Tumbling Yahoo Now a Target?

Yahoo's falling core value threatens the company's future and is ringing alarm bells for investors, the New York Times’ Saul Hansell warned in his "Bits" blog. The central business of Yahoo.com, excluding subsidiary holdings, is worth less than half of its current share price, and a paltry 7% of Google’s $200 billion market value, according to one analyst quoted by Hansell.

Speculation regarding a Microsoft buyout is likely to increase if the company keeps underperforming, the analyst warns. He suggests  that Yahoo trim back advertising efforts and focus on banner ad placement services, to avoid odious comparisons to other falling tech giants. “We do not think that an AOL-like slide is inevitable for Yahoo,” he notes. (More Yahoo stories.)