I could see Apple and Yahoo creating good synergistic mileu more so than Microsoft and Yahoo which are too redundant in product offerings.

Apple would clean up the myriad of Yahoo tools and provide some direction to the companies many offerings.

.Mac would become a premium service at $149 a year and Apple would basically turn Yahoo into .Mac on steroids ...but for free for most services.

I don't see Apple wanting to buy the chaotic boondoggle that is Yahoo.



Could Apple legally invest into Yahoo before putting in an offer that would make MS counteroffer, thereby increasing Apple's financial holdings as Yahoo stock would skyrocket again and drain MS of more money if the deal goes through? Well, they can at least do one of the two legally.

Oh lord, please, no.
Hopefully this would just be a ploy to make MS pay even more.
The MS bid is not about any product or technology... its about eyeballs, pure and simple.

But for the most entertaining look at the bid, check out...
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/0...-of-ideas.html

Fake Steve's finally back on track.

As someone with both a .mac subscription and paid subscription to Yahoo! email I too would welcome Yahoo! being bought by anyone else (well except to the Chinese company being mentioned in the article). I'm weary of Microsoft radically making Yahoo! less Apple friendly.

No chance Apple is so incredibly stupid to bid on YHOO (I hope!). They have enough on their plate and I don't think the value is there to come in over MSFTs bid.

Personally, I like Yahoo and wouldn't want to seem them consumed by MSFT, but I think the resulting indigestion would be great fun to watch and a big win for Apple. I would like to see MSFT get bled for another 10-15 billion on this purchase if possible though.

I would think that Yahoo! would be a distraction for Apple. Possibly as much (maybe slightly less) of a mistake as it will be for Microsoft.

However, I'd love to see some bidding force Microsoft to pay a few (10?) billion more, thus causing even more of a mess for Microsoft to find ways to justify this buyout.

Yahoo! is a "fixer upper" project I think. Probably has lots of great assets but probably lacks real focus. This is a perfect fit for Microsoft (sarcasm fully intended). This will keep Microsoft distracted for years trying to figure out a way to properly ruining the things that are good about Yahoo!

It would be a real challenge for Steve and his team to see how well they can shape up such a large organization (in a very different business) by Steve's sheer force of will. I suppose if anyone could do it, he can (making this a slightly smaller mistake for Apple). But it would scare me.

Apple's best strategic acquisition would be Adobe to get control of a bunch of decent software assets (including media content formats and technologies widely used on the Internet). Then partner closely with Google for the "cloud computing" side of things. Maybe even sell off .Mac to Google and much greater (and cooler) integration of Google with Leopard, Safari, iPhone, iPod touch, etc.

I think that's where I'd go if I were Apple.

I see no real reason for Apple to spend billions to acquire the sinking ship that is Yahoo!, and the article sounds like a reporter trying to invent a story to fill space.