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Microsoft in Talks To Acquire Ebay
thatedeguy writes "The NY Post is reporting that Microsoft and Ebay are in talks for the online auction house to join the Microsoft family." That said, the talks aren't going that well at the moment. From the article: " Sources indicate that the talks, while still active, have cooled somewhat in the last two weeks as executives considered antitrust issues. It is unclear what the full impact of yesterday's advertising and search alliance between Yahoo! and eBay will be for talks between MSN and eBay. One source close to the matter suggested the Yahoo-eBay tie-up would not stop Microsoft from pursuing the online auctioneer."
eBay is not an auction site, it's an auction-style site =)
... "Experience the thrill of placing the winning bid on an auction-style item"
An auction has a legal definition, which eBay doesn't meet - that is : goods have to be available for physical visual inspection for at least 24 hours prior to auction time.
Auctions were used to return or disperse recovered stolen property (or just stolen). Once offered at auction, stolen property is not automatically returned to its owner should it be proven stolen later, unlike other stolen property.
This is why eBay describes itself as : "eBay, the world's largest online marketplace!"
and
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Microsoft has a program called SPLA (Software Provider License Agreement) that anybody who is a Microsoft Partner can join (becoming a Partner is basically filling out a form). There's a bunch of legal stuff you have to sign, but then you get access to their entire library, which you can then resell -- of course you're responsible for supporting it, but you pay MS (or one of their major contractors, like Software Spectrum) a fee per month for each piece of software you use. You can sell per-user 'subscriber access licenses' or per-CPU, unlimited-user licenses. The monthly fees you pay MS are pretety reasonable -- instead of buying SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition for $1500, you pay MS $3/mo/user and charge the client whatever you want. A lot of their commonly-used software is under $5/mo., and some of the more esoteric stuff is only a little more.
That fee includes free upgrades, so if I sell you a Windows license at $5/mo., you would automatically get Vista when it comes out. It's actually a very reasonable program, or at least it appears to be.