Yesterday I was scheduled to appear live on the Happy Hour show on the Fox Business Channel. The show is held at the Bull and Bear bar at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, with customers milling around and drinking. I can’t believe no one has rushed the set as a prank yet.
The topic, I thought, was our presidential endorsements of Barack Obama and John McCain.
But we never actually talked about that. Instead, host Cody Willard dove into a general discussion of Yahoo v. Google and what might happen in an upcoming recession. A topic that I think about often and that is very timely given the layoffs at Yahoo, but I have to say I was caught completely off guard. But we were live on tv and so I just sort of kept talking.
Near the end I hinted at a strong rumor that has been floating around Silicon Valley: that Yahoo may someday have to face a very tough decision – to eiher kill its advertising network and partner with Google to boost revenues, or lose the entire company to a merger with Microsoft or a painful sale to a hedge fund.
Yahoo is in a precarious position right now, and things might get worse before they get better. Microsoft could buy them with cash they have in the bank (although a stock deal would be more sensible). The next six months will likely determine if Yahoo is a long term independent brand.
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