Industry Note: Who Should Buy Yahoo?
Analysts aren't strategists. And it's a good thing, too.
Here's a JPMorgan analyst
floating a Google/Yahoo combo.
Synergies!! Scale!! etc...
In a spreadsheet, this looks like Keira Knightley in bikini.
From a strategic pov, it's more like Dick Cheney in a bikini.
The point is that Google and Yahoo have vastly different DNA. It would be (to mix metaphors) like Carl Lewis genetically absorbing the post Super Size Me Morgan Spurlock - a disaster (for both parties).
With ideas like this, it's no surprise the vast majority of mergers destroy value in the long-run.
Strategy isn't spreadsheets.
Back to the larger question for a sec.
Yahoo isn't a company in dire straits (yet). But it's more and more transparent what we've been predicting for a long time - the leadership is utterly bereft of vision and strategic imagination.
So who should buy Yahoo? What do you think? For my money, it's no one...yet :)