yahoo.
Source: Wikinews, Image: Wikimedia
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