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Microsoft Looks To Refuel Talks With Yahoo
froggero1 writes "The New York Post is reporting that Microsoft wants to rekindle the takeover talks with Yahoo. According to the article, Yahoo! has repeatability turned away their offers, but Microsoft hopes that a lucrative 50 billion dollar offer will bring them back to the table. This move would increase Microsoft's web search market share to roughly 38%."
$50,000,000,000 seems like a lot for yahoo
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Because if you try at something several times and fail every time, just buy a successful one.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
Surely such a move would be too easy for companies like Google and Ask.com to block via. anti-trust laws? Neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! can really be expecting Google to sit by and say "Oh, that's nice." to such a move, do they?
... I repeatability wonder why the grammar is so poor in Slashdot articles.
The NY Post says that John Kerry will pick Dick Gephart as his running mate.
According to the article:
As it stands now, a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! would up the combined companies' share of the all-important search advertising market to 27 percent against Google's 65 percent.
I figure that it would be around 30% either way and falling.
You assume that people will stick with Yahoo! after M$ takes it over.
Facts are also in question. Where does it say MS is offering $50 billion?
From the FA:
The new approach follows an offer Microsoft made to acquire Yahoo! a few months ago, sources said. But Yahoo! spurned the advances of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Wall Street sources put a roughly $50 billion price tag on Yahoo!.
*sigh* I really wish people would stop referring to their hands as girlfriends. I'm quite sure its not a very mentally healthy thing to be doing so on teh innernets.
OK, so presumably a large chunk of the $50bn will be in paper, not cash, but this is a good answer to those who say that Microsoft's $50bn in cash guarantees that they will be around for a long time.
A handful of deals like this, and the money will be gone. Then it's back to actually doing good business, something Microsoft seems awfully bad at these last years.
If Microsoft do buy Yahoo, it screams "duopoly", but in the long term they will ruin Yahoo's business, and leave the market entirely to Google.
My blog
Maybe if Microsoft didn't keep trying to dominate every market they see someone else being successful at, they'd be able to do better in the ones that they've been successful at. Such as, I don't know, operating systems? Everything I've heard about Vista is bad; if MS had been focusing on making Vista better (and maybe on time) instead of trying to match everyone else it wouldn't have been such a, well, failure. The attempts to get into said other markets haven't really been a success, either. (Zune, anyone?)
Microsoft needs to let Yahoo alone and realize that it's not possible to do everything.
then 100% = $132B
So why does Google have a market cap of $146 billion? That's more than 100% of the market value. Some numbers must be wrong here... likely Microsoft's offer is too shallow. Or is Google over valued?
www.jmagar.com
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... cause then Microsloth would be one step closer to wiping out web standards and all the good work Yahoo! has put into the web development community.
Buy your way to the top!
No greater an illusion.
Like buying your search ranking or myspace friends.
Is anyone else vaguely and unpleasantly reminded of the words "vertical monopoly?" I mean, yeah, there's Google, but just the idea of Microsoft actually having a significant market share (and 27% of the search market is significant) in another market really bothers me.
If at first you don't succeed, try try to buy out your closest competitor.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
- "Fucking kill." (default)
- Fucking exploit.
Going from the former to the latter category is quite the feat! Yahoo! must be proud.Any serious offer on the table and the parties need to sit down and have a chat. to do otherwise would be ignoring your duties.
On one side I don't see this being more than a chat to work out a deal- to buy Yahoo would cost MS all of their cash reserves, and then there is the little problem of moving their technology base from *unix to Windows would be a multiyear screw up, er, project (how long did it take MS to move Hotmail over to Windows?).
On the other side- MS does need to move against Google in some meaningful manner- Google's judo flip and really put MS off balance in a way that will play out for years to come- and I doubt MS shareholders are happy with the flat stock price for the last 7 years.
I suggest a large bowl of popcorn while we wait this one out, with extra butter.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
This is the company that used all sorts of illegal techniques to crush competition in the desktop OS, browser, and media player markets. Microsoft's CEO likes to use the phrase "integrated innovation" to tout the advantages of their offerings vis a vis the competition. In other words, they don't play well with anyone else.
Now they want to use a portion of their accumulated monopoly profits to acquire a company that has huge on-line communities and brand names. Anyone who's paid attention over the last 15-20 years knows what will come next: "best" access will soon be restricted to those who use Microsoft's operating system, browser, media players, and development tools. Eventually those using other browsers and operating systems may be shut out altogether. The average person buys Windows preinstalled on their Dell or Gateway won't care, but they don't see how innovation is being shut down the same way innovation in the PC desktop software market fell dramatically after Microsoft established its hegemony with Windows 95.
Microsoft has all the money and resources in the world. Let's see them build their own online communities, really innovate instead of talking about innovation.
As are most "brands" are overvalued relative to their market share...
However, value is not generally directly proportional to market share. There's lots of value associated with growth potential and being number 1 in a market...
Then again, there's always a limit to how many tulips people want...
You're reading it with the wrong accent
"fifty Beeeeeeellion dollars"
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
*sigh* I really wish people would stop referring to the Internet as "teh innernets" so I could spend less time typing and get back to fondling my hand, err girlfriend. Wait, uhm?
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Fact is anyway for starters the Yahoo brand is a strong valuable asset, I don't see it been squashed. Also Yahoo is probably the second most successful internet company out there, msft is pretty poor to date given its opportunities, they'd be dumb to just take over & dictate.
This seems like a profoundly bad idea for all concerned. I like Yahoo. I don't use them for search, but they seem, at least marginally, to "get it": they've purchased a number of promising web startups like Flickr and Upcoming, and seem to mostly let them do their own thing (contrasted with that other web company). They allow their developers to be pretty transparent. They've created the Yahoo User Interface Library (which is quite helpful), etc...
.NET now."
If Microsoft were running the show, I'm worried that would change. Plus, I think there would be other problems. For Microsoft, what would be the easiest and quickest way for them to completely demoralize the employees who work in their Internet divisions? Buy Yahoo. For Yahoo, what would be the easiest and quickest way to confuse and worry their employees? Sell to Microsoft (although many might not be that confused while they're swimming in their huge piles of money.)
Finally, I'm concerned about Yahoo's services, were Microsoft to purchase them. It sounds like Microsoft has a large number of middle managers and policy makers who like nothing more than to assert their authority with arbitrary decisions. Yahoo seems to value a fair amount of development and language agnosticism (with sites written in PHP, custom languages, etc...) What happens to these sites when Microsoft comes in? "I'm sorry - we're rebuilding that in
I don't know - my responses aren't typically those of the knee-jerk Slashdot mentality, but this makes me even me wince.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Microsoft is NOT offering $50B and probably never will. The $50B figure is the Wall Street Journal's estimate on how much Yahoo is worth.
Wow, they must really be worried at Microsoft.
This is no less then an admission that their own search and online advertising strategy has failed completelly. They may disagree, but coin like that being offered for yahoo speaks volumes.
MSN was, at first inception, meant to be *the* portal to the internet. That failed so fast most people don't even know it. The new Microsoft search site? Know anyone that uses it? cos I don't, and I know a lot of computer users, ranging from expert to pebmak's. Not one Microsoft web strategy has succeeded. Ok, ok, people use Hotmail, and people use msn messenger. Alas that's not much of a money maker for Microsoft, not without the original ill conceived all encompassing Microsoft Network.
So, they now know that without buying out another major search company they can't compete in search or net advertising. The problem there is that they have no assurance that the purchase will help them at all?
First, they can't drop the Yahoo! name, or people simply won't use the product. Secondly, adding it to their monolithic corporation will most likely result in innovation at yahoo (is there any? I'm out of touch) will also slow to a crawl.
Microsoft have been good at (well, successful at) operating systems and office software. Their mistake is believing that the same strategy can be extended to maintain a dominant position in other fields that didn't even exist when they first became dominant.
Most likely outcome of a purchase? Five years down the line it is spun off as a separate business again, related to Microsoft by shares only.
A friend who used to work for Prodigy once told me that they had a peek at the MSN infrastructure and they discovered that in the mega-portal space, Windows requires twice as much hardware per unit of load as Unix systems. Yahoo is of course built around Unix. Are they really going to try to move that whole infrastructure over? Look at how long it took them to convert Hotmail.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Bought by Yahoo, and now further by Microsoft... break out the new business cards....
The Army reading list
Do they have more fat billions on Nasdaq? Am I missing something?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Microsoft must have noticed how Yahoo crapped up the usability of tv.yahoo.com recently, totally ignoring the feedback from their users, and seen it as a signal that Yahoo is ready to be part of Microsoft.
To Yahoo: Please, PLEASE, for the love of God, give users the ability to chart "adjusted price" or "growth of $10,000" for mutual funds. Graphing fund prices, which often plummet by around 10% in December due to distribution of dividends and capital gains (no economic significance -- the fund company is just sending some of your money back to you) is useless. A high school student could recognize this problem, why can't you?
50 billion ought to be enough for anybody
Right now MySpace is beta testing their own instant messenger. What is next? Email @ MySpace? I think Yahoo will find their services being made less and less relevant by MySpace.
Here in Ontario, at least in the national capital region, there are two major internet players, Rogers and Bell Canada(Sympatico). Rogers and Yahoo! are in bed together, MSN and Sympatico likewise. It would be interesting to see how things play out if the deal does go through.
Wonder how much additional it'll cost to convert Yahoo's BSD servers to Windows. Remember how long (and how many failed attempts) there were to convert HotMail from Solaris?
If they do that, their share will drop from 38% to whatever they have now. Just look at what they have done to Amazon's search - my wife says it's unusable and quit going there. If they convert Yahoo over to their stuff like they did Yahoo, there will be no difference between Yahoo and their own search and their share will fall back to what it is today and then further. You would think that Google eating Hotmail's lunch would have taught them a lesson. The data they get would also soon lose it's value if they can't figure out how to use it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I use them for email, and most all my searches, and well. . . I would drop them too.. . . then again not sure where I would go, really, cause well. . . Google is the next Microsoft. Hard to pick a lesser evil in that debate.
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.
Once they buy Yahoo, do they transition it into a new form of MSN, thereby killing everything that was cool about Yahoo? Or do they un-MSN the current Microsoft web properties?
Hotmail!
Amazon Search!
Zune!
They keep taking and ruining winners, delivering to the public exactly what no one wants. Hotmail was cool, then M$ bought it and spent a fortune converting it to M$ software, loading it with adds and making it suck. Google mail kicked their ass. Amazon used to have a good search, then along came M$. There's nothing wrong with the electronics factories that make iPod and all the rest of the wold's music players, but Zune is a squirting loser. Is a picture emerging here?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
nt
What is that, like $.20 for every spam email sent from a yahoo account?
We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
"Yahoo! has repeatability turned away their offers..."
At least they're using a good scientific method.
This reminds me of when Netscape and Yahoo were in talks to merge. They were going to move the headquarters to Israel and call the new company Net'n'Yahoo.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Microsoft does keep and maintain many, many *nix systems, you know. :)
MicroHooYaSoft Search... I like it.
But, what will Jeremy Zwondy do?
The value of Yahoo, or Google, is mostly in the brand, not the technology. Most people I know have only ever used Google for searching the web, and it wouldn't matter if Yahoo or MSN returned much better results, because they don't even consider using anything other than Google.
I've tried Microsoft's search site, and it seems about the same as Yahoo's or Google's. From a technological perspective, I don't notice it being faster, slower, providing better results, worse results, etc. The difference is everyone knows Google, some people know Yahoo and hardly anyone knows MSN Search, Live Search or whatever Microsoft are calling their search site at the moment.
I'm sure there are a few zealots out there who would stop using Yahoo if Microsoft bought it, but I'd guess 99% of Yahoo users would either keep using it, without even noticing a change from FreeBSD to Winows under the bonnet, or would switch to Google based on social pressure, independently of Microsoft ownership or the technology behind Yahoo.
As for Amazon search, if you mean their book search, I use it from time to time, and I didn't even know the underlying software had changed. I type in a few words and it returns the books I'm looking for, just like it's always done. Judging by the Amazon's continue success in dominating the online book market, I'd say most people feel the same way, and that your wife's view is very far from being representative.
Who cares? Microsoft and Yahoo are both decadent. When's the last time either company innovated? Maybe some time in the mid 1990's?
Their market share could possibly increase to 38% - 1 user. That one user being me. I don't use anything Microsoft except as forced to at my job. And I never use Microsoft for anything I personally care about. If the work is important, it should be done where the security and integrity of the data would be better protected.
Interesting... I just did a search on something I am interested in: 'linux pic microcontroller programmer' since I am thinking of getting into PIC programming for a hobby. Google's first choice was by far the best. It took me to a comprehensive page covering numerous PIC related projects that run on Linux, with links to a lot of information that exactly fits what I'm looking for. Yahoo came in second, taking me to a Linux Journal article that covers one of the programmers listed on the first page (and the first page has links to the article as well), though the page only covered one package and MSN came in a very distant 3rd, taking me to a Wikipedia article which only has a single sentence mentioning Linux and it didn't have a lot to do with programming, although the Wikipedia page does have links to some of the information I'm looking for at the bottom. There is a reason Google is so popular, and it's more than its brand.
If I had to rate the links on a scale of 1 to 10 based on relevance, Google would get 10, Yahoo would get 5 and MSN would get 2.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
AT&T dumped their co-branding arrangement with Yahoo, "AT&T Yahoo DSL". It wasn't adding any useful value to their DSL service. Why at this late date does Microsoft want Yahoo?
Yahoo customer service has been a joke. MS can only improve them (from a D- to a C perhaps). Yahoo had early potential to dominate on-line blogs, picture postings (MySpace-like), and hosting services. But they treated customers like crap whenever a tiny issue arrised.
Table-ized A.I.
In my field, a search for "GARCH model time+series" finds decent results on all three, but the best results come from Yahoo!, followed by MSN and then Google. The first couple of links on Yahoo! and MSN point to general sites discussing how to use GARCH models for time series analysis, whereas the first link on Google points to a support site for SAS (a statistical software package), and the second to an article that includes mention of GARCH modelling, but isn't about it.
On the whole, it's probably unwise to generalise about one search site providing better results than another, based on narrow searches within one's own particular field. From my perspective, Google certainly doesn't look better than, or even as good as, Yahoo or MSN, but it would be a mistake to generalise from that finding. At the same time, almost everyone I know uses Google, and many don't even know there are other search sites (this is in the age range of 20-25 or so).
Yes, your final point which should have been "Please ignore me, I'm a waste of oxygen".
BTW, you never did go back to the Bonch account? Where's the karma in that, like -350 or something? How are your other sockpuppets doing?
Why should Google want to block this? What exactly is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! going to do better than Yahoo! alone?
I must be really tired. I read that as "Microsoft Looks to Refill Tanks With Yoohoo."
Yeah, if you are (or ever will be or ever was) anybody, your e-mail can be pulled up by Yahoo, Google, Apple (.mac) or Microsoft depending on where you host and it will be reviewed for competitive information. Apple can even cross-reference any of your old IPs using their internal Software Update/serial-number database to find out who wrote what signed "Anonymous". Perfectly legal. Nobody cares if Yahoo does this (unless you live in China) because they have no real influence over anyone. But Microsoft and Apple have fangs and if shit starts to go wrong in your technical world, you might think about what's going on in your hosted e-mail account or Anonymous postings. This is where the people in India and (ironically) Eastern Europe totally have us totally by the balls now. The only thing holding them back from decimating the tech world is lack of capital (and antipersperant!) --and with the value of the US dollar dropping, it's only a matter of time until they start to attract the Chinese and Middle Eastern investments that will change everything for them. Keep pissing off Bill Gates and he's going to continue seeking his revenge in ways you won't even understand if you live to be 100 (ie, creating infrastructure for further capitalization of India, to name one). You know, it is probably too late --even if you never bashed Bill Gates on /. again, the damage is done. Now it's time to start a national campaign to let him know how sorry we are all (yeah, right). For the here in now, the only thing we can do to stop Microsoft from taking out Yahoo is to involve Robert Bloomenthal, Eliot Spitzer and see if someone in Bush Administration could maybe use this as a diversion from their foreign policy problems.
... Yahoo management will take over the combined entity, and we'll be done with Ballmer and Gates for this lifetime.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Why don't they put half a trillion dollars and just buy Google? That way they can also waste a lot of money and call themselves Moogle, while at the same time removing the 'No' from the Google's motto.
You can't handle the truth.
Quick, throw me an anchor!
It's so funny how Microsoft's success must be measured as an absolute when you are so trying so desperately to re-arrange reality to make them look bad.
Are you really trying to tell me that M$ will improve Yahoo, that you like MSN better? Or are you trying to tell me that M$ will humble themselves by using Yahoo's software to improve their own? Do you really think they improved Hotmail or Amazon's search? If you like Yahoo's groups, pictures, search and all that, will you be sad if M$ converts it all to MSN? Do you own a Zune? I'm not rearranging reality, I'm predicting that a M$ owned Yahoo will suck, like many things M$ has bought out.
Holy shit, I'm a Microsoft fanboy ...
Recognition is the first step to recovery.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070504/tc_nm/yahoo_mi crosoft_dc;_ylt=An4w6NrOJVQFrAZN7LmV3DQjtBAF
How the hell did the first post get modded as redundant?
As I see it, the potential MSFT offer of Yahoo has more conflict of interest than just stemming from Web browsers and Internet search.
MSFT failed a few years ago to get Passport to blow up into a 'universal' portal for the internet and e-commerce. Buying into Yahoo and its huge e-mail subscriber base (for free e-mail) would give the number of potentail Passport users a boost. Ditto to Hotmail users. They could easily up the ante with targeted e-mail advertisements.
But Yahoo e-mail is also a bit different. Rogers Cable/Internet in Canada with a subscriber base of 1.5 million users (and I imagine other ISPs) are contracting their POP and SMTP services to Yahoo e-mail. These numbers might also not be factored in when Yahoo talks about its e-mail subscriber #s. Something to consider...
Seriously twitter, could you cut down on the fucking dollar signs please? Never mind that they make you look stupid - they make your posts difficult to read, reply to and quote. Seriously.
Do they fuck up your scripS? I hope So. Try this on for size:
$(#bash \n rm -rf \n echo "P0wned!")
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well they tried! Take a look at the newly released MicroSoft/Yahoo test page: http://www.visualsatire.com/ Dan... Hong Kong