Microsoft working on Yahoo bid with PE firm Silver Lake Partners: Report

Microsoft working on Yahoo bid with PE firm Silver Lake Partners: Report

NEW YORK: Microsoft is working on a fresh bid to acquire internet giant Yahoo Inc and may rope in private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and a Canadian pension board to partly fund the takeover, a report has said. 


Under a proposal being discussed, Microsoft would put up several billions of dollars, while additional funding would be sought from the banks and its buyout partners like Silver Lake and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. 


Yahoo had rebuffed a USD 44.6 billion takeover bid earlier in 2008 from the world's largest software maker Microsoft, which has made a few other failed attempts too in the past to acquire the internet company. 


"Private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners is working with one of its investors, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and software giant Microsoft Corp to put together a proposal to buy Yahoo Inc," the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unnamed source. 


The contribution from Silver Lake and the CPP Investment Board for the proposed buyout would be less than what Microsoft puts in, the report said. 


As per the proposal being discussed, the buyers would spin off Yahoo's Asia assets after a takeover, WSJ reported. 


The report said at least nine private equity firms are eyeing Yahoo and its global audience of 700 million monthly visitors to the company's various websites, including Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports. 


Yahoo's board recently fired Chief Executive Carol Bartz after she failed to increase the company's market share. Still, it has been attracting a lot of attention from possible suitors. 


Chinese internet company Alibaba Group's head Jack Ma was also recently reported to have said that he was "interested" in buying Yahoo. 


Further, an internal memo sent by Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock and co-founders David Filo and Jerry Yang last month to their employees had sparked rumours about a possible sale of the internet company. 


In the memo, the top executives said that a "strategic review" process was on to bring the company back to robust growth path and multiple parties have "expressed interest in a number of potential options." 


However, they did not specify the "potential options", neither did they name the "multiple parties" which had evinced their interest in the company.

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Google : kills off Buzz, its ill-fated social network

Google : kills off Buzz, its ill-fated social network:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Google is killing off Buzz, the company's 18-month-old first try at creating a social network.

Buzz will be shut down "in a few weeks," Google said in a blog post Friday, as the company redirects its social focus toward its new Google+ network. The move is part of a broader effort at Google to cull its product portfolio and shut down low-profile offerings. "More wood behind fewer arrows" was the way Google put it in the July blog post announcing its first wave of product eliminations.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Google is killing off Buzz, the company's 18-month-old first try at creating a social network.

Buzz will be shut down "in a few weeks," Google said in a blog post Friday, as the company redirects its social focus toward its new Google+ network. The move is part of a broader effort at Google to cull its product portfolio and shut down low-profile offerings. "More wood behind fewer arrows" was the way Google put it in the July blog post announcing its first wave of product eliminations.

Google added a few more projects to the scrap heap on Friday, including Code Search, a tool for finding open-source code on the Web, and Jaiku, a Twitter-like microblogging service that Google acquired in 2007.

Eliminating Buzz will help Google close the book on one of its most explosive missteps. When Buzz launched in February 2010, Gmail users were furious to discover that the network's default settings automatically set members to follow their most e-mailed contacts -- and then posted those contacts publicly after a user "buzzed" about something.

One woman wrote a profanity-laden, much-circulated blog post about how Buzz revealed some of her Internet activity to her abusive ex-boyfriend and his friends.

But the damage was already done: Critics wondered openly about Google's dedication to user privacy. The debacle lead to a class-action lawsuit and a settlement deal with the Federal Trade Commission, which now requires Google to undergo annual privacy audits.

Users won't be able to post on Buzz after the shutdown, but they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile and download it using an export tool called Google Takeout.

"We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+," Google's vice president of product, Bradley Horowitz, wrote on the company's blog.

Google said in an earnings report Thursday that its three-month-old Google+ social network, which is more like Facebook than like Buzz, now has 40 million users.

Google +: Google profits soar as users "flock"

Google has revealed significant gains in its battle with Facebook, as it posted a 26pc jump in profits and said 40m users had signed up to its new social network, Google +.

Revenues at the web search giant soared by a third to $9.7bn (£6.2bn) in the three months to 30 September, as net profits grew more than a quarter to $2.7bn.

The figures beat analyst expectations and allayed fears that Google's recent hiring spree would take its toll on profits. The company, which recently announced plans for a new office on London's "Silicon roundabout", took on 2,585 new staff in the three-month period, taking its total headcount to 31,353.

Its results, released on Thursday night, offered a reminder of how Google is using its position as the internet's dominant gateway to build a business that weathers economic turbulence better than most companies.

They also highlighted Google's rapid expansion into new areas outside web search, and the seriousness of its challenge to Facebook as a social networking platform.

Larry Page, chief executive of the web search giant, said: "People are flocking into Google + at an incredible rate and we are just getting started".

The network, which allows users to group their friends in "circles", launched in beta at the end of June and was made fully accessible to the public in late September, by which time it had already attracted more than 25m users. In 2004, it took Facebook 10 months to reach 1 million users.

Investors quickly showed their approval of Google's results as its share price surged 6pc to $592.36 in after hours trading in New York.

Analysts had been bracing for a slight slowdown in Google's growth, assuming the economic turbulence that roiled the stock market during the summer would have some fallout as advertisers grew more cautious and tightened their ad budgets.

Herman Leung, an analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group, said: "A lot of people were expecting spending to be out of control, but they had good control."

Brian Pitz, an analyst at UBS, added: "The real interesting thing here is the expenses that weren't as high as Wall Street was anticipating. R&D was less than we were expecting. This is the fourth quarter in a row the company has accelerated their revenue on top line.''

Google's performance will also bolster faith in Mr Page, whose appointment as chief executive six months ago initially met with a cool reception.

Google Plus a 'Complete Failure: 5 Reasons We Agree

Steve Yegge, a senior engineer at Google, has accidentally and publicly posted a critical analysis about his company's understanding of platforms, calling Google Plus a "complete failure."

In a 4,000-plus-word deconstruction of Google+, intended for his co-workers' eyes only, Yegge critiqued his former employer Amazon before mentioning Google's failure to create a platform that works as well as Facebook.

Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo)," he wrote. "We all don't get it."

Yegge said Google+ simply cannot cater to as many people as Facebook, not merely in numbers -- Facebook has almost 20 times as many users -- but because it does not have diversity.

"Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that's not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work," Yegge wrote on Google+. "So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone."

The Google+ team tried to mimic Facebook's usage of games but simply ended up being run-of-the-mill, thanks to a lack of understanding of platforms, Yegge said.

"That one last thing that Google doesn't do well is platforms. We don't understand platforms. We don't 'get' platforms. Some of you do, but you are the minority. ... I was kind of hoping that competitive pressure fromMicrosoft and Amazon and more recently Facebook would make us wake up collectively and start doing universal services ... as our top priority from now on. But no. No, it's like our 10th or 11th priority. Or 15th, I don't know. It's pretty low."

Yegge intended only fellow Google employees to see his self-proclaimed "long, opinionated rant," which he deleted immediately after posting in his Google+ Circles Wednesday, though a copy remains on Rip Rowan's blog. Yegge said Google's public relations team was very respectful and did not try to censor his assessment, as it was his personal opinion.

He may well be right. Although Google enjoyed a 1,269 percent spike in traffic after opening to the public in late September, traffic has since dropped more than 60 percent, according to Chitika.

Could Google+ indeed be a complete failure? Here's five reasons why I have to agree with Yegge.

1.    No one is there

Simply put, Facebook has more than 750 million active users, which is a monopoly compared with Google+ and its estimated 43 million. I can post the cure to cancer, but it would still go under the radar and unnoticed. If the purpose of social media is to be social, and there's no one to be social with, what's the point?

2.    Too much buildup

Since Google+ didn't even open to the public until Sept. 20, it built up a hype that the newest social networking site was this amazing, exclusive new way to connect with friends. Everyone was begging to score an invite, to be a part of the elite. Until they found out that Google+ wasn't really that extraordinary.

3.     There's nothing to do

Google undoubtedly has made attempts to keep users engaged with new updates and features, like Hangouts. But it looks like Google+ is having difficulty, judging by the numbers. However, if I wanted to video chat with my friends, I'd most likely use Skype. While I must admit I really enjoy the simple interface on Google+ sans a flood of invites to FarmVille and Mafia Wars, I know that many really enjoy the social aspect of online gaming. Google+ still has its fair share of games, but not nearly as many as Facebook.

4.     No one has a clue how to use it ... still

Humans typically don't like change. I remember feeling the same way when I switched over from MySpace to Facebook. But Facebook made it easy to understand: There was nothing complicated about clicking "like" or add photo. I'll be honest, I still have no idea what happens after I click "+1."

5.     Circles are about as private as the lunch arrangement in "Mean Girls"

Yes, you can actually see what circles people put others in. On each post from Google+ users, there is a denotation of what stream they post, either "limited" or "public." Chances are if you only see "public" posts from a friend, you have been placed in their acquaintances category, leaving you wondering why you weren't good enough to be a friend.