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News Corp. Scrambles To Bid For Yahoo — The rumors keep on rolling around the surprise semi-hostile Microsoft bid for Yahoo this morning. Sillicon Alley Insider says they've heard that a couple of hedge funds were already preparing their own bids for Yahoo, and were (or perhaps still are) days away from making their move.
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A Giant Bid That Shows How Tired the Giant Is — Oh, how the mighty have fallen. — This may seem like an odd way to characterize a company that just announced its willingness to plunk down $44.6 billion to make its first hostile takeover ever. A company that will probably generate …

Microsoft/Yahoo: A Bad Deal For Silicon Valley — There's a ton of discussion today about Microsoft's unsolicited bid for Yahoo. Much of the discussion focuses on whether or not the deal is a good thing for Microsoft, Yahoo or Google's shareholders. While it's possible it could be a good or bad deal …

Deal That May Create More, Not Less, Competition — In most industries, a merger of two major companies would cause everyone else to panic over a decline in competition. — But in the case of the online advertising market, advertising and media executives said on Friday that they liked the prospect of a combined Microsoft and Yahoo.

Media Response — 02-01-08 Yahoo! Board of Directors to Evaluate Unsolicited Proposal From Microsoft — Media Hotline — Robinson Lerer & Montgomery for Yahoo! Inc. — FAQ: Unsolicited Proposal From Microsoft — Q1. How is Yahoo! responding to Microsoft's proposal?
Discussion:
WebProNews, The Constant Observer, Tech Trader Daily, Yodel Anecdotal, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Valleywag, Mashable! and CNN

MSFT-YHOO: the Twitterverse edition — At Rob's urging, I've put together some of the Twitter posts (no, I will not call them “tweets") that came through my Twitter client this morning related to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. Got any others? Email me. — @stuartma: Studebaker buys Edsel.
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Random Mumblings

Google's Investment in AOL Set Stage for MSFT/Yahoo! Merger/Acquisition

Yahoo! buy would give Microsoft ownership of open source e-mail, projects, code.
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TeleRead


Microsoft-Yahoo: What Will Stay And What Will Go? — While the tech world waits to see whether Yahoo will accept Microsoft's $44.6 billion takeover bid, Microsoft and Yahoo employees sleep restlessly at the prospect of massive staff cuts if the takeover goes ahead.


Bullish About the Web — ONLINE ADS: WINNERS AND LOSERS — Perhaps because a Jan. 2 report (pdf) by JPMorgan Chase on Internet stocks ran 312 pages, it took a while for many bloggers to digest it. “Nothing but Net,” written by Imran Khan, a stock analyst, and his team at the investment bank …


Every User Lies — Heidi Adkisson notes that features sell products, but the people buying those products often don't use the very features they bought the product for in the first place. … It's interesting that Heidi used the hedge phrase “may be different” when her own study data showed …


Decision: Blogs vs. New York Times — February 1st, 02008 by Alexander Rose — Long Bets has arrived at a decision for Long Bet #2 between blogger Dave Winer and Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times. At stake is US$2000.00 plus half the interest that has accrued over the last 5 years in the Farsight Fund …


iPhone takes on semi, lives to tell the tale — We though we'd seen it all when it came to creative device destruction — iPod with a bullet: check, exploding laptops: check, everything in a blender: double check — but we've never seen anything spend over an hour on the highway and survive.
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Tech Blog


In pictures: Mobile design competition — Royal College of Art students were set the challenge of designing a mobile phone to “outperform, outsmart, and outmanoeuvre everything on the market”. — One of three winners in the competition, sponsored by 3, was Vase.

MacBook Air 1.6Ghz HDD vs 1.8Ghz SSD Benchmarks — Many readers are reporting shipments and delivery in our MacBook Air forum. First impressions and notes of the MacBook Air are being compiled in this thread. — Few head to head comparisons between the Solid State Drive (SSD) …


Hulu to Stream Super Bowl Commercials After Game — With the Super Bowl fast approaching, the big question lingering on (most) everyone's mind isn't who will win, but rather, what will be this year's must-see rewindable moment, a la Janet Jackson's infamous wardrobe malfunction?