From Silicon Alley Insider, July 3, 2008:

Carl Icahn is down a couple hundred million dollars on his Yahoo (YHOO) gamble. His buddies, Boone Pickens and Dan Loeb -- if they haven't run for the hills -- are getting buried, too. So they want blood (in the form of control).

Yahoo, meanwhile, is getting shelled from all sides for blowing the Microsoft deal, especially as its stock sags back toward the teens. There's at least some chance that Jerry and the board will be tossed out on their rears at next month's shareholder meeting. So Yahoo's trying to find some way to broker a peace.

Specifically, Yahoo is considering bribing Icahn by giving him two board seats, says Kara Swisher. Of course, Icahn's smart enough to know that all this will do is allow him to insult Yahoo board members in person a few times a year, so he wants more. Specifically, he wants four.

Four seats wouldn't give Icahn a majority (the board is currently 9), but it would put him in a position in which he only had to persuade one additional member to make changes.

The first change he'd make? Based on his previous vituperations, tossing Jerry.

From Silicon Alley Insider, June 25, 2008:

Yahoo oracle Kara Swisher has been busy today. Here's what she's come up with:

• Furious Yahoo (YHOO) investors--including Carl Icahn--are pushing Microsoft (MSFT) to radically boost the value of its Google-alternative search deal and buy 33% of Yahoo for $30-$32 a share (instead of the 1/6th of Yahoo at $35 a share Microsoft offered in connection with its last search deal). Microsoft is seriously considering this.

• Owning 33% of Yahoo and having the backing of several major Yahoo investors would effectively give Microsoft control over Yahoo.

• Pressure from angry investors has convinced Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock (formerly asleep at the switch) that the company must do something with Microsoft soon.

• Under this plan, Jerry Yang and Sue Decker would likely be toast: Jerry because investors are apoplectic about his having blown the Microsoft deal, Sue because she has supported Jerry.
  

• Backing out of the Google search deal Yahoo signed two weeks ago will cost Yahoo $250 million.

• Two dissident Yahoo board members, who feel no one is paying attention to them, may quit out of frustration with Jerry.

• News Corp could be brought into the deal.

• Microsoft might also pay more than the $1 billion it previously proposed to buy Yahoo's search assets, and give it bigger revenue guarantees.

Kara cautions that no "formal" talks have happened yet. Based on what our sources have told us, we continue to believe there have been some informal ones.

What This Means for You Yahoo Shareholders

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn's cautious comments about the state of the U.S. auto market should come as no surprise to anyone paying even cursory attention. But Ghosn also warned about rising steel prices, which could put even more pressure on struggling U.S. automakers.

Highlighting the cash crunch facing the once-vaunted Big 3, Chrysler this week drew down a $2 billion credit line that was made available when the firm was sold by Daimler to Cerberus Capital last year.

Meanwhile, Fitch today downgraded GM and Chrysler's ratings deeper into junk status, and is threatening to do the same for Ford.

Against this backdrop, it's probably not surprising GM shares are trading at their lowest levels in decades while Ford shares flounder under $6.

From Silicon Alley Insider, June 24, 2008:

Why is Nokia (NOK) spending $410 million to buy the rest of Symbian, the smartphone operating system it co-owned with Sony Ericsson and others? Because its continued dominance of the smartphone market -- 60% of the install base, according to its press release -- is anything but guaranteed.

Buying Symbian won't help Nokia build sexier-looking, high-end gadgets. But in theory, Nokia's ownership will speed up Symbian's platform development and could allow Nokia -- its biggest customer -- to come out with more phones, faster.

That's important as new competitors enter the market with sexier, more exciting products, like Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, which is just opening up to outside developers. So far, Apple's success has mostly been in the U.S. But this year, it will start selling its iPhone in more than 70 countries, at a lower, subsidized price.

New home sales fell for the sixth time in seven months in May while inventory levels rose further, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The report follows Tuesday's Case/Shiller Index, which showed a record 15.3% year-over-year drop in home prices.

Yet amid these grim statistics, some economists are seeing a glimmer of hope for the housing market. Most notably, 8 of the 20 regions surveyed in the Case/Shiller report showed prices either stable from a year ago or actually higher.

There's also some solace to be had in the news that Congress is closing in on housing legislation that would provide $300 billion for refinancings to keep homeowners out of foreclosure.

The bad news, of course, is that government involvement is a step toward the socialization of the housing sector, meaning U.S. taxpayers are ultimately on the hook.

Yahoo shares were little changed today after rival bloggers refuted TechCrunch's report of renewed buyout talks with Microsoft -- a report which gave Yahoo shares a huge spike Tuesday afternoon.

"TechCrunch is 1,000% wrong," writes Henry Blodget, quoting a source familiar with the proceedings.

"Sources at both Yahoo and Microsoft, who certainly can spin like dervishes when need be, emphatically went out of their way yesterday -- which is not so typical -- to deny any talks were going on," writes Kara Swisher.

Setting aside blogger rivalries and the Journalism 101 discussion -- Swisher criticized TechCrunch's Michael Arrington for not being more cautious "about floating rumors about renewed deal-making between the star-crossed pair" -- the key takeaway is this neverending takeover saga isn't over yet.

Microsoft can't afford to let Yahoo get away and has a lot of incentive to revive talks -- even if just about reviving its alternative search transaction, even if (especially if) Yahoo already inked an outsourcing deal with rival Google.

That said, with Yahoo's Aug. 1 shareholder meeting, a reorg underway, and second-quarter results still ahead, time is on Microsoft's side. Any further deteriorating in Yahoo's business outlook and/or stock price could bring more shareholders into Carl Icahn's dissident camp.

From Silicon Alley Insider, June 25, 2008:

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) reports May quarter (1Q09) results today after the bell. Investors have recently taken a liking to RIM: Shares are up 8% since June 12, and up 25% since the end of March. May quarter sales should have been strong. But with new BlackBerry models -- and Apple's (AAPL) iPhone -- due out next quarter, we're most interested in RIM's Q2 guidance.

The good news for RIM: Sales have been strong, especially the Curve via Verizon Wireless, according to Lehman. And new toys coming out in the next few months -- the Bold at AT&T (T), the touchscreen Thunder at Verizon -- should help, too. Analysts have recently raised estimates above consensus.

The bad news: Apple's iPhone 3G comes out on July 11 in the U.S. and more than 20 other countries.

From Silicon Alley Insider, June 24, 2008:

TechCrunch's sources say the two are talking about a full buyout. One of our sources was highly skeptical of this. A second source said "TechCrunch is 1000% wrong."

CNET thinks they're talking about just a search deal (presumably the one Yahoo walked away from two weeks ago.) Our sources concur.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington intelligently observes that Microsoft's "No Comment" is a change of position from yesterday.

Microsoft official comment is “no comment,” which actually contains more information than it appears to. For well over a month, Microsoft has officially been saying they’re no longer interested in Yahoo. They didn’t say that today.

If the companies are talking about a full buyout, it is almost certainly at a price lower than the $33 Microsoft offered a month or so ago. There is no reason on earth for Microsoft to pay that much now that reeling Yahoo has dropped to $21 again. Yahoo shareholders, in fact, would probably be grateful for $25.

eBay's fall from grace was on stark display at its Live conference in Chicago, which featured a lot of empty seats and irate sellers.

Silicon Alley Insider has all the gory details, and the video accompanying Henry's story offers a 1,000 words on how eBay's changes have alienated its core community of sellers.

Many of those sellers are now using alternatives like Craigslist and/or launching their own websites and bidding for keywords on Google, which is indirectly benefiting from eBay's stumbles.

comScore, meanwhile, is being directly threatened by Google's new system to measure Internet usage. Coincidentally or not, Google's move comes just a few months after the whole "controversy" over comScore's data on Google's paid-click search numbers.

Seeking to stem a steep decline in sales, GM is reviving the "zero-percent" financing strategy that helped boost sales earlier this decade. With Ford also in desperate straits and even Toyota scaling back its U.S. sales forecast, it probably won't be long until "no money down" becomes the industry standard again.

In separate but related news, The Wall Street Journal reports "no money down" financing is also making a comeback in the housing market. Thanks to nonprofits that are funded by homebuilders and private homeowners, buyers can get their down payments funded and then qualify for FHA-insured loans -- meaning U.S. taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for these loans.

Just like the automakers, homebuilders like Lennar and KB Home are saddled with huge inventories of unsold homes, so the strategy makes sense for them. But whether zero-percent loans will revive sales of either homes or autos is debatable. Unlike in 2001-02 consumers are retrenching, and many have (hopefully) learned the lesson that there's ultimately a price to pay for all this "free money."