As much as Yahoo might be a brand from which many internet users have moved on, it’s still a very valuable company with a lot of assets, albeit not as many as it once had. That’s why it’s been looking for a buyer for a short while, and Twitter was reportedly one interested party.
Twitter and Yahoo are said to have conducted their meeting — headed by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Twitter head Jack Dorsey — a few weeks ago, according to the New York Post. The idea was to essentially merge the two companies and integrate Twitter’s instant-communication platform with some of Yahoo’s more longer-form news content.
While the blending of the two entities might sound like chalk and cheese, clearly the higher-ups at both firms thought it was a viable future, given how much time and effort was put into hashing out a potential deal. Ultimately though it fell through, with Twitter deciding that the venture wasn’t favorable enough from where it was standing.
What exactly it didn’t like, or how far the meetings progressed, we may never know, as both Twitter and Yahoo are refusing to comment on the meeting that may or may not have taken place.
Regardless though, the big news here is that Twitter is not buying Yahoo, which means that the field is still open for the presumptive front-runner in the potential buy out discussion: Verizon. Considering it already owns another internet old-boy in America Online, it could be that it combines Yahoo with AOL to create some new entity that caters to a specific audience.
There is some competition though. Fellow mega-corporation AT&T is also said to be in the running for taking over Yahoo, according to Fortune. Warren Buffet is said to be interested too, as well as a number of private equity firms.
The next round of bids are due in the next few days, so we may well have a clearer picture by the end of the week.
