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| Over 50 percent of companies fire workers for e-mail, Net abuse |
| Friday, February 29, 2008 |
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Managers cite accessing porn, using offensive language in e-mail, and breaching confidentiality rules as grounds for firing, according to survey
Think you can get away with using e-mail and the Internet in violation of company policy? Think again.
A new survey found that more than a quarter of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail, and one third have fired workers for misusing the Internet on the job. The study, conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute, surveyed 304 U.S. companies of all sizes.
The vast majority of bosses who fired workers for Internet misuse, 84 percent, said the employee was accessing porn or other inappropriate content. While looking at inappropriate content is an obvious no-no on company time, simply surfing the Web led to a surprising number of firings. As many as 34 percent of managers in the study said they let go of workers for excessive personal use of the Internet, according to the survey.
Among managers who fired workers for e-mail misuse, 64 percent did so because the employee violated company policy and 62 percent said the workers' e-mail contained inappropriate or offensive language. More than a quarter of bosses said they fired workers for excessive personal use of e-mail and 22 percent said their workers were fired for breaching confidentiality rules in e-mail.
Companies are worried about the inappropriate use of the Internet, and so 66 percent of those in the study said they monitor Internet connections. As many as 65 percent of them use software to block inappropriate Web sites. Eighteen percent of the companies block URLs to prevent workers from visiting external blogs.
Companies use different methods to monitor workers' computers, with 45 percent of those participating in the survey tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. An additional 43 percent store and review computer files. Twelve percent monitor blogs to track content about the company, and 10 percent monitor social-networking sites.
Companies are keen to track employee e-mail and Internet behavior in part due to legal fears. According to research done by the AMA and ePolicy in 2006, 24 percent of companies in the study had e-mail subpoenaed by courts, and another 15 percent have faced lawsuits based on employee e-mails.
The researchers found that even though only two states require companies to notify their workers that they're monitoring them, most tell employees of their monitoring activities. Of the companies that monitor workers in the survey, 83 percent said they tell employees that they are monitoring content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. As many as 84 percent tell employees that they review computer activity, and 71 percent alert workers that they monitor their e-mails.
Source: InfoworldLabels: Industry News, IT News |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 7:34 PM |
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| Yahoo set to open its search engine to third parties |
| Wednesday, February 27, 2008 |
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February 26, 2008 (Computerworld) Yahoo Inc. is planning to open its Yahoo Search engine to allow third parties to add a wide variety of data to search results. Code-named "Search Monkey," the new open-source application programming interfaces (API) that Yahoo is slated to detail today will allow Web site owners to add information such as ratings and reviews, images, deep links and other data directly to the Yahoo Search results Web page. "Our intent is clear -- present users with richer, more useful search results so that they can complete their tasks more efficiently and get from 'to-do' to 'done,'" noted Vish Makhijani, senior vice president and general manager of Yahoo Search. "So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time, users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in Web sites." Web site owners can supply Yahoo with data, and the company's Machined Learned Ranking technology will ensure that the results are presented to users at the correct time, he added. "We believe that combining a free, open platform with structured, semantic content from across the Web is a clear win for all parties involved -- site owners, Yahoo and, most importantly, our users," Makhijani said. "And by the way, users will be in complete control of the experience and will be able to turn off anything related to open search if they so desire." In an example provided by Yahoo, a search result for a Japanese restaurant in California that previously would have included the URL, an abstract and an address would provide ratings, price information and links for reviews and photos with the new tools. Yahoo plans to provide additional details on how the open search tool will work over the next few months. Not to be outdone, Google Inc. posted a reminder Monday that its similar effort, called Subscribed Links, allows users to create custom search results that users can add to their own Google search pages. Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer and head of Google's Webspam team, noted that Subscribed Links, which Google debuted in 2006, allows users to "display links to your services, answer questions, and calculate useful quantities and more." Source:Computerworld
Labels: Industry News, Search Engine, Yahoo |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 11:08 AM |
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| Computer Programmer's Attorneys Use 'Geek Defense' |
| Monday, February 25, 2008 |
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On Trial for Murder, Man Being Portrayed As Eccentric, Difficult
OAKLAND, Calif. -- When Nina Reiser disappeared in September 2006, investigators suspecting foul play looked long and hard at her estranged husband, the computer genius Hans. Eccentric, awkward and notoriously difficult as a human being, Hans Reiser proved quite accommodating when it came to providing clues.
After taking no part in the massive public effort to search for the mother of his two children, he listed the reasons he was happy that Nina was gone in a phone call monitored by police. He discreetly purchased copies of "Masterpieces of Murder" and "Homicide" from a local bookstore. Police discovered his passport in his fanny pack along with $8,000 in cash and a cellphone that could not be tracked electronically because its battery was removed, just like the phone found inside Nina's minivan, which was found abandoned on a side street smelling of rotting groceries; she had been to the store before dropping the kids at Hans's house.
Police also found soaked floorboards in his car and an empty space where the passenger seat should have been.
In the courtroom where Hans Reiser is on trial for murder, all this might appear to indicate guilty knowledge. But his attorneys cast it as evidence of an innocence peculiar to Hans, a computer programmer so immersed in the folds of his own intellect that he had no idea how complicit he was making himself appear.
"Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse," defense counsel William Du Bois said. "All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he's the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field."
And so this week, after a prosecution case that took almost three months, Du Bois launched what Wired magazine dubbed "the Geek Defense." In court, Du Bois has taken pains to portray his client as an irritating nebbish. He has repeatedly asked Alameda County Circuit Court Judge Larry Goodman to order his client to stop distracting him by talking in his ear at the defense table. He called Reiser "an inconsiderate slob" in front of the jury.
"We're leaving the right message," Du Bois said outside court. "He's a very difficult person. It's very difficult to represent a genius."
The effort will be watched and appreciated down the breadth of Silicon Valley, perhaps the only place a computer genius might find a jury of peers.
There, Hans Reiser's actions appear fairly reasonable, at least to people who spend much more time with computer code than with other humans.
"It strikes me that a lot of coders have a somewhat detached view of the world, and it's reasonable to assume that Hans might not even have stopped to think about how things looked," said Rick Moen, a local area network consultant in Menlo Park.
"I remove my cellphone battery periodically, and I've taught many people to do the same," noted John Gilmore, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is challenging the Bush administration in court on wiretaps. "What can you do when the FCC mandates tracking capability to every cellphone? On the lame excuse that once in a while someone calls 911 and can't give the address."
On his LinuxMafia site, Moen maintains a timeline of the case culled from the posts filed from correspondents in the courthouse gallery 35 miles north, live-blogging the trial for the San Francisco Chronicle and Wired's Threat Level blog.
"I met Hans a couple of times socially, and he did not strike me as being all that peculiar for a technical person," Moen said. "A little bit intense, a bit highly focused. Quite bright."
Now 44, Reiser was accepted at the University of California at Berkeley at age 14. He wrote a role-playing game to compete with Dungeons & Dragons and dabbled in science fiction. His signal adult achievement was ReiserFS, a file system he named for himself, unusual in the programming world. The system organizes data on Linux, the "open source" operating system.
After opening a company in Russia, he met Nina Sharanova, a striking obstetrician-gynecologist using a dating service to meet foreigners. They married when she became pregnant, but after the second child was born in 2001, Nina began an affair with Hans's best friend, Sean Sturgeon. The cross-dressing bondage and discipline enthusiast had been "maid of honor" at their wedding.
The ensuing divorce was ugly. Hans accused Nina of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, saying she made their son ill for her own gratification. Nina complained of Hans's avowed enthusiasm for violent video games, which he encouraged the boy to play as a rite of passage. Relations were so brittle that a police officer seeing them exchange the children one day advised Nina to "get a gun."
She was last seen at Hans's house, where she was dropping off the children for Labor Day weekend 2006. She was 31 then.
"His undergraduate thesis is on how if you change the perspective, the reality is different," said Ramon Reiser, the defendant's mathematician father, folding a pair of pants in the courtroom hallway as he waited to testify.
The thesis might apply to the evidence, which the judge in the preliminary hearing termed thin. Ramon Reiser argued that it's likelier that Nina is back in her native Russia with funds embezzled from her husband's business than in an unmarked grave she was carried to in the soaked, seatless Honda CR-X. The children are with Nina's mother in St. Petersburg.
"When you look at it, would Hans Reiser turn a hose on a car to wash it? Absolutely, his mother told him to get that car cleaned up," the elder Reiser said.
"I and my brother -- maybe it's genetic -- have driven our cars without the front seat. It's really convenient."
If Hans Reiser testifies in his own defense, his attorney said the risk is that "this guy is so weird, it's a little tricky to wrap yourself around it if you're a juror." He described his client as borderline for Asperger's Syndrome, a condition that self-described geeks call unusually common in the computer industry, combining as it does an exceptional ability to focus with an inability to read social cues.
Gilmore added that the unforgiving nature of computers demands of coders "a perfectionism that makes it hard sometimes in social situations. When I see something that's a little bit wrong, and I ought to just shut up and roll with it, but I comment and it causes trouble with the people around me. Back-seat driving and that sort of thing."
Yet not all the strangeness in the case arises from computers. Du Bois takes every opportunity to mention Sturgeon, who in addition to his role as Hans's friend and Nina's lover, told investigators that he killed eight people years ago. It's unclear whether the claim is true: Sturgeon remains free. But the judge forbade attorneys from mentioning the claim in court.
In any event, Sturgeon reportedly has insisted that whatever his crimes, he had nothing to do with Nina's disappearance. Wired quoted him as saying that, in the Reiser case, he is red herring, or rather, he said, "a red Sturgeon."
Source:Washington PostLabels: Industry News |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 7:37 PM |
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| Microsoft Releases List of Programs that Won't Work with Vista SP1 |
| Saturday, February 23, 2008 |
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| Microsoft Corp. released a list of known programs that experience some sort of "loss of functionality" with Windows Vista SP1. The list of 11 products -- divided into categories of "blocked from starting," "do not run" and "loss of functionality (minor or major)" -- is based on reported issues and is "not comprehensive," the company said. Many of the affected programs offer newer versions or upgrades that will make the software compatible (linked below where applicable). As of press time, the products are: Blocked from Starting Do Not Run Loss of Functionality As Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing and IT professionals this month, the list may grow -- especially after the update goes live for consumers in March.
Source:Redmond Developer NewsLabels: Industry News |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 3:42 AM |
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| Microsoft offers its development, design tools to students for free |
| Wednesday, February 20, 2008 |
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Microsoft Corp. Monday unveiled a new program that will offer as many as 1 billion high school and college students free access to its development and design tools. The DreamSpark program is now available to 35 million college students in the U.S., China, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K., Microsoft said. The company then plans to expand the offer to high school students worldwide in the coming months. Once the full program is in place, the number of potential users could approach 1 billion students, Microsoft said. "I've always believed in getting developers at as young an age as possible," Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in a video interview on Channel 8, a Microsoft site focused on student developers. "These are the tools that people can build a career around or they can just build fun software for themselves. The basics of understanding how good architecture works, the data structures ... those have been the same for the last 30 years. Fundamentally, the skills of design, of knowing what good code looks like -- that is going to be valuable for at least the next three decades." DreamSpark is available to students whose studies include technology, design, math science and engineering. As part of the program, students can access Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition and XNA Game Studio 2.0, Microsoft said. The students are also eligible for a free 12-month academic membership to the XNA Creators Club. The program will also encompass Microsoft's Expression Studio design tools, including Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Media. Students also can access SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows Server Standard Edition for free as part of the program. "The opportunity, as a student, to use the same professional tools that I can expect to use after I graduate gives me a real head start in my career," said Nathan Murith, a computer science student at the University of Geneva in Switzerland who tested the service, in a statement. "I'm already getting more out of my studies, applying my learning to try out new ideas, and gaining new insights into careers in software design and development." In the next six months, Microsoft plans to expand DreamSpark to college students in Australia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, and more countries in the Americas, Asia and Europe. The program will be extended to high school students by the third quarter of 2008, Microsoft said. Microsoft is working with academic institutions, governments and student organizations around the world, such as the International Student Identity Card Association, to ensure the necessary local student identity-verification technology infrastructure exists to provide access to DreamSpark, the company added. Source: Computerworld |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 11:58 AM |
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| Yahoo sends letter to shareholders over Microsoft bid |
| Friday, February 15, 2008 |
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CEO Jerry Yang says Yahoo wants to take advantage of a 'unique window of time' in the growth of online ads to build market share and create value for stockholders
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang cited the growing online advertising market and his company's position to take advantage of that growth as reasons for shareholders to reject Microsoft's acquisition bid, he said in a letter to shareholders Wednesday. The letter, the contents of which Yahoo made public Wednesday, stated that Microsoft's February 1, $44.5 billion unsolicited takeover offer was too low. Yang said that Yahoo is the most visited site in the United States, held the top position in online display advertising, and counted almost one out of two of the world's Internet users as its members. He also said Yahoo is the top mobile destination in the U.S. Yang did not cite sources for most of his claims. However, comScore Networks research from November 2007 confirmed Yahoo's online display advertising leadership, with almost 19 percent of the market. The online ad market is expected to grow from $45 billion last year to $75 billion in 2010, Yang said, and that Yahoo wanted "to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth -- and evolution -- of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders." The company plans to grow visits to its properties "by 15 percent per year over the next several years," although did not specify how. He also said that Yahoo's own search marketing system, Panama, along with two 2007 acquisitions -- Right Media and Blue Lithium -- would "complement and enhance Yahoo!'s existing capabilities and will make it easier for advertisers and online publishers to buy and sell advertising online." Both Yahoo and Microsoft have struggled to compete with Google's success in online advertising, specifically its paid search and Adwords programs. Based on the same comScore data, Microsoft captured only 6.7 percent of online display ads. That poor performance is seen as the main impetus behind its move for Yahoo. The letter made no mention of talks with News Corp. for some sort of share swap, intended either to offset Microsoft's interest or force the software company to boost its bid for Yahoo, as reported late Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal. Source: Infoworld |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 3:05 PM |
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| With Videos-On-Demand, Bollywood Meets Web 2.0 |
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| In many ways the films of Bollywood, South Asia's prolific film industry, are tailor-made for the Web: They're instantly digestible, they're lavishly eye-catching, and they come in an unending stream of around 1,000 movies a year. Plus, the huge expat Indian community of some 25 million worldwide offers a sizable potential market. So it makes perfect sense that Bollywood.tv is using next-generation caching and content-delivery technology to bring its vast collection of South Asian spectacles to online subscribers around the world. Based in London and owned by Australian investment firm Charter Pacific Corp., Bollywood.tv was founded in 2005. It has amassed a catalog of 1,900 contemporary and classic Bollywood movies in languages including Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, and Bengali. The site charges $3.99 and up to watch full-length movies and has a monthly subscription offering as well. Along with third-party providers like Bollywood.tv, big Bollywood studios are getting into the online act as well. Last year two of the largest Indian film factories, Rajshri Group and Eros Entertainment, began making their movies available via download to fans across the Web. Several recent South Asian blockbusters have been released simultaneously in theaters and on the Web. Bollywood.tv CEO Nigel Glynn-Davies said Thursday his company has started using the Velocix content-delivery system to move films across the Internet. Velocix, which changed its name from CacheLogic earlier this month, offers what it calls "multisourced caching" -- a way of dividing large files (feature-length videos, computer games, software applications, and the like) into pieces and storing them across many different caching sites across the Internet, then delivering the whole dynamically from the best source. Citing Cisco Systems research that shows consumer-generated traffic growing at 52% a year between now and 2011, Velocix CEO Phill Robinson said that conventional content-delivery networks, such as Akamai's, are not designed for such high-capacity requirements. "Most content-delivery networks work exactly the same now as they did 10 years ago," said Robinson -- they cache files locally on servers and deliver them from a single source based on the user's location. Velocix, by contrast, carves up large multiple gigabyte files into 256-KB slices and shifts the source of the download or stream based on the optimal connection at any given moment. Velocix also uses intelligent routing technology to deliver big files using a combination of peer-to-peer networks and caching. As well as working with major broadcasters such as the BBC, Velocix is equipping independent content distributors to provide for-pay online video services to their audiences. Last November the popular Italian soccer club AC Milan began providing streaming and on-demand video of matches to fans online, using Velocix's technology. The entry of the big studios into the movie-on-demand market means that Bollywood.tv could face some stiff competition in the coming years. But in the world of South Asian movies, nobody ever said that less is more.
Source: Information Week |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 2:45 PM |
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| 'Office 14' to be more Web-friendly, Gates says |
| Tuesday, February 12, 2008 |
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Microsoft envisions the next version of Office to have partial online functionality similar to how Outlook Web Access worksMicrosoft Chairman Bill Gates talked publicly for the first time on Monday about the next big Office release, code-named Office 14, which he said will give users new ways to access their applications online. Microsoft won't provide the full functionality of Office online, but it will offer limited capabilities to view and edit the data in Office applications. It already does this for its Outlook e-mail client with a product called Outlook Web Access, and it will offer similar capabilities for other applications in Office 14, Gates said in a speech at the Microsoft Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, California. "Outlook Web Access is not the full version of Office, but if you want to go into a kiosk or an Internet cafe and browse and connect, it gives you plenty of functionality," he said. "As we look at all the modules [in Office 14], we have in mind the equivalent of Outlook Web Access," Gates said. It was the first time Microsoft had confirmed the "Office 14" moniker for the next release, although the Windows enthusiast Web site AeroXperience reported that fact recently, citing an internal Microsoft document. It also reported that a beta of Office 14 would appear this year with commercial release planned for 2009. Gates offered no timeline Monday and addressed Office 14 only briefly at the end of his speech, which focused on how developers can extend the current version of Office. He was answering a question from a developer in the audience who asked when Microsoft would provide full online access for Office in the same way Google does for its Google Apps service. "There are lots of ways I can get to your Office data, but nothing compares to Google," the developer said. Google Apps is used mostly by smaller businesses today, but it is seen as a potential competitor to Office despite having more limited functionality. Microsoft, which makes much of its profits from its Office desktop software, has been criticized for moving too slowly in getting the applications online. It will take another step in that direction with Office 14 by offering Outlook Web Access equivalents of other Office applications such as Excel. "If you look at spreadsheets, maybe you'll not be able to set up all the data models [online], but you'll be able to read documents, change a few assumptions, and try things out," Gates said. Outlook Web Access is a part of Microsoft's Exchange Server 2007 software, and it was unclear how the other Office 14 applications would be packaged and delivered. Gates did say that SharePoint Server, which is becoming more closely aligned with Office, "will be able to render a greater set of Office documents in an HTML environment." Source: Infoworld |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 10:07 PM |
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| Microsoft spurned, but will likely win Yahoo in the end |
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Now that Yahoo Inc. has formally turned down Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover bid, some industry observers say the most likely outcome is that Microsoft will raise its offer and Yahoo will be forced to accept it. Today, Yahoo's board told Microsoft that its $31 per share offer undervalued the company and said it would continue to evaluate other "strategic options" in order to maximize value for its shareholders. Microsoft called Yahoo's decision "unfortunate," and said its offer gave shareholders "superior value." The unsolicited bid was a 62% premium over Yahoo's closing price the day before the Feb. 1 offer was made. Since then, Yahoo's stock has risen in value and was trading just above $29 this morning. Microsoft, in a statement, also warned that it might pursue a hostile takeover. "Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo's shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal," the company said. Microsoft believes that acquiring Yahoo will position it to better compete with Google Inc. in the online advertising market. For its part, Google has been doing what it can to scuttle the Microsoft takeover bid, including playing up the antitrust component of the deal. Google could not be reached for comment today. "We have Microsoft's initial offer of $31 per share and we have what Yahoo wants, which is about $40 per share. They're looking for the amount of money Microsoft had offered them in a previous round," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at San Jose-based Enderle Group. Although Enderle said the deal will most likely go through, Yahoo won't get as much money as it wants from Microsoft. "Microsoft will counteroffer," he said. "This is a negotiation. Microsoft's initial offer was lower than Yahoo wanted, and Yahoo wants an offer that's higher than Microsoft is willing to pay. Now they do their dance and we see on whose side it ends up, typically someplace in the middle. But right now it looks like it will happen." Guy Creese, an analyst at Burton Group in Midvale, Utah, said that while Yahoo is looking for more money from Microsoft, the Internet company is also looking to Google to form some kind of partnership. "I think they have several options, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out," Creese said. Anthony Sabino, professor of law and business at St. John's University in New York, said Microsoft's offer was a "bonanza beyond belief" for Yahoo's shareholders, and if Microsoft sweetens the pot a bit more the board is under a legal obligation to consider it because its job is to maximize value for it shareholders. "It's incredible for Microsoft to come and make this kind of offer," Sabino said. He added that although the Yahoo board and CEO Jerry Yang don't want to become part of Microsoft, they probably won't have a choice. "It should not be a surprise that that there is a powerful dissident group within Yahoo that has told the board they want it to consider this offer because it is a lot of money and they're not going to let the board turn it down," he said. "And not only are they right in terms of the business sense, because you don't turn away money that's offered to you in this princely sum, it's also a question of what the corporate law in this country provides." And Sabino said that law is very specific. He said once a company is in play, which means another company has made a bid for it, its board has a duty to the shareholders to try to obtain the best price it can. "There's no doubt in my mind that Yahoo is in play. There is an interested bidder or bidders for the company, so they're on the auction block," Sabino said. "Yahoo doesn't want to be there, Jerry Yang doesn't want to be there, the rest of the board doesn't want to be there, but being in play isn't something you usually have a voluntary choice about." Sabino said the board can probably squeeze more money out of Microsoft, but at some point it will have to accept the offer. "Microsoft will probably sweeten this offer to get what they want, but sooner or later Yahoo is going to say, 'OK, fine. We give up' because once the offer maxes out, what are they going to do? They simply can't [reject the offer] and say, 'We're better off going it alone.' They can't do that to the shareholders," he said. As for Yahoo partnering with Google, Sabino said that deal wouldn't pass regulatory muster. David Ferris, president of San Francisco-based Ferris Research, said he didn't think Yahoo was right to turn down Microsoft's offer. "The thing is, it's a very large amount of money," he said. "I think it was a good offer for stockholders, but maybe Yahoo is just trying to get a better offer. But I'm not so sure they were right to turn it down."
Source: Computerworld
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| posted by TechFreeks @ 9:30 PM |
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| Yahoo! set to revive merger talks with AOL after rejecting hostile takeover |
| Monday, February 11, 2008 |
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Yahoo! is seeking to restart merger talks with AOL as a means of defending itself against the $45 billion (£23 billion) hostile bid approach from Microsoft, The Times has learnt. It is understood that Yahoo! and its team of advisers from Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, the US investment banks, have spent the past week evaluating possible tie-ups with media and technology firms that would save it from being swallowed by Microsoft. It is also understood that one option being explored is to restart merger talks with AOL, the online business owned by Time Warner. Tie-ups with groups such as Google or Disney are also being considered. Although Yahoo! and AOL previously failed to join forces because of differences over price, it is hoped that the urgency created by an unwelcome approach from Microsoft and an impending economic downturn will spur the two into new talks. Google, which offered support to Yahoo! when the Microsoft approach was made public, also has a 5 per cent stake in AOL. Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, will today tell Wall Street that his board has rejected the software giant’s cash-and-shares proposal because it significantly undervalues the company. It is believed that the Yahoo! board will not even consider starting talks with Microsoft unless the suitor group offers at least $12 billion more, representing a share price value of more than $40. Currently, Microsoft has proposed paying $31 in cash and shares, valuing Yahoo! at just under $45 billion. Microsoft had proposed to pay Yahoo! shareholders up to half in cash and the rest with Microsoft shares. A source close to Yahoo!’s thinking told The Times: “All they [Microsoft] are trying to do is pick off the company on the cheap. They’re trying to steal it. And the board is not going to let that happen. They have gone for a valuation that reflects the five-year low of the stock.” The source added: “It would have to be in the 40s to start talking, and we would have to get over regulatory issues. It would have to be an offer that would give Jerry Yang something to stand on a podium and smile about.” Yahoo! came to its decision at a meeting of its board on Friday night.The rejection may raise eyebrows, since Microsoft’s bid proposal valued Yahoo! at a 62 per cent premium to its closing price the day before the offer was made public on February 1. Such a rejection would suggest that Mr Yang is prepared to argue to shareholders that he is capable of boosting Yahoo!’s share price by at least 62 per cent if the company stays independent. It is understood that today’s announcement will not include any firm talks with other media firms. Yahoo! has suffered eight consecutive quarters of profit decline. Critically, it has also lost part of its share of the $40 billion online advertising market to Google, its dominant rival. Microsoft is thought to be trying to engage Yahoo! shareholders in some form of discussion. It is also understood to be considering a proxy fight in the next month, in which it plans to oust most of the Yahoo! board and replace key executives with its own choice of management team. That process — open to Microsoft as a shareholder in Yahoo! — is understood to be the last resort for the computer group if Mr Yang refuses to start serious merger talks. Any shareholder in Yahoo! can nominate executives by next month. Nominations would then be voted on by all shareholders. Microsoft is desperate to take over Yahoo! because of the threat that Google’s dominance of the online search advertising market poses to the computer company’s future. Last year, after long discussions about a merger between the two, Yahoo! declared that it was not for sale. However, it did agree to draw up proposals about how the two could co-operate to fight Google more effectively. Yahoo! is considered by Microsoft to have reneged on its pledge and Microsoft has become increasingly frustrated in the past 12 months as Google has grown stronger and Yahoo! has lost market share and been forced to cut 1,000 jobs. Source:Times Online |
| posted by TechFreeks @ 11:36 AM |
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