Yang e-mail reaches out to Yahoo employees

Wonder what Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang and the company's nonexecutive chairman, Roy Bostock, said to the troops on Friday, after Microsoft launched its unsolicited $44.6 billion bid?

Here's the text of the e-mail they sent to employees, which the company filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Subject: more on today's news...

-CONFIDENTIAL-

fellow yahoos:

since we talked to you this morning, there's been a lot of media coverage and industry chatter about microsoft's unsolicited proposal to acquire yahoo!. we know you've been hearing and reading a lot about this. that's why we wanted to reach out to all of you at the end of the day to emphasize a few things that we hope will give you some more context about this proposal, the process that our board is taking, and what you can expect in the days ahead.

first, we want to emphasize that absolutely no decisions have been made--and, despite what some people have tried to suggest, there's certainly no integration process underway. this proposal is just that--a proposal. and it was only made in the last 24 hours. you can be sure the board is going to review it thoughtfully and carefully, and do what's right for our great company. microsoft's proposal is one of many options that we're evaluating in order to maximize value for our shareholders and employees over the long-term. that's why we will respond to microsoft after our board has completed a careful review of all of our strategic alternatives.

second, we can't let any of the noise we're hearing around this situation distract us from our core mission. it's critical that we continue to focus on running our business, executing our strategy and delivering value to all of our users, advertisers and publishers.

finally, we realize that this may have been a tough day for many of you, especially those on the front lines of our business. we know you have many questions, and we're committed to making sure you're as informed as possible as this process moves forward. in the interim, we both want to thank you for your continued energy, focus and determination. we'll continue to share information with you as we have it and can do so.

jerry and roy bostock (our new non-executive chairman)

[dascha1]

ADD'L NOTE: He also decided...

to go back to school to get his degree in Music, perhaps with a
focus on Performance or Industry.

[chuckwh]

Is the non-use of capital letters supposed to be cute?

Somebody should tell the man there's a reason for capital letters. It makes things easier to read. Yeesh, and he's a CEO?

[Lee in San Diego]

He isn't alone in that

Well if that is actually the way he wrote the memo, it might have
been changed to all lower case by someone else. However, I do
agree with you, and is becoming a common occurrence. Maybe they
don't have the time to hit the shift key. At least he had some
paragraph breaks.

[spider418]

Tell me about it

I capitalize my sentences all the time and what do I have to show for it? CEO of a lowly IT services company. Certainly no Yahoo. To pour salt on a paper cut this man has beat me to the job, while clearly using inferior grammar. I was beat in a race by a man with one arm tied, hopping on his left leg!

wait... maybe his lower case use is a sign of exactly the kind of out-of-box thinking needed to run a web startup. darn-it!!! all this time it was *me* who was hopping on one leg. well no more! ahh... this feels strangely liberating... google here i come!

[lostincosmos]

welcome to the interwebs!

since you are clearly new here, please take this time to also update your 80s music and your 70s clothes!

[JCPayne]

Remember when Microsoft wanted to buy AOL??

Anyone remember Steve Case standing up and telling a huge audience about when Microsoft said they wanted to buy AOL?

In his words:

http://www.businessweek.com/1998/29/b3587058.htm

"
On May 11, 1993, CEO Stephen M. Case of America Online Inc. (AOL) found himself face to face with Microsoft Corp. Chairman William H. Gates III. AOL, then the third-largest online-service provider, had gone public only a year earlier, after some fairly rocky beginnings. Gates--the most powerful man in Corporate America--was telling Case in a deadpan tone: ''I can buy 20% of you or I can buy all of you. Or I can go into this business myself and bury you.''
"

The fact of the matter is. Micro$haft NEEEDS this deal more than Yahoo needs Micro$haft.... I can name a bunch of flops by MS. From WebTV, to Microsoft Network, to MSN Search which they claim will be "on top" soon, to the tossing out of SCO vs. Novell court case...

Anyway
Yahoo has tons of potential suitors.

Ebay:
Then you'd see Yahoo, Ebay, Skype, Craigs'List, PayPal, Half.com, Overstock.com etc. etc. all under the same roof. Ebay would easily make up for the failed Yahoo Auctions unit. And also Yahoo could rebrand the Half.com/Overstock.com stores as Yahoo Stores or Yahoo Mall or something like that and reap big bucks from that. Also PayPal would be a big competitor to Google's upstart "CheckOut" business. Etc. ETc.

Sony:
Sony Entertainment could be another potential suitor. Yahoo could become the backend for the Sony PlayStation like how there's an XBox Live. And Yahoo chat could be embeded in the Sony Playstation for realtime game chat etc. Sony phones could be outfitted with Yahoo IMer etc.

Viacom:
Viacom has no large central network like how Disney/ABC does. Disney purchased the Go network and powers everything off there. Well Viacom has such stations as Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, BET, etc. etc. and they could put their content on Yahoo.

A US phone company might like to snap up Yahoo. It would give them a kick@$$ platform for Online media that they could call their own content. Plus Yahoo's deals with outside companies could be another source of revenue....

AOL/TW Could make a bid. After AOL-TW failed to bring in the large audience they could make a go of it again with Yahoo and see if they can do things right this time....

Another Suitor possibly from Europe might swoop down last minute. Sort of like Terra from Spain when it snatched up Lycos (becoming Terra Lycos) etc.... You never know what might happen....

But I do know there's lots of directions Yahoo could go and make one or some companies very- happy.

[gefitz]

Lots of suitors, but...

...none of those potential suitors will be willing to pony up unfinanced cash amounting to $31/share for Yahoo, who before this offer was trading somewhere in the $19-ish range.

This will happen...if the regulators can keep their mitts off of the deal, that is!

[Save_Me_from_my_Govt]

Deck chairs on the Titanic?

Sounds like a plea to the troops to "keep rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" while "we work out a way to maximize shareholder profits", (and make sure the 'Golden Parachutes' are in-place) before we bail out...

[scottwilkins]

"maximize value for our shareholders"...

I remember a day when companies would strive to gain the best for customers and employees. It's sad to know that now companies only think about shareholders and seem to care less about the source of their income. Once that critical mass has been reached in the market place, the customer no longer matters. It's all what the share holders think. Many of which have never run a company or had to deal with creating a customer friendly product. Does anyone else get this feeling too?

[PzkwVIb]

Strangely

It has always been the mission of every publicly traded corporation to maximize the value to its shareholders. It has to be by definition. The rest is good and companys should strive to be good to employees and customers, but their highest duty in a capitalist society is to their shareholders (read owners).

[ConsiderThis1]

Yahoo needs to reach out ... Much further

I have had Yahoo web hosting for years because I have a brain injury and their program, SiteBulider, has allowed me to have a web site because it makes creating my site brilliantly easy.

However, my web hosting is so slow that on a give day I have 528, even 741 errors of people not being able to see my pages because the server is so slow.

Yahoo won't let me take my site and move on because they have control over SiteBuilder.

I am at loggerheads as to what to do.

I wish Jerry Yang and all of Yahoo would get their show on the road and provide what I am paying for. When they turn away 500-700 visitors, I'm left with 19 to 56... Yahoo says it's a problem with the statistics, but really it's a problem of the statistics telling the truth about how many visitors are getting through...

Karen Kline

http://www.health-boundaries-bite.com/Vitamin-B12-and-Fingernails.html
Your fingernails reflect your health --
Learn some warning signs --
Karen Kline