Microsoft & Yahoo: Talk About a Put-down...

Kevin Maney observes: OK, so, if you tease out what Yahoo said today about dropping talks with Microsoft, you'd have to conclude that Yahoo is as attractive as a house with a cracked foundation and a highway running through the back yard.

First of all, now that Microsoft has crawled all through Yahoo and thought about the purchase, Microsoft is running for the hills. As Yahoo's statement says: "Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo, even at the price range it had previously suggested." Ouch! The price that Yahoo said was too low isn't close to low enough to get Microsoft interested.

Then Yahoo said this today: "With respect to an acquisition of Yahoo!'s search business alone that Microsoft had proposed, Yahoo!'s Board of Directors has determined, after careful evaluation, that such a transaction . . . would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future."

Well, the latest numbers show that Yahoo continues to lose search market share to Google and is now basically a search also-ran. So Yahoo is saying that its future depends on a business that is going nowhere but south. Doesn't that sound kind of...bad, to say the least? It's like the San Francisco Giants saying the baseball team's future relies on Barry Bonds.

Whether Yahoo's prospects as a company are good or bad, it seems like its handling of public statements has been horrible.