IT executives and business travelers in general be advised: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that agents of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection division do not need reasonable suspicion to examine information contained on the laptop of any individual crossing the U.S. border. Bottom-line: be smart about questionable or sensitive e-material, corporate or otherwise (it was a child porn case that led to this ruling).

Standing in the Nothing To Declare line, Yahoo's deadline for responding to Microsoft's takeover offer came and went Saturday night without comment from either side. Flat sales and a profit drop last quarter bolster the odds that Microsoft may need to raise its bid--or will it be an ugly proxy fight?

The Wall Street view, according to Silicon Alley Insider, splits evenly three ways: Microsoft walks; Microsoft fights and wins; Microsoft raises its bid and the companies do the deal. The takeover offer is priced at $31 a share; based on Friday's close, SAI's Microsoft-Yahoo Bid Calculator has the current value of the bid at $29.68. Yahoo's board of directors says the offer "substantially undervalues" the Internet provider, insisting the company is worth at least $40 dollars a share.

Google hiring freeze? Not likely, and over on the Yahoo campus, retention and recruiting sound healthier than one might expect. Carol Mahoney, Yahoo’s vice president of talent acquisition, is quoted as saying that it isn’t harder to convince candidates about Yahoo, but “it’s more time-consuming.” There's word of a favorable acquisition-friendly severance policy--and also from Mahoney, possibly some 1,000 job openings in support of its consumer "starting point" online ad strategy.

Jeff Heilman

4/28/08