What if AT&T buys Yahoo!

It’s not a secret that Yahoo! has been struggling over the past couple years. It’s not so much the quality of the services they provide – but what Wall Street thinks of their performance. And this hasn’t been good for some time.

As Yahoo’s stock price falls they become more vulnerable to take over. In steps AT&T who seems to just be re-gobbling up the telco industry and has its eyes on content again. Why? It seems to be a natural progression to own the content that is already zooming through your infrastructure.

Why AT&T? There is already an existing relationship between Yahoo! and AT&T since an agreement between SBC Communications (which magically turned back into AT&T) and Yahoo! years ago offering Yahoo! branded DSL service.

From FT.com…

Underscoring the shift in the balance of power between the two partners, AT&T is believed to have even considered buying Yahoo, whose share price has been under pressure for some time.

This could very well be an unsubstantiated claim but nevertheless it is feasible.

Would this be a good thing? No. John Battelle poses the question “Imagine the business model such a company might be inclined to push. Tiering, anyone?” He’s referring to the plan of a Two-Tiered internet that has been that has been tossed around by major telcos.

Look out Google. The monster that a merger between these two could create will cause you many, many headaches.

Tags: AT&T, Yahoo, Business, Media, Telecom

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