Microsoft Withdrawals Bid for Yahoo!

After almost three months of constant bartering with Yahoo!, Microsoft has withdrawn their bid for the company. Microsoft’s last offer sat at $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, while Yahoo! refused to accept anything lower than $37 per share. It was not in Microsoft’s best interest to go higher, which Ballmer addressed over the weekend.

Despite the withdrawal, Ballmer believes that the final bid was more than fair, and many others agree as well. All except Yahoo!, of course. For the past couple years, Yahoo! has not been doing well at turning traffic into profit, which is one of the reasons they are willing to be bought up by someone. However, since Microsoft’s initial bid, CEO Jerry Yang has kept adamant about the fact that the company is on the rise, and not vice versa.

Regardless of that, today is going to be an incredibly interesting day for Yang, as many shareholders are not expected to stick around after the news of Microsoft’s withdrawal. Once the “aftermath” settles, Yahoo!’s market value is expected to plummet to $30 billion, down from the ~$40 billion it sits at now.

Microsoft’s withdrawal doesn’t mean the fun stops now, however. Some speculate that Microsoft could consider a re-bid if Yahoo! continues to go downward, but at this point, it’s hard to guess what could happen.

Analysts now expect Ballmer to use the money he had earmarked for the Yahoo acquisition to explore other possible deals with large Internet companies like Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and News Corp.’s MySpace and promising startups like Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. Microsoft already owns a 1.6 percent in Facebook, the second-largest social network behind MySpace.

Source: Yahoo!