MicroHoo a ploy?

I'll be damned... when I read some of the analyst articles on the proposed merger a week ago, especially J.C.Dvorak's take on the issue, as well as FSJ's, I thought to myself... Imagine they did that knowing that it will fall through anyway but in the meantime it's gonna shake and stop a few other initiatives... I had no clues what other initiatives these would then be... but look at what came up in the press today... is that an answer to my gutfeel?

"As the world awaits Yahoo Inc.'s (YHOO) response to Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) bold bid to buy the Internet giant, one analyst has come out with an intriguing take on the proposed marriage: It is probably a ploy. Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research speculated Thursday that Microsoft made the stunning $44.6 billion merger proposal as a way to block a possible alliance between Yahoo and another Internet behemoth, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). Chowdry also believes the Microsoft-Yahoo merger won't pass muster with regulators, even if Yahoo accepts the bid. That analysis runs counter to the predominant view of financial and industry analysts who believe that, while the deal faces many challenges, Microsoft's plan to gobble up Yahoo will likely succeed. But Chowdhry said he believes Microsoft made an astoundingly high offer that it knows can't be matched by other potential buyers and will likely be rejected by U.S. and European regulators. In his view, Microsoft's gambit puts Yahoo in a tough bind. "I call it strategic deception," he said in an interview. "Now, Yahoo is in limbo...If they accept, DOJ will reject it. If they reject it, shareholders will say, 'What are you doing?'" In his research note, he speculated that "Microsoft's offer to acquire Yahoo was probably a preemptive move to block a potential Amazon.com and Yahoo merger."

Cont'd here...

Monkey boy, you cunning sonovabitch...