Microsoft News Tracker

Steve Ballmer’s three week ultimatum to Yahoo’s board of directors to accept the Microsoft acquisition offer passed yesterday with no comment from Yahoo or specific action from Microsoft to carry out the threatened reduction of the offer amount and proxy fight. The next episode in this soap opera is expected early next week and predictions range from Microsoft withdrawing their offer to a full out hammer and tongs proxy battle. The most telling commentary however is likely the desire of Yahoo employees to take the money and Microsoft employees to forget about the whole thing.

Joanne Bradford who is Microsoft’s current MSN honcho and former Microsoft Web ad czar (”We love ad salesmen“) is leaving Microsoft for startup Spot Runner which is nominally an “Internet-based ad agency that makes it easy and affordable for local businesses to advertise on TV.” The trick apparently is to have canned creative content that can be easily modified for a local business. Bradford reportedly will be executive vice president of National Marketing Services, focused on national advertisers” which sounds like a good fit for her and apparently also fits somewhere in Spot Runner’s business model.

As for MSN, former Bradford direct report Greg Nelson, who is the general manager of MSN.com International, will be running things on an interim basis. I would chalk this up as yet more turmoil in Microsoft’s online business  - the departure of Bradford’s boss Steve Berkowitz was announced in February. Of course, we’ll really see turmoil if the Yahoo deal goes through and Bradford may well have been dodging exactly that.

According to John Letzing at Marketwatch, Microsoft’s acquisitions point man, Bruce Jaffe, is departing:

Microsoft Corp. confirmed Wednesday that Bruce Jaffe, an executive charged with overseeing the software giant’s mergers and acquisitions strategy, will be leaving the company at the end of February.

Jaffe, vice president of corporate development at Microsoft, has been charged with overseeing key acquisitions at a time when the company has sought to buy its way further into strategic Internet and advertising markets to compete with surging rival Google Inc.

“Bruce’s contribution to Microsoft’s growth is much appreciated and we wish him well in his next endeavor,” Microsoft spokesman Bill Cox said in an email. Cox did not respond to questions about why Jaffe is leaving, or what his plans are for the future.

A Bloomberg report suggests that Jaffe “is leaving as the largest software maker gives individual unit leaders more control over deals.” I would also have to observe that Microsoft’s acquisitions haven’t been an unmixed blessing.

All week long blogger Jacob Metcalf has been reporting a rumor that Microsoft subsidiary Bungie Studios ( the creators of the wildly successful Halo Xbox game family) were about to split from Microsoft. He suffered a bit from doubters of his scoop, but today Mr. Metcalf has the last laugh as Microsoft announced a plan to “evolve” their relationship with Bungie.

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Yesterday, Microsoft announced that Timothy Chen had resigned as head of Microsoft Greater China Region and that the company was searching for a successor. All the press release said about Mr. Chen’s future plans was that he was assuming a leadership role outside the IT industry, but elaboration was soon forthcoming.

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