Sprint/AT&T Dispute Elevates to FCC
Yahoo continues to fight the takeover offer of Microsoft from last week, and is getting creative with its options to accomplish this. Few other companies have the capital to buy Yahoo outright, but several have lined up to get the chance to potentially get a piece of the internet company, helping them fend off Microsoft. Among those offering various forms of deals are AOL(owned by Time Warner) and News Corp(FOX). (Kleinman, 2008)
AOL has offered few details in how they a deal would be structured, but anti-trust issues have cropped up as Google owns a small stake in AOL and has a number of advertising agreements in place with them. In the case of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch is offering an 10 Billion dollar asset swap that would give Murdoch a large stake in Yahoo, and provide Yahoo with a piece of News Corp’s MySpace.com site. (Kleinman, 2008)
In any case, Yahoo seems determined to retain its independence from Microsoft and the battle is likely to get increasingly ugly as time passes. (Hansel, 2008)
Sources:
Kleinman, Mark. AOL Clicks with Yahoo to Sideline Microsoft. The Telegraph. February 17, 2007. Retreived February 17 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/02/17/cnaol117.xml.
Hansel, Saul. A Guide to Yahoo’s Unlikely Alternatives to Microsoft. NewYork Times February 13, 2008. pD2.