Yahoo! Blog from Sunnyvale, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Generic license (caption added by us, with Ballmer's words)

THE previous post dealt with the disturbing trend of patents passage from large companies (usually in rapid decline) to merciless trolls. This past week we saw many reports about Yahoo, which Microsoft had effectively demolished, putting its patents on sale. This decent article by Joe Mullin said: "News of the patent sale came late yesterday, not long after it was reported that Verizon is submitting a $3 billion bid for Yahoo's core Internet business. The sale of the core Web business will include about 500 US patents and more than 600 pending applications, separate from the larger group going in the standalone patent sale."

"This past week we saw many reports about Yahoo, which Microsoft had effectively demolished, putting its patents on sale."As Florian Müller noted, Google might be the victim/target, not the purchaser, due to "antitrust concerns" and one person wrote about it: "A Yahoo auction of an important and relevant 1990’s trove of ~3,000 search, advertising and ecommerce patents implicating Google’s proliferating lines of business, may be tempting for Google to bid on and buy, but it should be obvious given the above evidence that Google will either show self restraint and not try, or antitrust authorities will be challenged with the proverbial taunting red cape in front of a bull, to charge Google with antitrust violations."

Patent trolls must be salivating because "Yahoo [is] trying to raise an extra billion dollars from its patent portfolio" and CNET gave this lower valuation (than the above) of a billion dollars. To quote: "The web pioneer hopes to raise $1 billion with sale of about 3,000 patents, including some for core search technology, sources tell The Wall Street Journal."

The main report that everyone initially linked to came from News Corp. and it's likely to have upset quite a few parties. Yahoo engineers were upset about their patents being 'weaponised' (they wrote about this online after Microsoft killed Yahoo as a search contender) and Red Hat's Jan Wildeboer suspects that "Yahoo is feeding the patent trolls. What could possibly go wrong?"

"We shall soon know what Microsoft's interference in Yahoo has ultimately led to other than the shutdown of many Yahoo services that would otherwise compete against Microsoft's."The estimate, based on this report, is an imminent sale for over $3 billion. B-I wrote about the paywalled article: "The WSJ reported on Monday that Verizon has placed a $3 billion bid for Yahoo's core business, which includes its search and email services."

We shall soon know what Microsoft's interference in Yahoo has ultimately led to other than the shutdown of many Yahoo services that would otherwise compete against Microsoft's. Remember CPTN? ⬆