Microsoft drew a firm line in the sand in its bid to acquire Internet giant Yahoo: make a deal with us within three weeks, or we’ll engage in a hostile takeover attempt, either by replacing your board or taking our offer directly to investors.
That deadline passed in silence a week ago.
Although all is still officially quiet between the two companies, reports now have the firms actively engaging in merger negotiations. Contrary to Microsoft’s assertions that it would not be raising its $31/share offer, the Redmond software company is apparently offering Yahoo a significantly higher price in an effort to make the takeover a friendly negotiation rather than engage in a hostile takeover. Although there are no reliable reports of the price Microsoft may now be offering for Yahoo, industry watchers speculate that it’s in the neighborhood of $33 to $34 per share. Some Yahoo investors have been said to be holding out for a price as high as $37 a share, but it’s doubtful Microsoft will have to go that high in order to win the company.
If Microsoft were to offer $33 per share for Yahoo, the value of the deal would approach $47.5 billion; at a price of $35 per share, Microsoft would be paying about $50 billion for Yahoo.
Despite the protracted, complicated dodge-and-weave between the two companies, financial analysts have generally been expecting Microsoft to complete a takeover of Yahoo in due course, noting Microsoft has more than enough assets to cover the purchase. In general, Microsoft may feel that it’s better to pay a higher price for Yahoo upfront to conclude the transaction quickly than to engage in a months-long hostile takeover effort that will erode Yahoo’s value to Microsoft and significantly embitter its workforce. “I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me, exactly,” MIcrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer told employees last week, according to a transcript filed with the SEC. “I won’t go a dime above, and I will go to what it’s worth if I think that gets the deal done.”
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.