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 experiences that Microsoft provided $44.6 billion for the online portal the earlier week.
Nothing finally comes of it, however Apple’s curiosity is later confirmed in a licensed biography of Jobs.
This put up accommodates affiliate hyperlinks. Cult of Mac could earn a fee if you use our hyperlinks to purchase gadgets.
Apple shopping for Yahoo?
A report revealed in The Scotsman (sadly now not accessible, though the quote is reproduced right here) claims that, “It’s believed [Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang] can be significantly open to a rescue bid from Steve Jobs’ Apple Corp, having brazenly expressed his admiration for the agency prior to now. Yang final yr invited Jobs to Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale to provide 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 massive money supply.
Microsoft makes hostile bid to purchase Yahoo
Nonetheless, Yang was in no hurry to cede to Microsoft’s “hostile” supply. In response to the 2015 e book, Marissa Mayer and the Battle 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 traders that it had declined a momentous supply.
The implication? A Yahoo shareholder rebellion may dethrone Yang.
Microsoft’s hostile supply would have paid half the value in Microsoft inventory and the opposite half in money.
Finally, Yahoo declined Microsoft’s bid on February 11, 2008. The next month, on March 18, Yahoo revealed a presentation for shareholders, saying the corporate would double free money circulation 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-about making a suggestion presently stays unclear, however Jobs was undoubtedly . The e book Turning 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 per week” and meet at Apple’s HQ to strategize.
This helps clarify how precisely Apple could 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 bunch of patents, net companies and different instruments in a fiercely aggressive sector. Provided that Google was, presently, coming into the smartphone area with Android (a transfer that infuriated Jobs), it’s fascinating to assume that Apple may have taken on Google at search.
Wouldn’t it have been a sensible thought to purchase Yahoo? Fairly probably not. Wouldn’t it have been fascinating to observe? Completely!
