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Remember When Yahoo Turned Down $1 Million To Buy Google?

Jayson Derrick
BenzingaJuly 25, 2016, 11:28 PM GMT+10

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) confirmed on Monday it reached an agreement to sell its Internet properties to Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) for $4.83 billion.

Taking a look back at Yahoo's M&A opportunities, the going price for Yahoo's assets today could have been in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Related Link: Verizon To Acquire Yahoo's Operating Business For .8 Billion

Back in 1998, two individuals, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, who were unknown to the technology company offered to sell their little startup to AltaVista for $1 million so they can resume their studies at Stanford.

The company that Page and Brin were looking to sell was the soon-to-be patented PageRank system and represents the core of Google (Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL))'s existence.

AltaVista turned down the offer to acquire the company. Similarly, Yahoo wanted its users to spend more time on its own platform, contrasting PageRank, which sends a user to the most relevant web site.


Yahoo had another opportunity to acquire Google. In 2002, Yahoo's CEO at the time, Terry Semel, engaged in negotiations to acquire Google, which lasted several months.

The outcome of the negotiation was Semel balking at Google's price tag of $5 billion.

Today, Google and its parent company Alphabet boast a market capitalization of more than $500 billion.

$40 Billion Still A Better Offer

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) proposed to acquire Yahoo's entire business in 2008 for $44.6 billion, or $31 per share.

The price tag on a deal represented a premium of 62 percent above Yahoo's closing price the day before Microsoft went public with its offer.

Microsoft said that a joint Microsoft-Yahoo entity can dominate the online advertising market and create a more efficient company and generate at least $1 billion in annual synergies.