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"Talk about a 180. Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco; he and his company are tired, battered and bruised. But his message is now - suddenly, and amazingly - clear: Yahoo wants to be bought by Microsoft. \nHis exact words?\n\"To this day, I have to say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo. I don't think that is a bad idea at all...at the right price, whatever the price is, we are willing to sell the company. We were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate a deal, and we felt that we weren't that far apart. But at the end of the day, they withdrew and they since have been very clear about not wanting to buy the company.\" \nPerhaps I have a bad memory, but Yahoo did not want Microsoft to acquire them following their initial offer which, in the light of perhaps inevitable economic recession and current Yahoo share price, now seems generous. \nIn fact: they did everything in their power to block the deal from happening, including negotiating a search ad deal with Google - one that was doomed to fail because of anti-monopoly laws. \nNow, they're willing to be acquired at the \"right price,\" which, in light of recent events, will inevitably be lower than Microsoft's initial offer. This is a huge win for Steve Ballmer, who showed he's a tough negotiator who knows when to walk away and wait for a better opportunity, and that opportunity is now. Microsoft is now buying a much, much weaker Yahoo, and even if their price is low; severely lower than their initial offer, Yang will probably have to take it. \nThe stage is now set for the final chapter of a Microsoft-Google-Yahoo saga. Yahoo definitely pulled the shortest straw here; Microsoft may be a winner, but whether they're capable of doing something useful with a giant such as Yahoo remains questionable. The real winner is, once again, Google, who interfered just enough to weaken both Microsoft and Yahoo as much as possible with virtually no downside. Well played."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/11/06/yahoo-microsoft-buy-acquisition/>