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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?
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.
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
-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
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