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Microsoft/Yahoo! Merger a Good Idea?
NorbMan writes "Last month there was speculation about Microsoft's interest in joining forces with Yahoo! to battle Google. Today, a Merrill Lynch analyst recommended a Yahoo! takeover by Microsoft. From the article: "A Yahoo/MSN-Microsoft combination would have garnered approximately 41% share in the US of search queries [in April] versus Google with 44%.""
Can anyone say antitrust?
:wq
Theoretically, the combined user-base would surpass Google. But many users like me, never visit MSN / Yahoo after acquiring a Google identity (gmail).
The combined HPaq is still below Dell, although prior to the merger, the combn. was much bigger.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Somehow, I think that the moment yahoo joins (msn eats it up) with microsoft, mysteriously half the 41% will move to google or another different engine.
Is not numbers we are talking here, is not even efficiency. IT's TRUST.
Face it, there's really no way around google yahoo or msn.
Have you tried finding a good alternative to any of them?
Most smaller engines are powered by either yahoo or gooogle.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Microsoft has already been convicted of monopoly activity and yet somehow people keep talking merger.
Yep that's it _, we want to allow more centralization of market power.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This monopoly of commercial operating systems for personal computers, and monopoly of commercial word processors for personal computers, is proving somewhat a millstone round the neck of Microsoft. Are they about to sell off these businesses so that they can move on ? Games consoles, search services, etc.
I expect if the price was right, IBM would take Windows and/or Word off their hands. It's only money.
I don't think that a merger like that would result in a name change.
Microsoft merging with Yahoo! is like me merging with pizza. It ends up with a slightly larger me.
LL
Ok, these 'market analysts' look at spreadsheets of market shares, etc. Look at the technology under the hood: Microsoft uses all Windows products. Yahoo uses BSD and PHP as their environment. I'm sure Gates and company would LOVE to be running such a large, critical portion of their business on OSS! Or throw all Yahoo's code away and re-write in .NET? Right!! From a platform point of view, anybody who thinks about this for more than 30 seconds will see that this is a non-starter. Nothing here. Move along.
First, Google's capitalization is higher than Yahoo's (they are more expensive).
Second, remember when AOL bought Netscape? Something like 40% of their workforce quit the next day. If MS buys Google, the google brain trust (which is were all the value is) hits the door immediately.
They'd have 41% for about 10 seconds until users began migrating. There's no way Yahoo could fit comfortably into the MS spectrum of products. The real stickiness for Yahoo isn't search, it's webmail and the other services that get people using it as a portal. They search at Yahoo because its already loaded up in their browser. None of those services are something that MS wants to maintain -- there's way too much friction with MS's existing products. So they either kill it all off or force users toward Live et al, which is not what those users wanted, not the least reason being MS has a negative reputation in this space.
Poisoning all of Yahoo's services doesn't gain you any marketshare in search. Maybe a few percent as collateral damage, but nothing like what's being predicted here.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Why is it assumed that all the people that currently use yahoo will instantly start using the new MSN search? You can't buy search marketshare. It don't work like that.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
True growth can NEVER be achieved by mergers.
Tell that to GE. Admittedly, they seem to do the merger thing better than almost anyone, but mergers, when done correctly, can indeed lead to organic growth. Big company acquires smaller one in a niche industry. Big company then pours its resources and expertise into this promising new area and grows that business in a way it never could have otherwise.
Certainly, Microsoft/Yahoo wouldn't be such a case. And frankly, having one player with 44% of the search market and another with 41% isn't very attractive. A Duopoly, after all, isn't very much better than a Monopoly.
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Big Brother + Viruses + China = :(
The only motive to do this for microsoft is to make its own monopoly position stronger. Mergeing with yahoo would result in a stronger position versus google, makeing the possebility for elimenating google even greater. Remember: microsoft does NOT really need yahoo (it's already got MSN). Microsoft only needs yahoo when it wants to elimenate google.
Why would Microsoft want to elimenate google? Well, for starters: it's a big, high profile, highly visible company... which just happens to support Open Source Software, and that includes... Linux (do you ppl remember Microsoft declaring 'war' on Linux?).
If this merger is allowed to continue, we might not have a big, high profile, highly visible google in a few years... and that would be very convenient to Microsoft.
seen the tactit assumption that the markets parts add up to the new total. This assumption is made too often. However, if the parts are inherently a misfit, the total too often is much less than the sum of the parts.
It seems this advice was given in desperation, since the goal should be to enhance the whole. That is, just becoming bigger does not assure retention of markets. Moreover, misfits can destroy existing value. Despite the currently available cash horde at Microsoft's disposal if these units do not mesh to create greater value than their independent parts the premium paid is not worth the price.
If this action is taken, at least, no matter how bad the executive decisions are it is unlikely to destroy MS immediately as Borland did to itself when it bulked up to fight MS. Borland simply did not recognize the value of some of the pieces that could have generated positive cash flow despite not being premier products.
The corporate cultures of these two companies just couldn't live together. Microsoft a technology company good at enforcing the status quo, Yahoo is wannabe technology company that survives by being smarmy and sleazy, while forced to follow companies with better hiring practices and less conservatism in the ranks. I pray for you Yahoo employees, oh wait you're already praying...you should too, considering how you make your money.
See the stagnation of Home Depot / Lowes for an example of what else can go wrong. Two entrenched players does not make a competitive market.
I dub thee... Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass.
The technology under the hood is totally irrelevant from a business profitability point of view. Hotmail did not run on Windows at first either. Over time, Microsoft ported it over. ... It might take five years, but who cares?
I can smell the money burning when I hear stupid shit like that. The arrogance is stunning. Have you seen the contradiction in your thinking from the above parsing yet?
Who cares? The customer cares, you idiots! They are not going to hang around for five years worth of buggy service. That's Microsoft, though, their precious marketing image is always more important to them than actual service or .... the customer. Yahoo appropriately stands for "You Always Have Other Options."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yahoo is in trouble and needs to do something. But such a merger would almost certainly kill Yahoo rather than save it. Microsoft would be financially unaffected, remaining a big bag of money.