Yahoo finally agrees to sell to Microsoft?
Just got the alert via Marc Hustvedt, co-founder of Tubefilter, on Twitter linking to a Search Engine Journal story reporting that Jerry Yang sent an e-mail out to shareholders that Yahoo is willing to sell to Microsoft at the price of $33 per share.
Question #1: After all these months of flirtation and Yahoo condemnation in the media, is this deal finally for reals?
The caveat is that the deal will go down if “Microsoft will negotiate a transaction that delivers certainty of value and certainty of closing.” So that could mean we’re still not at a done deal, but it does seem as though the trigger may be close to getting pulled.
Question #2: If it is for reals, does this affect the day-to-day lives of ordinary online media cultists out there in one way or the other?
Probably not a great deal, at least right away. There will probably be relatively fewer acquisitions of smaller start-ups over the next year or longer as both Yahoo and Microsoft will be consumed with the integration, meshing, and fallout between the two companies. That may have some affect in overall innovation and funding as two titans in the space take a relative timeout for a little while.
But with the economy so wacky right now, there are many other things for startups to worry about.
