Financial Pundit: Don't Mess With Carl

In a letter sent to Yahoo's board, Carl Ichann has threaten to seek control of the board, if it doesn't renew talks with Microsoft. Below is the first paragraph from his letter.

'It is clear to me that the board of directors of Yahoo has acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders and Microsoft. It is quite obvious that Microsoft's bid of $33 per share is a superior alternative to Yahoo's prospects on a standalone basis. I am perplexed by the board's actions. It is irresponsible to hide behind management's more than overly optimistic financial forecasts. It is unconscionable that you have not allowed your shareholders to choose to accept an offer that represented a 72% premium over Yahoo's closing price of $19.18 on the day before the initial Microsoft offer. I and many of your shareholders strongly believe that a combination between Yahoo and Microsoft would form a dynamic company and more importantly would be a force strong enough to compete with Google on the Internet.'

Clearly Mr Ichann motives are driven by money, but he is saying what a lot of people were thinking. What was Yahoo thinking? I am sure that Yahoo thinks that they can go it alone, but what does it have to offer beyond the internet? The buy-out offers gives everyone at Yahoo a nice and neat way out of the business.

Goggle is eating every one's lunch when it comes to making money online, along with developing innovate ways to sell advertising space. Just this week, comScore announced that Google beat out Yahoo for the first time in the number of unique visitors with 141 million views. Yahoo was second with 140 million and third was MSN at 121 million. When it comes to the share of online searches, Google has 59.2% of the market followed by Yahoo at 21.6% and MSN at 9.6%.

Below is a chart of Google, Apple, Yahoo & Microsoft over the past year.