Galen Gruman at Infoworld has the April 1, 2008 scoop:
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.
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Yang will join Microsoft as "chief Yahoo," with specific duties to be determined later. Employees that Microsoft decides to retain will be offered an Xbox 360 game platform and a Zune music player as tokens of appreciation, in addition to cash grants and stock-option incentives for higher-level employees, Johnson said.
Golly! What can this portend?
Reaction from analysts and consumers ranged from disbelief to praise.
"This signals the death of Yahoo as it becomes part of Microsoft's proprietary, awkward Live strategy," said Mark Kelly, an analyst at The Buckeye Group research firm.
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This talent is what Microsoft bought, and the company can afford to be tolerant of a distinct Yahoo culture, at least for a while, because it is contained in the Silicon Valley,” Ruiz said. "It can't infect Redmond as easily from there, even though Redmond could stand a little infection."
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"Microsoft said the same thing about its slew of small business applications such as Great Plains a decade ago, yet nothing really came out of them," Hydecomb said.
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Buckeye's Kelly said he believes the acquisition was nothing more than a platform purchase to replace the anemic Microsoft MSN, ad platform, and search-engine businesses, and that once Microsoft learned to run them, it would not need to retain the Yahoo culture."This is a liver transplant, not a brain transplant," Kelly said.
There’s much more by following the link, but the really scary part is how April Fool imitates reality when it comes to the Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo.
