Yahooligans At The Window

Newsweek, February, 2008 by Steven Levy

Microsoft’s $45 billion bid for Yahoo is a ‘Hail Mary’ to beat Google in search.

As a veteran of the technology world, Yahoo!’s chairman, Jerry Yang, certainly knows how relentless the software giant Microsoft can be. If he had by some chance forgotten it, the phone call he received last Thursday night would have been a handy memory jogger. On the other end of the line was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who had, during late 2006 and early 2007, vigorously pitched the concept of joining forces, the better to take on the whirlwind search and advertising success of archrival Google. Last February, Yang wrote Ballmer that “now is not the right time to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction.” A year later Ballmer was back, telling Yang that Microsoft had...