Yahoo Presses Ahead With Panama Rollout in Emerging Markets

Yahoo plans to soon roll out its Panama search advertising platform in the few remaining markets in Asia and Latin America where it's not yet available, completing plans to make the platform available worldwide, a company executive said Tuesday.

"Within the next coming weeks we will have Panama, our search marketing platform, launched globally," said Prashant Mehta, vice president and head of Yahoo's Advertiser and Publisher Group for International Emerging Markets.

The Panama system was conceived as a way of better competing against search-advertising leader Google, but hasn't diminished its commanding lead. Expanding Panama internationally plays to the strengths of Yahoo, which has a stronger position than Google in many key Asian markets, such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia.

Last month, Yahoo conducted a limited two-week test of Google's AdSense for Search system, running these ads on Yahoo.com. The test took place against the backdrop of Microsoft's aborted bid to acquire Yahoo, and fueled speculation that a wider advertising alliance between the two rivals could be in the works.

Yahoo has not disclosed the results of the test with Google, but the company appears pleased. "The results were as what we had anticipated," Mehta said, declining to elaborate further.

Microsoft Tells Yahoo To Accept Offer or Face Hostile Takeover

By Jessica MintzAssociated Press

SEATTLE, April 5 — Microsoft urged Yahoo accept its $41 billion buyout offer, warning in a letter Saturday that if a deal wasn’t reached by April 26, it would launch a hostile takeover at a lower price.

“If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo board,” Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, wrote in the letter.

“If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.”

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment.

In the letter, Ballmer said Yahoo’s search share and page views, two measures of the strength of the Web portal company’s business, appear to have fallen since the end of January, when the cash-and-stock offer was made. At the time, Microsoft’s offer was valued at $44.6 billion, or 62 percent above Yahoo’s market value. The deal is now worth just under $41 billion, based on Friday’s closing stock prices.

Yahoo’s board formally rejected Microsoft’s bid in February, saying it was too low. Since then, the Silicon Valley company has explored alliances with Google, News Corp.’s MySpace.com and Time Warner’s AOL, but no alternative to Microsoft’s offer has surfaced.

Ballmer acknowledged the alternative negotiations and questioned why, in the absence of another offer, Yahoo was still dragging its heels.

“This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares,” Ballmer wrote. He said the Microsoft offer has strengthened as the economic climate has weakened.

“We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment,” Ballmer wrote, despite a recent Yahoo forecast that its revenue would rise more than 70 percent during the next three years.

Microsoft has said from the start that it would consider all means of completing the deal. Those possibilities taking its offer directly to Yahoo’s shareholders, as well as working to elect its own candidates to fill Yahoo’s board at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

Yahoo has not set a new date for the meeting. Before Saturday, it was known that Microsoft had hired a proxy solicitation firm to help with a hostile bid, but it had not said when it would take such action.