After much internal debate and industry speculation, Yahoo today agreed to be acquired by Microsoft, adding $2.6 billion to Redmond’s original offer of $44.6 billion on Jan. 31, reports InfoWorld.
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who had publicly opposed the acquisition, said, “Being part of Microsoft will let the Yahoo vision reach further than we could have done on our own.”
The agreement was reached near midnight last night, thus closing a contentious quarter for the Web company, one rife with in-fighting and power jockeying since Microsoft’s initial offer.
Of the agreed $47.2 billion, $10 billion is in cash and the rest in stock, with $1.12 of Microsoft stock being swapped for each share of Yahoo stock, roughly a 12-cent-per-share premium over Yahoo’s $29.05 closing stock price on Monday.
“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,” said Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division, which will oversee the Yahoo service offerings.
On the other hand, it IS April Fools day. Consider the statement; “Employees that Microsoft decides to retain will be offered an Xbox 360 game platform and a Zune music player as tokens of appreciation.”
In other news, here’s Ken Norton, Product Manager at Google showing Robert Scoble the new offline features of Google Docs, which were just released today.
.gif)
