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Journalists are starting to discuss what financial analysts realized earlier this month: 90 percent institutional owners of Yahoo stock are also Microsoft shareholders. See this CNET article for details.

Fund managers don’t like to bid against themselves

This places companies like T. Rowe Price and the Capital Group in an awkward position. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has vowed to fight the Microsoft offer, even though a Microsoft takeover makes some sense for both companies. If Yahoo is seriously negotiating with News Corporation and AOL, as this report indicates, Yahoo CXOs must be quite desperate to avoid assimilation into the redmond hive mind.

An institution that holds YHOO and MSFT must balance its risk

Institutional fund managers may want an offer of US$40 per share for their Yahoo stock, but what happens if Microsoft’s stock price stumbles? These fund managers might consider a US$35 offer if it means a quick resolution to this battle. A proxy fight might take months to settle, and would send Yahoo into a tailspin as employees defect and CXOs waste time defending their firm.

On Thursday, the New York Times commented on this blog article by Bradley Horowitz, who announced on his blog that he was leaving Yahoo. Horowitz had been the VP of Yahoo’s Advanced Development Division, and his farewell message includes a few “ADD” puns. He wasn’t laid off – he simply left Yahoo to take a new position at Google.

The endgame plays out

The remaining Yahoo CXOs may not be ready to admit defeat, but it is clear that Yahoo management has less control over the company’s fate with each passing day.

See my earlier posts on the Microsoft-Yahoo debacle:

• 7 February 2008: Microsoft’s rocket ship
• 4 February 2008: Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo faces roadblocks
• 1 February 2008: Microsoft makes offer for Yahoo

BoingBoing has a nice article by Xeni Jardin about an Internet carrier hotel: One Wilshire in downtown Los Angeles. It’s based on a radio report Xeni prepared for NPR. She also posted a set of her pictures in Flickr, and I’ve posted an image under her Creative Commons license.
Last week I mentioned the Internet backbone. While the Internet is composed of many different connections used by many telecom companies, sometimes these companies have to link their bandwidth to share content or provide better service. It’s easier to interconnect across a room than under the sea! Among the amenities in this carrier hotel is the Meet Me Room. One Wilshire is a 30-story building that hosts collocated equipment and connections for 300 different ISPs and telecom companies including AT&T, Google, Level 3, Sprint, Time Warner, Verizon, and many other major companies.

Among other features, One Wilshire provides tenants with 100 watts of high-quality electrical power for each square foot of floor space, and the ability to provide backup power for at least 24 hours. The building has 656,000 square feet of space, so that’s a lot of power for switches, servers, and other equipment. Remember, you can’t do anything useful with a computer without the physical layer of the OSI model.
It’s interesting to note that One Wilshire was purchased in September 2001 by The Carlyle Group, the current owners of Hawaiian Telcom.

This article first appeared on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=50

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/15/spammer.gold.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

“AOL said Tuesday it intends to search for gold and platinum bars the company suspects are hidden near the home of Davis Wolfgang Hawke’s parents on two acres in Medfield, Massachusetts.”

AOL has already won a USD13M judgment against Hawke, who sent millions of unsolicited commercial messages (UCEs) to AOL customers. Winning the lawsuit was the easy part - now AOL is trying to collect from a defendant who never appeared at his own trial. AOL lawyers believe Hawke converted some of his holdings to previous metals and then buried the bars near his parents’ home.

Hawke’s mother said she that the family has not heard from her son in over a year. “We don’t know where is he,” she said. “We certainly wouldn’t allow him to put any gold on our property.”

If nothing else, I hope that Time Warner has bought the movie and TV rights. This will make an interesting story, especially if AOL’s prospectors find buried treasure. Ahoy!

This article first appeared on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=37

URL: AOL to slash 5,000 jobs

The death spiral for AOL’s dialup business hit a new low this week, as the company announced it would distribute its access software free of charge in the United States.

AOL will also offer some content and services for free, including e-mail. Some of these services will include advertising, following the model that Yahoo and Google have employed.

The company announced massive layoffs in its operations, primarily in call centers. These layoffs will help compensate for the lost subscriber revenue.

The dialup access business has been in decline for years in the U.S., as residential customers choose faster “always-on” connections like cable modems and DSL. In Hawaii, Time Warner Cable is the dominant provider.

Clearwire has entered the Honolulu market with a wireless broadband service that uses cellular phone signals to provide broadband. This service does not require a fixed-wire installation, and it may be attractive to users who change their residence frequently, such as students.

From a joking friend:

Thanks to all my friends who sent me such important emails in 2003 and 2004! It’s so wonderful that you included me in your quest to inform! Because of all of you:

I stopped drinking Coca-Cola after I found out that it’s good for removing toilet stains.

I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with AIDS.

I smell awful, but thank goodness I stopped using deodorant because they cause cancer.

I don’t leave my car in any parking lot even though I sometimes have to walk about seven blocks, for fear that someone might drug me with a perfume sample and then try to rob me.

I also stopped answering the phone for fear that they will ask me to dial a stupid number and then I get a phone bill from hell with calls to Uganda, Singapore and Tokyo.

I stopped consuming several foods for fear that the estrogen they contain may turn me gay.

I also stopped drinking anything out of a can for fear that I will get sick from the rat feces and urine.

When I go to parties, I now don’t mix with anybody, for fear that someone will take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.

I went bankrupt from bounced checks that I made, expecting the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL were supposed to send me when I participated in their special e-mail program.

It’s weird, though, that my new free cell phone never arrived, and neither did the passes for my paid vacation to Disney. But I am positive that all this is because of the chain I broke or forgot to follow and I got a curse from hell.

If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 1200 people in the next ten seconds, a bird will crap on you today at 7:00 PM.