Carl Icahn said Tuesday that Microsoft Corp needs Yahoo to be competitive with Google over the next five years.
“They can’t compete” if the company doesn’t acquire Yahoo, he said at the annual New York Financial Writers Association Awards Dinner at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.
Icahn cited Google’s incursions into core Microsoft businesses such as word processing and spreadsheet applications. Microsoft’s Word and Excel have dominated this area for years. Google recently launched its own versions of these products, giving them away free on its website.
“Microsoft needs this company,” Icahn said. “They have to be on the internet if they’re going to compete with Google. These applications are all going online.”
Icahn owns 10 million shares of Yahoo, and has put up his own slate of directors to replace Yahoo’s board. He wants the company to rethink it’s resistance to being acquired by Microsoft, which withdrew a bid for the company earlier this year saying Yahoo was not cooperating.
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Icahn doesn’t own a computer. He has no idea what Microsoft or Yahoo does. He only knows that MSFT offered $33 for YHOO and the stock is currently $26. That’s the extent of his due diligence. This is all just sound and fury.
Mircosoft… What’s their market cap?
And now that I think, are they in any way related to Microsoft ?
No you moron, they are a subsidiary of Maicrosoft.
I’d tend to agree with 11:15, besides icahnhazblog, which he really doesn’t, the guy doesn’t appear to knwo jack sh!t about computers, but then of course no one really expects him to. This is the same game thats been played over-and-over again for the past 30 years, and to think otherwise is silly. Icahn wants his money, and he’ll say/do whatever it takes to get it, with little care as to whether it results in the downfall of either company after-the-fact.
Guess that it is time for Icahn to move to Plan B.
Put up a slate of directors for Microsoft’s next board meeting, take over Microsoft, force Microsoft to buy Yahoo.
Now THAT (2:07p) works.
So what Icahn is really saying is that the Justice Department was correct in 1998-9 when they said that MSFT should be broken into two companies, because the Apps company would at least still be profitable now, instead of being stuck with an OS (Vista) that even MSFT isn’t trying to sell for most of the places where the commoditized computer sales business is actually expanding?
Damn. I =do= own a computer (or five) and could have told them that.
Have to wonder, though, how far the “MSFT is toast without YHOO” argument will go in the MSFT board room.
I think what Icahn is trying to say is that if MSFT and YHOO are both airplanes without a dance partner they should get together.