Passionland

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft)

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008
To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: Proposed Acquisition of Yahoo!

Today, I am very excited to announce that Microsoft has made a proposal to acquire Yahoo!. This announcement represents a big opportunity for Microsoft, and is the next major milestone in our company wide transformation to embrace online services, search, and advertising. By combining the strengths of our companies, we can deliver an efficient and highly competitive offering for our customers. Our complementary assets will give us increased talent and scale to compete in the markets of search and online advertising, and pioneer new innovations in the areas of video, mobile services, online commerce, and social media. This year, online advertising is a $40 billion business. It will grow to $80 billion by 2010 and will continue to increase in the years beyond. This market provides a significant growth opportunity for Microsoft—our ability to provide the best search and online experiences for consumers, and the best ad platform for publishers and advertisers, is the key to unlocking this opportunity. We are on a good path with our existing search and advertising product roadmaps. To date, we have made progress in our organic online services and advertising efforts, and by joining with Yahoo!, we will take the next step toward becoming a major search destination and social platform for consumers. The combined reach of our content properties and combined breadth of our tools for advertisers will enable us to provide an online advertising platform at scale. Together, we’ll create a company that is in a much better position to compete against an increasingly dominant player in this market. Through our recent acquisitions of aQuantive and Tellme, we understand what it takes to successfully integrate new talent, assets, and infrastructure into our company. Leaders from both Microsoft and Yahoo! will work together closely on the integration process to ensure that we are thoughtful about the questions we ask and the decisions we make. As we move forward, we’ll look carefully at how to bring our assets together to create the greatest value for customers, employees, and shareholders. During this transition period, I urge you to stay focused on your commitments and team goals. We are committed to communicating with you frequently as our leadership team works on bringing the two companies together. As I outlined in my quarterly strategy email last week, we grow by anticipating new areas where software has the greatest potential to create opportunities. The proposed acquisition of Yahoo! will transform our ability to compete as new opportunities in online services, search, and advertising emerge. I am very excited about today’s announcement and about the collective talent and energy we will bring to the industry. A great opportunity is in front of us to evolve how people and businesses create, find, and use information. Through today’s proposed acquisition, we can take our business to new levels of success and growth. Kevin Johnson, Chris Liddell, Ray Ozzie and I will host an employee web cast that can be viewed live beginning at 10:00am PST and will also be available on-demand. You can link to the web cast at http://msw/NewsEvents/StudioCasts/Pages/conferences.aspx Steve

via TechCrunch

Jerry Yang (Yahoo!)
Subject: more on today’s news…-CONFIDENTIAL-

fellow yahoos:since we talked to you this morning, there’s been a lot of media coverage and industry chatter about microsoft’s unsolicited proposal to acquire yahoo!. we know you’ve been hearing and reading a lot about this. that’s why we wanted to reach out to all of you at the end of the day to emphasize a few things that we hope will give you some more context about this proposal, the process that our board is taking, and what you can expect in the days ahead.first, we want to emphasize that absolutely no decisions have been made–and, despite what some people have tried to suggest, there’s certainly no integration process underway. this proposal is just that–a proposal. and it was only made in the last 24 hours. you can be sure the board is going to review it thoughtfully and carefully, and do what’s right for our great company. microsoft’s proposal is one of many options that we’re evaluating in order to maximize value for our shareholders and employees over the long-term. that’s why we will respond to microsoft after our board has completed a careful review of all of our strategic alternatives.second, we can’t let any of the noise we’re hearing around this situation distract us from our core mission. it’s critical that we continue to focus on running our business, executing our strategy and delivering value to all of our users, advertisers and publishers.finally, we realize that this may have been a tough day for many of you, especially those on the front lines of our business. we know you have many questions, and we’re committed to making sure you’re as informed as possible as this process moves forward. in the interim, we both want to thank you for your continued energy, focus and determination. we’ll continue to share information with you as we have it and can do so.jerry and roy bostock (our new non-executive chairman)

via cnet