I am a Yahoo! Employee. I love it here. Would you leave Yahoo! if it was bought by Microsoft?

I would leave....

A YAHOO-VERIZON-EBAY merger would be BETTER!
IMHO. Yahoo got worse because they shut down all of the good stuff that made them Yahoo! They screwed up EGroups.com.... Yahoo used to have a HUGE following on the discussion boards ( on news.yahoo.com ) but they closed it "temporarily" and then never brought it back.... WHY??????

In terms of Yahoo Instant Messenger, it has nothing now but SPAM since they merged their Instant Messaging product with Microsoft Messenger (on the backend.)

Now the spammers are having a field day because it patches through to Yahoo too..... Nobody is willingly choosing to opt for Microsoft's products.... That should tell them something......

Yahoo would no doubt end up worse under M$.... Heck MSNBC was suppose to be "good"....
But no... NBC had to take their service back...

Hotmail was supposed to end up "better" too under Microsoft...
As you can see...Nothing doing.....

Yahoo also has had the Unix (FreeBSD) crowds backing them for years. A Microsoft buyout will do nothing more but firmly place the Unix Backers. (Thus the Apple backers too.) firmly into Google's camp too.....

Verizon or AT&T could be a better deal.... Or Google buying out Yahoo now that would be a sweet deal.....

Verizon and AT&T use Yahoo to power their Internet services so they would win out in a buy of Yahooo. Esp. Verizon which is rolling out FiOS and could use Yahoo as a nice content backend for their Fiber-optics service.... Yahoo would be a sweeet content deal for Verizon.....

The current co-branded provider sites.

http://www.att.yahoo.com/
http://www.verizon.yahoo.com/

And it would be good for them too because Yahoo has partners around the world...

British Telecom
http://www.bt.yahoo.com/

Rogers Cable in Canada etc.
http://www.rogers.yahoo.com/

If Yahoo wants to be company in the future they will need to buy their own U.S. distribution network... That's the main problem with Yahoo.... Their next problem? They've stopped being innovators. I don't see anymore killer applications/services being created by Yahoo. In fact Yahoo has been scaling back services over the years.

I remember when Yahoo announced they were buying DialPad. I thought great Yahoo could do some great stuff with that... They merged it with Yahoo IM. But they haven't really added anymore killer features to Yahoo IM. SPAM has increased by leaps and bounds on it. Soo much so I don't bother to leave Yahoo IM open anymore. (My friends are starting to do the same.)

When I heard TIVO was going to have Yahoo features integrated I thought NICE! more Yahoo services on my TV now... The convergence of TV and Computer may finally come about under that deal. But nothing much further has gone on between those companies. Yahoo I hear even dropped Photos which was one of their services that worked on TIVO.

When Yahoo announced their partnership with Wikipedia I expected to see more good things.... Nothing, really fruitful yet has come from that either. I've also come to watch competitors buy-out key stuff that Yahoo let slip by.

MySpace's parent company went to Fox.

Facebook has gone to Micro$oft.

Blogger went to Google.

Live.com went to M$.

Craig'sList went to Ebay.

YouTube went to Google.

Skype went to Ebay.

Mapquest went to AOL

GrandCentral went to Google

Paypal went to Ebay

etc. etc.

Anyway, I've thought of some deals which could still save Yahoo...

Buying their own pipeline, so that they have their own customers to draw monthly revenue from... Like by offering services. Perhaps QWEST or FairPoint Communications (The company which Verizon sold their New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont telephone network to.)

Perhaps the buyout of CableVision in New York City area. It would give Yahoo a market to also develop new Cable TV set-top boxes or the like...

A merger with Ebay (as first proposed back in 1999) could save Yahoo. Ebay gets millions of page hits daily that Yahoo could translate into even more (joint website) visits. Imagine seeing a small box showing Ebay auctions closing soon on Yahoo. It would make up for the marked failure of Yahoo Auctions. And would bolster Yahoo's marketplace against Google's upstart "Checkout" service...

Also having Yahoo-Ebay-Paypal under the same roof would be a force to recon- with...

Also, Yahoo needs to find a partner or create a unit to push more of their Yahoo services on cell phones. And at a more accelerated pace. Buddy-Beacon type services are in their upstart and would be a nice addition to Yahoo if they can pull it off.

Yahoo is becoming stale, that is why they're lagging.

Com'mon raise your head Yahoo!!! Do something!!! You're losing your touch.... The leadership of Yahoo must be getting too old... They're not forward thinking anymore.

My thought is about when Yahoo Clubs was killed... Back when EGroups.com was purchased by Yahoo. Yahoo killed clubs and merged parts of it with EGroups.com...

Microsoft may kill off Live.com or Yahoo to merge those together and in the end people will probably defect because the separate services they grew to love would no longer be what they initially fell in love with...

When MSN-Canada sought to merge with www.Sympatico.ca They did that same thing... Killed off Sympatica.ca's website (Which was owned by Bell Canada.) and they just sent all the traffic to MSN.ca basically...

The semi-good news though is if Microsoft lays off mass numbers of people at Yahoo, it could create a backlash because Microsoft will be creating a spawn of new people that will depart their company and go-off to create new companies that may JUST--- choose to complement Google rather then Microsoft or Yahoo and if the Microsoft-Yahoo audience dwindles--- they'll be back to square one fighting to try and increase falling advertising dollars.

Anyway this isn't the first time.... Anyone remember Steve Case standing up and telling a huge audience about when Microsoft said they wanted to buy AOL?

In his words:

http://www.businessweek.com/1998/29/b3587058.htm

"
On May 11, 1993, CEO Stephen M. Case of America Online Inc. (AOL) found himself face to face with Microsoft Corp. Chairman William H. Gates III. AOL, then the third-largest online-service provider, had gone public only a year earlier, after some fairly rocky beginnings. Gates--the most powerful man in Corporate America--was telling Case in a deadpan tone: ''I can buy 20% of you or I can buy all of you. Or I can go into this business myself and bury you.''
"

The fact of the matter is. Micro$haft NEEEDS this deal more than Yahoo needs Micro$haft.... Anyway
Yahoo has tons of potential suitors.

Ebay:
Then you'd see Yahoo, Ebay, Craigs'List, PayPal, Half.com, Overstock.com etc. etc. all under the same roof. Ebay would easily make up for the failed Yahoo Auctions attempt. And also Yahoo could rebrand the Ebay Stores of Half.com or Overstock.com to "Yahoo Stores" or "Yahoo Mall" or something and reap tge big bucks from that. Also PayPal would be a big competitor to Google's upstart "CheckOut" business.

Sony:
Sony Entertainment would be another potential suitor. Yahoo could become the backend for the Sony PlayStation like how there's an XBox Live. And Yahoo chat could be embeded in the Sony Playstation for realtime game chat etc. Sony phones could be outfitted with Yahoo IMer etc.

New potential trailer movies could be posted on Yahoo.com. New Game releases. etc.

ViaCom:
Viacom has no large central network like how Disney/ABC does. Disney purchased the Go network and powers everything off there. Well Viacom has such stations as Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, BET, etc. etc. and they could put their content on Yahoo.

Rupert Murdoch - the Fox TV empire might want to make a bid too...

A US phone company might like to snap up Yahoo. It would give them a kick@$$ platform for Online media that they could call their own content. Plus Yahoo's deals with outside companies could be another source of revenue....

AOL/Time Warner could make a bid. After AOL-TW failed to bring in the large audience they could make a go of it again with Yahoo and see if they can get things done right this time....

Another Suitor possibly from Europe might swoop down last minute. Sort of like Terra from Space snatched up Lycos etc.... You never know what might happen.

Give me 6 months at Yahoo in Corporate Development. I'd have the stock value up. I'd have traffic up... I'd have a reinvigorated company that is on top again with tons of suitors lined up all down the hall ways.