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Google Considering Merger With Microsoft
buford_tannen writes "According to this New York Times Article (registration, etc.), Google may be considering a merger with Microsoft in the near future. As many people know, Google's search services are powered by Linux. "
The Ledger (NY Times business section) - Microsoft and Google: Partners or Rivals?
'Microsoft - desperate to capture a slice of the popular and ad-generating search business - approached Google within the last two months to discuss options, including the possibility of a takeover.'
Financial Times (business section) - Google approached by Microsoft for takeover
'The approach "gained little traction" , according to the report, with Google indicating that it preferred to pursue an initial public offering.'
CNN Money - Microsoft courting Google
'Microsoft may still be interested in pursuing the Web search company at a later date' (The page title is 'Mr. Softee Courting Google' despite the article heading.)
It appears that Microsoft is trying to threaten Google with "If you don't merge with us, we'll make MSN search built into Longhorn, and everybody will use it instead of you because they won't know any better." To Google's credit, they think they can do a better job, find new and interesting areas to innovate, and generally tell Microsoft to suck it. The real question remains: Will Google be as good once they are a public company?
Well it reminds me of the simpsons episode when homer starts and ISP and microsoft just buys them out.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Thankfully, according to the article Google has decided to NOT sell out to Microsoft.
"While the overture appears to have gained little traction - Google indicated that it preferred the initial offering route, the executives said"
However they indicated it could happen in the future -
"Though seemingly spurned, Microsoft may still be interested in pursuing Google at a later date, according to an executive briefed on the discussions"
This would be very troubling if MS did buy Google at some point. Google may have turned them away now, but one they have gone public a hostile takeover could be in the works. Heaven help us if they do - the last thing I would want to see is MS controlling the best search engine out there.
Not if Google keeps enough shares with the original owners to control the company. When a company goes public, it does not have to sell every share of the company they are issuing. A good example is Ford. The Ford family still owns almost 100% of the voting shares of Ford Motor Company. At no point in the future will there be a hostile takover of Ford without a lot of family members participating in the takover.
Google could easily either hold a bunch of shares with the original owners (preferably more than 50%) or make the shares they sell non-voting shares. I seriously doubt they will be selling enough voting shares for a hostile takeover.
Registration free link...provided by who else Google.
www.teoma.com gives me good results.. Have fun..
But your still permitted (so far) to customize the address bar search to use Google (or another search engine).
Two observations:
1. Even the N.Y. times wasn't able to offer much real evidence for merger talks. Also, remember that they are just talks, and a preference for IPO was stated by the company.
2. If Microsoft acquires Google, give them enough time and they will commercialize it to the point that it isn't as useful. At that point, the private world will once again rise up to meet the demand.
The real underlying conflict here is between privately and publicly owned business. The mass markets and finely tuned product quality have always been at odds.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
You can't just buy shares that aren't there to be sold. Google wants to sell about 10% - 15% of the company in the IPO, which hardly gives anyone a strong influence.
Jason Lotito
According to this site, Google powers 76% of all search results, and MSN 15% (numbers seem to be for August 2003). I cannot see the FTC or European Commission approve this merger. This merger would eliminate the only serious competitor to Google on the search engine market.
If google is public and MS wants it, the only hope it would have of remaining "free" is that the FTC would decide MS doesn't need to expand its "monopoly" into search engines.
What to do? Switch to Teoma.
I use Teoma interchangably with Google. Teoma results are as relevant as Google's yet slightly different, however they almost always have the best most relevant results in common.
Teoma's search site is as sparse and ad free as Google's and the search results are of as high a quality. The only Google feature I would miss if it were to dissapear tomorrow is the Google cache.
Eat at Joe's.
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, recently spoke at my school (University of Maryland; he got his CS degree here). In no uncertain words he said how much he hated Microsoft - he is on our side every step of the way - against monopolies, against DRM, against the DMCA (which forced Google to censor certain webpages), etc. The only way this merger will ever happen is over Sergey Brin's cold, dead body.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
They are not running Linux. They are using a cache server from Akami. They are the ones running linux not Microsoft.
The are still running Windows and IIS in the background. Notice the IIS for Webserver, they have not ported IIS to linux.
You can read about it in historical news on Netcraft.
Have fun...
Scott Carr
- the mail Database is still running on Sun-boxes with Oracle
- e-mail and ads are still handled by FreeBSD-boxes with Apache.
- only the (most visible) front-end WebServers are now running Win2K (it took about 3 years to migrate them)
You can find detailed descriptions of how Microsoft migrated the front-end Webservers from FreeBDS to Win2K. The rest doing the horse-work was not migrated, and probably never will.My 2c.
-h-
That's because Microsoft's IIS servers are hidden behind Akamai's layer of Linux redirection/load-balancing servers, which is what Netcraft actually sees/identifies here.
Sorry, but the headline and description are totally misleading. I don't care which submission was posted on this story, but at least get it right. A merger would have meant that Microsoft effectively controlled the Internet, at least until someone came along with a better technology. Here's the post that I originally submitted:
Microsoft and Google: Partners or Rivals?
The New York Times Technology reports that Microsoft and Google were in partnership/takeover discussions during the last two months, in part due to the competitive threat that Google poses to Microsoft. 'Microsoft - desperate to capture a slice of the popular and ad-generating search business - approached Google.' Ultimately Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page decided to go the initial public offering (IPO) route. How different might things be if Google had agreed to be acquired by Microsoft? Looks like we'll never know. This also puts some of the search industry frenzy and acquisition activities into a different context. Fittingly, here's a Google link to the article.
What most here are not really looking at is not the 51% rule but all they need is a board seat.
once on the board ( 3% of the public float) then they can make a tender offer for more. With the new laws in effect after Enron and others, the tender must be reviewed carefully and if they don't accept they might be subjected to sharehold legal action.
very careful steps have to taken since boards now have to sign documents also.
Onepoint
if you see me, smile and say hello.
The Economist also have an article today on the subject of Goggle.
The article speculates a possible $15bn Goggle IPO, and argues that this would be risky, because unlike Yahoo, Lycos, MSN etc, Goggle have only a single product, and can easily be displaced by a couple of clever computer geeks, just like the founders of Goggle did with Alta vista.
Worryingly, they argue that Goggle should head into the paid for search search market in order to increase their current $150 m profit. ($150m is clearly not enough to justify a $15bn market cap).
They also cite Google's perceived 'goodness' compared with Microsoft, as an advantage in any battle against MS, and a barrier against any takeover.
You've got to be kidding me. Microsoft has to be hundreds or thousands of times larger than Google in terms of worth.
Random is the New Order.
So delete the cookie, or turn off cookies if cookies bother you. Or use a browser that lets you easily block cookies on a per-domain basis. And what difference does it make how long the cookie lasts? Is one year better than 35 years? How about two years? Four? Ten? Where's the line? Why should there be a line?
This sounds like an actual service to me. If I'm searching for stores that sell product X, why exactly would I want hits for stores that are in other states? Yes, there's always the privacy issue, but is there any evidence that Google is selling targeted information to spammers or doing anything nefarious with this information?
User information? Google's never collected any *personal* information from me. Maybe they correlate all the searches that come from my home IPs, which won't do them much good if I ever move or get a new IP. (My work IP is a router that represents several hundred computers, so good luck on them tracking me through there). What data are they retaining that could be bad, exactly?
Google probably should answer this one, assuming that this statement is accurate. Given the oddly-shaped axe that Googlewatch seems to be grinding, I wouldn't be surprised if this one was taken out of context.
And the problem with this is... what?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Actually, that's not entirely true. Microsoft has 40 billion or so in the bank, but a buyout would involve buying *stock*, which is worth a lot less than that (though still worth a lot).
Google would have to buy over half those shares - a single share over half would be enough - to take over the company. This would be extremely expensive, but it is possible. Basically, Google doesn't have to buy Microsoft in the physical property sense of paying the entire value of the item. They just have to buy majority control over Microsoft. For corporations, that's the same thing as buying them outright.
Actually, as of yesterday afternoon, Microsoft's market capitalization (number of outstanding shares times price of one share) was 282.44B, which is a tad more than the 40B in the bank.
Moreover, if there was a takeover bid, the price would certainly rise, makeing the deal even more expensive.
Google doesn't have to buy Microsoft in the physical property sense of paying the entire value of the item.
Actually, the book value (physical property: buildings, equipment, cash reserver, IP, ...) would probably be less than market capitalization. If this were not the case, an enterprising businessman would already have bought MSFT and sold the parts... Such incidents where common during the 1970's oil crisis years in Europe.