Microhoo: fat lady has not yet sung

It's IT Blogwatch: in which we ponder the fate of Jerry Yang's career -- will he be first against the wall when the shareholders revolt? Or are negotiations between Yahoo! and Microsoft still going on in secret? Not to mention ten drool-worthy luxury workstations...

Elizabeth Montalbano reports:

Facing shareholder ire and a plunging stock price, Yahoo Inc. CEO Jerry Yang said Yahoo board members would still sell the company to Microsoft Corp. or another suitor if the price is right ... Yang said late yesterday that Yahoo would be open to a sale as long as the company is not "undervalued" by any potential bidders ... [and] it was Microsoft, not Yahoo, that was unwilling to complete the deal; his company wanted to continue negotiations on a price ... Yang's comments indicate he is backtracking on the position he held during Microsoft's three-month attempt to purchase Yahoo, and they come as the Internet company faces pressure from shareholders who think the company was foolish to pass on the offer ... Two public pension funds from the city of Detroit already said they plan to expand a complaint, originally filed as two lawsuits on March 5, against Yang and other members of Yahoo's board of directors ... Yahoo will likely face a barrage of similar class-action suits in the coming months. more

Crayton Harrison and Amy Thomson add:

Yang will continue a strategy to boost Internet advertising sales and is speaking with other companies about ways to increase Yahoo's value. While Yahoo isn't for sale, the company would listen "should somebody else come back someday and want to buy the company," he said ... Yang may find his job in jeopardy if his strategy fails or he can't boost the stock in a few months ... An idea to outsource more search advertising to Google Inc. is already drawing criticism for risking customer defections to the competition ... Yahoo, owner of the most visited U.S. Web site, said yesterday that its annual meeting will be on July 3. more

Erick Schonfeld wonders if Yang is even still in control:

Here’s the latest Yahoo rumor that we’re chasing: The Yahoo board of directors met earlier today and authorized chairman Roy Bostock, not CEO Jerry Yang, to call Ballmer about re-starting negotiations. In fact, this rumor may have been behind the small rally in Yahoo’s stock today ... Yang has been getting a lot of grief from angry shareholders for not taking Microsoft’s $33 a share offer, and instead holding out for $37 or $38. Now his story keeps changing on when he learned about the $33 bid. But when Ballmer balked and called off the deal, that may have been when Yang’s grip on power began to weaken ... Now the Yahoo board may be rethinking that stance, and putting Bostock in charge of negotiations. The timetable for any new negotiations is about ten days, since Yahoo announced yesterday that its annual shareholder meeting will take place on July 3. That gives Microsoft (and anyone else) until May 15 to nominate an alternate slate of directors, should it choose to revisit that option. more

Paul Kedrosky muses:

If true, then it's the end of Jerry Yang's time at Yahoo, not to mention one of the biggest business debacles in recent memory. If it's not true ... well, at least it's entertaining reading. more

But Kara Swisher pooh-poohs it:

Rumors of Jerry Yang’s dethroning are greatly exaggerated ... That is not to say Yang has not lost a mountain of credibility with Wall Street, investors, his own employees and in the industry in general ... Yahoo’s leadership team has not exactly distinguished itself in the aftermath with their public statements, whether it be Bostock’s fanciful musings that Yahoo had the support of shareholders or President Sue Decker’s ungracious dissing of disgruntled Yahoo employees or pretty much the bulk of the backpedaling Yang has done ... it has been so cringe-inducing to watch, that part of me wishes they would slink back into that cave Yang and his team have been living in all year long ... I were to predict, I would say six months without meaningful change is all he has. And after that, I would imagine, is when the blade really starts really falling. more

And Henry Blodget squashes the idea:

If Yahoo shareholders are going to bench anyone, they should bench Roy Bostock, who was either asleep at the switch during these negotiations or incompetent ... we actually believe the two sources close to Microsoft who told us today that Steve Ballmer has "moved on" ... Steve's "we've moved on" tactic, however un-planned, is working better than any Yahoo acquisition tactic thus far, so why would he abandon it? ... The whole $33-bid-wasn't-delivered-in-writing thing -- though mostly a comment on the patheticness of Yahoo (why on earth does this matter?) -- also reveals that Steve Ballmer was looking for an excuse to walk ... to persuade Steve to reopen negotiations, we think Yahoo will have to become the promoter of this deal--a position it will find quite unfamiliar after its stance for past three months. more

And finally...

• Top 10 Luxury Workstations

Buffer overflow:

• Richi Jennings: Lost in Translation? Bill Gates in Korea...
• Mike Gunderloy: Dragonfly: Open-Source Web Debugging
• Mitchell Ashley: Apple Amazingly Silent About SaaS
• Todd Watson: IBM's Global CEO Study 2008: "Hungry for Change"
• Dan Goodin: Google launches security group for open source
• Coding Horror: Understanding Model-View-Controller
• 9 to 5 Mac: iPhone, iPod touch becomes home music remote control
• John Timmer: Researchers use Akamai to find local BitTorrent peers
• David Strom: How Open is the International Internet?
• Kara Swisher: Andreessen to Facebook Board?

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• SJVN: Pondering when your next break-in will happen
• Don Tennant: Campus whispers
• Robert L. Mitchell: Microsoft, VMware and the coming VMwars
• Preston Gralla: Cubans' first PCs: Windows XP, Not Mac or Vista
• Mike Elgan: Free Wi-Fi trickling down to iPhones
• Mark Hall: P2 Security for PCI Section 6.6
• Douglas Schweitzer: Backstabbing backscatter
• Shark Tank: Well, yes
• Shark Bait: IRS and FICA computers

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 21 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Sun's OpenSolaris: now with added cloudiness
• Microsoft gives up: what now for Ballmer?
• SCO in court again: Novell wants its $19,979,561.00