I very highly doubt that.

Yeah thats not exactly possible. I do wonder, however, what this effectively does to Yahoo's stock price.

see for yourself

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=yahoo

What this stock price says to me is that investors are betting that this story, even if it's correct, is not the last word, and that Microsoft (or someone) will eventually get them.

Is it possible though, that the stock prices went up as a sign of investor relief? I'm not sure all stockholders were too happy with the deal.

If Yahoo! does reject the offer, their stock price should, were the market completely rational, fall a lot. Back to what it was before Microsoft made the offer in the first place.

Yahoo's the same company it was two weeks ago; the stock was just worth more since MS was offering a premium.

The other possibility is that investors are not completely rational.

Yahoo is the same company it was in November; the stock is just worth what it was then. It's the last 3 months that's been the aberration. ;-)

doubts can be dangerous :)

It's kind of scary to think that corporations existing today are likely to be around for hundreds of years. All hail our corporate overlords.

I wouldn't count on it. Look how many of 1908's giants are still big today. A few, but most are dead and gone. This book talks about some of the reasons why:

http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/2/why-most-things-fai...

OK. I doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo will be around in 2108. It seems inconceivable that Google could fall though, especially if Google.org's energy research pays off.

Here's the paper:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282(199805)88%3A2%3C62%3ASASMAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8

Unfortunately it's not free. The stats cited in the book are that only 20% of the top 100 from 1915 were still there in 1995. Think about the technology landscape 100 years ago, and how much it's changed. I think there's every chance that Google will either not be around, or be radically smaller or different than it is now. It could be even larger, too. It's simply not possible to know. What is evident though, is that with time, companies grow and die.

Bonus fact - this is one of the oldest companies in the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zildjian

Why, by 2108 there will be superhuman machines and all... If Google is not the company who invents them, they will be toast.

Just imagine all those Yahoo services ported to Silverlight. I think it would be very impressive actually.