Perspectives
After 17 years of existence, Yahoo! Inc. has fallen upon hard times. It recently fired its CEO Carol Bartz and has fallen further and further behind its competitor Google. Now the real question is who Yahoo will consider the “right bidder.” Jack Ma, CEO of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, said that Alibaba would be “interested” in buying Yahoo. Ma certainly should be interested, seeing as Yahoo has a 40% stake in Alibaba.
Alibaba is now in a position of power. It is thriving in the Chinese e-commerce market, thanks to its incredibly successful Taobao.com and B2C platform TMall.com. With the opportunity to buy Yahoo, Ma has the chance to consolidate ownership of Alibaba within the company and break free of its responsibility to Yahoo as an outside stock holder. Alibaba is not the only interested party, however. Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $47 billion in 2008, an offer that Yahoo declined, and rumors have circulated that Microsoft may yet again attempt to buy the company. It has been speculated that AOL would buy Yahoo, though this seems improbable as AOL faces its own serious problems.
Further Reading:
Alibaba ‘interested’ in buying all of Yahoo
Yahoo’s potential buyers include Alibaba
And Now Yahoo Has Put Itself Up For Sale…
