Yahoo! Not Critical for Microsoft's Plans

Yahoo! or no Yahoo!, Microsoft is planning to go knee-deep in web search. That should really worry the high-ranking executives at the Sunnyvale-based company, or maybe that was the whole point. MS Chairman and biggest shareholder, Bill Gates, said yesterday in a telephone interview for Reuters that acquiring Yahoo! would be a great plus, but it is not critical to the future development of the Redmond based company's online branch.

"We can afford to make big investments in the engineering and marketing that needs to get done. We will do that with or without Yahoo. […] But we also see that we'd get there faster if the great engineering work that Yahoo has done and the great engineers there were part of the common effort," Gates said.

The relative peace and quiet that appear to have settled over the churning waters of Microsoft's unsolicited $44.6 billion bid are but a façade. Yahoo! spirits are not by far calm, with internal fighting going strong over whether the deal should be accepted or not, and CEO Jerry Yang (against) seems to be a part of the losing side. He has been trying hard to find alternatives to the takeover, or even another competitor that would go up against MS, but wasn't successful.

"We sent them a letter and said we think that's a fair offer. There's nothing that's gone on other than us stating that we think it's a fair offer," Gates also said. A direct threat to Yahoo! that his company will not raise the bid, but stick to the current sum. The down slope MS stock has been on ever since it announced its bid should make the Sunnyvale-based company board members' heads instead of them. Each day the Microsoft stock loses value, the lesser money Yahoo! will be getting from the deal. The offer made consisted of 50 percent cash and 50 percent Microsoft shares.