A Vision of a Microhoo Future

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD also noticed the quiet before the storm with the Microsoft-Yahoo merger we reported on last week. She went further, though, suggesting a number of possible scenarios for the upcoming deal.

“A raise in price is the most mentioned option, from $34 to $36 a share, but other things that could happen include everything from upping the cash versus stock ratio, to larding up retention packages to key Yahoo employees to giving Yahoo more independence as part of a deal,” Swisher said. “But actually, if you really analyze what a post-Yahoo/Microsoft world would look like if the companies merged, Yahoo could and probably should remain a lot more independent and in control than it might appear.”

She goes on to do a step-by-step run-through of the various departments in each portal and what may happen to them—a considerable task, given the two Internet behemoths in question—but surprises the most when she suggests that Yahoo would win out, “hands-down,” on the media side. Yahoo’s digital media portfolio is considerable, with Yahoo Autos, Yahoo Finance, and more, but we’re not sure that Microsoft would just fold up all its MSN (or MSNBC, for that matter) properties and replace them with Yahoo versions.

Mobile is also still a huge question mark, as each portal’s mobile offerings are tightly woven into their desktop products (Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail, Windows Live Maps, and so on).

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