February 4, 2008: Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly considers shopping for the search engine Yahoo. Apple is considered one of a number of corporations, following stories that Microsoft provided $44.6 billion for the net portal the earlier week.
Nothing finally comes of it, however Apple’s curiosity is later confirmed in a certified biography of Jobs.
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Apple shopping for Yahoo?
A report printed in The Scotsman (sadly now not obtainable, though the quote is reproduced right here) claims that, “It’s believed [Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang] can be notably open to a rescue bid from Steve Jobs’ Apple Corp, having brazenly expressed his admiration for the agency previously. Yang final yr invited Jobs to Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale to present a motivational speak to workers.”
On the time, Apple had a comparatively meager $16 billion in money reserves. This implies Apple couldn’t have competed with Microsoft’s giant money supply.
Microsoft makes hostile bid to purchase Yahoo
Nonetheless, Yang was in no hurry to cede to Microsoft’s “hostile” supply. In keeping with the 2015 e book Marissa Mayer and the Combat to Save Yahoo!, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to coerce Yang into promoting. He threatened that if Yang didn’t conform to the deal, Microsoft would inform Yahoo’s buyers that it had declined a momentous supply.
The implication? A Yahoo shareholder rebellion might dethrone Yang.
Microsoft’s hostile supply would have paid half the worth in Microsoft inventory and the opposite half in money.
In the end, Yahoo declined Microsoft’s bid on February 11, 2008. The next month, on March 18, Yahoo printed a presentation for shareholders, saying the corporate would double free money stream inside two years and lift revenues to $8.8 billion in 2010.
So the place does Apple match into this?
Whether or not Apple thought of making a proposal at the moment stays unclear, however Jobs was positively . The e book Changing into Steve Jobs recounts the Apple co-founder’s friendship with The Walt Disney Firm’s Bob Iger. Previous to Jobs’ liver transplant in 2009, the 2 reportedly would speak “three or 4 occasions every week” and meet at Apple’s HQ to strategize.
This helps clarify how, precisely, Apple might have deliberate to compete with Microsoft’s Yahoo supply: by teaming with Disney.
“We’d stand at a whiteboard brainstorming,” Iger recalled. “We talked about shopping for corporations. We talked about shopping for Yahoo collectively.”
Shopping for Yahoo would have given Apple entry to a number of patents, net companies and different instruments in a fiercely aggressive sector. Provided that Google was, at the moment, coming into the smartphone area with Android (a transfer that infuriated Jobs), it’s fascinating to suppose that Apple might have taken on Google at search as effectively.
Would it not have been a sensible concept to purchase Yahoo? Fairly probably not. Would it not have been fascinating to look at? Completely!
