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yahoo raid
Yang eyes AOL to save his job
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang spent the holiday weekend with his company's Goldman Sachs advisers, devising a plan to present shareholders during the company's annual meeting on August 1. The goal: Craft an alternative to a company breakup or buyout at the hands of Microsoft, which would likely come at the cost of the entire Yahoo board's jobs, including Yang's. To escape such a fate, Yang and his bankers zeroed in on Time Warner, hoping to acquire its online property AOL in exchange for $10 billion worth of Yahoo stock. It's an old plan, brought up again last week after first surfacing in April. More »
Corporate Raid
Reeling Yahoo board talks AOL merger, prepares to give Icahn board seats
Yahoo continues to hold merger talks with Time Warner, discussing a deal that would fold AOL into Yahoo and give Time Warner a minority stake in the new company. Another morning, another round of share-price stimulating rumormongering in the Yahoo saga. If the deal sounds familiar, that's because Yahoo sources first leaked the idea back in April. You're hearing it again because Yahoo shares dropped into the teens two days ago. We don't expect Yahoo-AOL to happen, if only because Microsoft is also said to be interested in AOL and its got a lot more cash and pride on the line. In other Yahoo rumormongering: Reporter's reporter Kara Swisher reports that Yahoo is prepared to avoid a nasty proxy fight with Carl Icahn by giving him two seats on its board. Problem is Ican wants four. Swisher thinks the two will come to an agreement because neither side wants a media-friendly, share-crumbling fight at the company's annual media. Because its not at all too late for such concerns.
recommendations
Jason Calacanis says ex-AOL CEO Jon Miller is the man for you, Yahoos
Before creating the world's most comprehensive list of videogame cheats, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis worked at AOL under then-CEO Jon Miller. Calacanis joined AOL only after it bought Weblogs Inc. from him for $25 million and since Miller led that acquisition, eventually invested in Mahalo and now sits on the company's board, Calacanis is naturally a little biased in his feelings toward Miller, whom Calacanis considers a mentor. Still, when we heard talk of Miller as a contender to be Yahoo's next CEO, we figured Calacanis's opinions would at least be entertainingly biased. Our email exchange: More »
jerry yang
Yahoo shares are almost below $20 in morning trading and as the company approaches its August 1 annual meeting, Yahoo's directors have finally begun to fear for their jobs and their reputations. They're negotiating with Yahoo's major shareholders and, along with agreeing to renew talks with Microsoft and approach AOL for acquisition, some on the board are offering to promote CEO Jerry Yang into a non-executive chairmanship and fire Yahoo president Sue Decker. Reporter's reporter Kara Swisher reports that shareholders and some board members have already come up with a wish list of names for the top jobs.
More »
Cowed Yahoo board members' wishlist of Yang and Decker replacements
Yahoo shares are almost below $20 in morning trading and as the company approaches its August 1 annual meeting, Yahoo's directors have finally begun to fear for their jobs and their reputations. They're negotiating with Yahoo's major shareholders and, along with agreeing to renew talks with Microsoft and approach AOL for acquisition, some on the board are offering to promote CEO Jerry Yang into a non-executive chairmanship and fire Yahoo president Sue Decker. Reporter's reporter Kara Swisher reports that shareholders and some board members have already come up with a wish list of names for the top jobs.
More »
7:02 AM on Tue Jul 1 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
2,782 views,
13 comments
Latest by hookedonredbull: It was Jon who took the engineers away from him - same difference, and a good call. more »
online advertising
AOL can guarantee your widget 0.04 cents per pageview
For the makers of widgets, those annoy-your-friends applications littering social networks, it's fractions of pennies from heaven: AOL ad network Platform-A has promised Facebook and Bebo widget developers that it can guarantee them "one of the industry’s highest" CPM — cost per thousand pageviews — rates if they sign up for its Widgnet publisher network. A Platform-A source says widgetmakers will get about 40 cents per thousand pageviews. Which is, of course, terrible. "Most [widgetmakers] won't sniff $1 CPMs," AdWeek's Brian Morrissey snarks.(Photo by MrVJTod)
Wall Street Wisdom
Analyst says Yahoo brain drain means company can finally become the next AOL
Flickr founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield are gone from Yahoo and as of yesterday, so is Del.icio.us creator Joshua Schachter. It's great news, says Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay. This way, Lindsay argues without irony, Yahoo has a much better chance of becoming the next AOL. More »
microsoft
Now Wall Street wants Microsoft to buy AOL
If you ask an investment banker, the only way Microsoft is going to compete against Google is to acquire a dying 1990s Internet brand. Gabelli & Co. analyst Christopher Marangi now wants the company to acquire AOL from Time Warner. He writes: More »
AOL's Platform-A goes to Europe
The Advertising.com takeover of AOL's Platform-A continues abroad. AOL will merge its exisiting European advertising subsidies, Advertising.com, Adtech and buy.at into Platform-A's international operations, based in London. Former Advertising.com international head Brendan Condon will lead the group. [WSJ]
The Advertising.com takeover of AOL's Platform-A continues abroad. AOL will merge its exisiting European advertising subsidies, Advertising.com, Adtech and buy.at into Platform-A's international operations, based in London. Former Advertising.com international head Brendan Condon will lead the group. [WSJ]
online advertising
Slide comes to New York, cap in hand
Widgetmaker Slide hired AOL's former director of national sales, Jason Bitensky, and opened a New York office in the West Village, Kara Swisher reports. Slide CEO and founder Max Levchin says his company followed the bright lights to the big city because More »
crash this bash
You're invited to Michael and Xochi Birch's Bebo farewell party
Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch cashed out in the nine figures with the social network's $850 million purchase by AOL. According to the invite for their farewell party, they'll be retiring to a humble, quiet cabin (which, in the Bay Area housing market, should set them back a million or two). What they aren't spending their windfall on? More »
ringo
Michael Birch's first social networking sellout a blowout
In 2003, social networking was not yet faddish. Michael Birch sold his self-admitted Friendster clone, Ringo, to online dating site Tickle for a pittance. He came to see that as a mistake, and went on to found Bebo, which he sold to AOL for a giggle-inducing $850 million. A cautionary tale for AOL: Tickle, now a unit of online jobs site Monster, laid off most of its employees in April, and informed its users by email over the weekend that Ringo was shutting down for good. (Photo by Michael Birch)
mysteries
Did AOL buy Bebo to tempt Yahoo into a merger?
No one can make sense of AOL's $850 million Bebo buy, not even Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, who is dropping hints that his company overpaid for the social network. AOL CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant, shown here in a deliciously awkward moment with Bebo president Joanna Shields, negotiated the deal in secret, to the disbelief of their underlings. But there's one strategic way in which the Bebo buy makes sense. More »
time warner
What to do with AOL's dial-up business?
Time Warner is trying to split AOL's dial-up business from its Web-content operations, and running into trouble in the process, says Henry Blodget. The problem: Allocating costs. AOL can run its websites cheaply in part because it has so many servers running email and other services for subscribers; scale economics mean that servers and bandwidth cost less. A smaller, standalone Web-publishing operation wouldn't enjoy the same benefits. But I suspect the larger problem is allocating revenues, not costs. More »
d6 live coverage
Yahoo's Scott Moore catches Time Warner CEO fudging numbers
CARLSBAD, CA — How rarely can one give one's enemies an in-your-face comeuppance? For Yahoo's Scott Moore, the chance came during Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes's interview at D6. Bewkes claimed that AOL was No. 1 in news, finance, and a host of other categories. "Where are you getting your numbers?" asked Moore during the session's open-mic portion, pointing out that AOL led Yahoo in all the areas Bewkes mentioned. Bewkes offered a feeble parry, suggesting that the numbers were close. Not even, Moore replied, rattling off how many millions of users the Yahoo sites he leads beat AOL. A satisfying moment, but shouldn't Moore be keeping his career options open at a time like this? (Photo by Asa Mathat/AllThingsD.com)
d6 live coverage
CARLSBAD, CA — Here's Microsoft dealmaker Hank Vigil chatting up AOL COO Ron Grant over lunch at the D6 conference. Why is that interesting? Because we overheard Vigil gabbing away on his cell phone earlier today about the "economic terms" of some deal. Microsoft famously made a run at merging its online businesses with Time Warner's AOL a few years ago. As with its recent talks with Yahoo, Microsoft only succeeded at driving its target into Google's arms; Google has a search deal with AOL, and owns 5 percent of the company. Could AOL be an option once more for Microsoft? Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes is set to take the stage soon. While he's not likely to say anything about talks, it's a safe bet Vigil and Grant will be seeing more of each other.
Microsoft, AOL talking? Our spy photo says yes
CARLSBAD, CA — Here's Microsoft dealmaker Hank Vigil chatting up AOL COO Ron Grant over lunch at the D6 conference. Why is that interesting? Because we overheard Vigil gabbing away on his cell phone earlier today about the "economic terms" of some deal. Microsoft famously made a run at merging its online businesses with Time Warner's AOL a few years ago. As with its recent talks with Yahoo, Microsoft only succeeded at driving its target into Google's arms; Google has a search deal with AOL, and owns 5 percent of the company. Could AOL be an option once more for Microsoft? Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes is set to take the stage soon. While he's not likely to say anything about talks, it's a safe bet Vigil and Grant will be seeing more of each other.
yahoo
Now that Time Warner has another $9.25 billion to play with, will Yahoo talks heat up?
Time Warner Cable will pay shareholders a $10.9 billion dividend as part of its spinoff from Time Warner, which will get $9.25 billion as its portion. With that cash in the bank, will Time Warner-Yahoo negotiations heat up? Last we heard, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes were negotiating a deal that would merge AOL and Yahoo and give Time Warner 20 percent control over the new company. According to Bewkes, the new cash could result in "disciplined acquisitions." Bewkes also acknowledged that AOL-Yahoo "discussions are going on." But here's the thing: as much as Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang might prefer merging with AOL rather than selling out as a whole or in splinters to Microsoft, it's not really up to him anymore, is it?
crime
