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Microsoft/Yahoo Merger to Take on Google?
Mz6 writes "One faction within Microsoft is promoting a bold strategy in the company's battle with Google:
Join forces with Yahoo. That would be a major departure for Microsoft, the software maker that is legendary for toiling on its own until it captures a new market. However, people familiar with the situation say that Microsoft has considered the idea of acquiring a stake in Yahoo, and that the two companies have discussed possible options over the course of the past year. Currently, talks of an equity stake in Yahoo don't appear to be active, given that Microsoft is focusing on a reorganization that it hopes will re-energize its effort to compete with Google. Two wild cards remain: Steve Ballmer, who has historically shunned large acquisitions, and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, whose support would be key to bringing the necessary Yahoo shareholders on board for a deal. Mr. Yang and others in Yahoo would be hard-pressed to sell to Microsoft, people close to the company say. However, people familiar with Microsoft say its top management remains open to a deal with Yahoo as pressure grows to perform better against Google. The increasing pressure on Microsoft -- not just from Google, but also from its own shareholders, as well as from advertisers that want an alternative to Google -- could help to justify the acquisition or some kind of business collaboration, these people say."
With apologies to all the Google fans out there, the Internet has changed the top search engine several times in the past and it will change it again.
Just about every Internet veteran company has now recognized Google for the threat it is and has declared an all out war against them. Basically, it's Google against everyone. In such cases, everyone usually wins. Unfortunately for Google, they should expect many more actions like IE7 having a default search bar just like FireFox, only defaulting to pointing to MSN Search.
Sorry, Google - it was fun while it lasted.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Does anyone else find it ironic that M$ is partnering with Yahoo! given the recent post concerning Yahoo's shady partnership with spyware companies, especially considering that IE's security holes are one of the reasons that spyware got so bad, so fast? A match made in heaven...
"Tu fui, ego eris" - Virgil
They buy, develop and market technologies; they don't typically buy established players for their market share. Hotmail and WebTV are the only two cases I can think of where Microsoft did that.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Ya, I caught that too. Legendary for toiling on their own?! What product do they have that they have completely developed by themselves? There could be one or two, but that definately doesn't make them "legendary" for doing their own work. When they were getting into the console market, I heard that they tried to buy Nintendo(wouldn't be surprised if it's true).
Hell, the company was founded on the idea of ripping off other people's work.
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Heard a story about a stockbroker's meeting where they all made forecasts about where the market would be in a year.
The clever veteran always took an extreme position, either that there would be a crash or that there would be a spectacular runup.
He figured that nobody would remember a middle-of-the-road forecast but that if the market did crash (or zoom up) he'd get credit for being brilliant.