Yahoo rejects joint proposal from Microsoft, Icahn

Sometimes you wish for problems to just go away, and it happens for a little bit. Then something like this comes up:

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Yahoo Inc. has rejected Microsoft's latest attempt to buy its online search operations in a "take or leave it" proposal that Yahoo said would have dismantled its Internet franchise.

As described by Yahoo in a statement released late Saturday, Microsoft packaged its latest offer with activist investor Carl Icahn, a billionaire who is seeking to overthrow Yahoo's board of directors in a shareholder meeting scheduled for August 1.

[From Yahoo rejects joint proposal from Microsoft, Icahn - CNN.com]

The whole Yahoo dilemma is turning into a death watch. A really slow one. It makes you wonder if Microsoft is even interested in all or part of Yahoo, or they simply want to create enough disruption to make the company collapse onto itself.

The sad thing is that the damage is already done. Right off the bat it cost Jerry Yang his job, since there is no way in hell that he is going to survive the board of directors meeting. Icahn is only counting his beans, so if what makes sense is to wrap it up and deliver it to Microsoft, that's exactly what he is going to do. If instead makes sense to slice and dice Yahoo, and give Microsoft the parts that they are willing to buy, then he'll do that.

Two outcomes: Microsoft eats Yahoo as a whole, or Microsoft gets the Yahoo units that it wants, and the rest gets spun off (thanks God Flickr doesn't suck!). Both paths mean no more Yahoo.

And if there is a third way out of this mess, nobody has bothered to mention it. I found three quarters that had rolled under my laptop long ago, but I don't think I want Yahoo even if they sell it to me for 75 cents.

Flickr? I'll give them 25 bucks for it.