Yahoo Bid shows Microsoft on the Ropes

Ponca City, We Love You writes "One day after the announcement of Microsoft's plan to buy Yahoo, there is an interesting piece from the NY Times analyzing the reasons behind Microsoft's bid and proposing that the bid is a tacit, and difficult, admission that Microsoft did not get its online business right and that online losses continue to mount while Google makes billions in profit. Microsoft "finds itself in a battle where improving its search algorithms and online ad software is not going to be enough," writes the Times. With the Yahoo bid Microsoft is trying to buy a big enough share of the market to be a credible alternative to Google with online advertisers. "This shows just how worried Microsoft is by Google," says David B. Yoffie. "Microsoft has faced competitive threats before, but none with the size, strength, profitability and momentum of Google.""

Comments

Eh?

[Dan100]

How can a company that can afford to pony up $44.6 bn possibly be described as being "on the ropes"?!

Re:Eh?

[tomhudson]

"How can a company that can afford to pony up $44.6 bn possibly be described as being "on the ropes"?!"

Here, let me fix that for you ...

"How can a company that feels it has to pony up $44.6 bn possibly be described as being anything but "on the ropes"?!"

... and its not an "all-cash" bid. 50% Microsoft stock. At least they aren't paying in

At least they're not offering to pay in Bush coins ... yet!

Re:Eh?

[jonbryce]

Look at for example GEC/Marconi. It can happen.

People aren't buying Windows Vista and Office 2007 because they have Windows XP and Office 2003 that does the job just fine, and possibly better, and it costs nothing to continue using it. None of their other attempts to diversify - Zune, X Box, Windows Live etc have been very succesful, so there are problems ahead.

They aren't bankrupt yet, but they are taking action to try and avoid it while they still can.

Re:Eh?

[Wowsers]

Let's google for the answer.

Re:Eh?

[rustalot42684]

Actually, I was helping my neighbour with their new computer the other day, and when I pointed out that you didn't need to pay $150 for Office 2007 Home&Student to write letters, they were very open to the idea of trying out OOo. I think they'll be very happy with it, mostly because they saved $150.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

People aren't buying Windows Vista and Office 2007 because they have Windows XP and Office 2003 Despite what you may read on slashdot, all other evidence suggests that this simply isn't true.

Re:Eh?

[Dan100]

People aren't buying Windows Vista and Office 2007 because they have Windows XP and Office 2003 that does the job just fine, and possibly better, and it costs nothing to continue using it.

Please folks, RTFA. To quote:

[Last year] The Office division alone had quarterly revenue of $4.8 billion equal to Google and an astronomical $3.2 billion in operating profits. The Windows unit is even more profitable.

In fact, Microsoft's Q1 results last year were the best for seven years:

Microsoft stunned Wall Steet with its latest financial results, based on the success of Windows Vista, Office 2007 and the Halo 3 game. First quarter revenues jumped by 27% to $13.76 billion, and profits by 23% to $4.29 billion. Sales beat expectations by more than $1bn.

Microsoft dwarfs Google in both revenue and profit. It's just lost out in the online services market (where despite rising revenues it still makes a loss), and wants to catch up. To do so, it can afford to make investments nobody else can, such as buying out another huge company with a big (if not terribly profitable) portfolio of online services. Together, the "network effect" would make both much more profitable than they are operating seperately.

Re:Eh?

[RobertM1968]

Good question... which leads me to this statement:

"This shows just how worried Microsoft is by Google," says David B. Yoffie. "Microsoft has faced competitive threats before, but none with the size, strength, profitability and momentum of Google."

Though probably true to one extent or another, this is just normal business for Microsoft. They routinely buy their competitors, whether they (or we) think their competitors have a better product or not. Thus, I am sure that DBY has not hit upon MS's full reasoning behind this move. Even if MS Live Search were the best "product" out there, this would be a way for MS to gain more market share in a very short period of time, and thus also increase revenue (ad and services generated), while wiping out yet another competitor.

Also, keep in mind, Yahoo does more than just search engines, and some of their other services also compete with MS's online services (and dont have similar Google services to compete with)... all of the above EXCEPT the Google aspect still apply.

Re:Eh?

[A nonymous Coward]

Despite what you may read on slashdot, all other evidence suggests that this simply isn't true.

Despite what you may post without evidence on slashdot, much other evidence suggests that this has more truth than falseness.

Re:Eh?

[multisync]

Despite what you may read on slashdot, all other evidence suggests that this simply isn't true.

Okay, I'll bite. Other than new systems preinstalled with Vista and Office 2007 (no choice available to the customer), which evidence suggests people are choosing to move from XP/Office 2003 to Vista/Office 2007?

Re:Eh?

[MightyMartian]

Or not. There's no guarantee that buying Yahoo is going to make it a uber-profitable division, nor does it mean that Microsoft somehow magically gains from it. Yahoo may be the next biggest, but Google dwarfs it. Yes, Microsoft will buy some market share, but even if it manages to maintain it, it's going to be an ironic twist, a sort of online market share version of the Windows/OSX split.

Re:Eh?

[RobBebop]

I pointed out that you didn't need to pay $150 for Office 2007 Home&Student to write letters, they were very open to the idea of trying out OOo.

So, ten years later, the identified threat turns out to be true, albeit moreso in the Office monopoly than on the OS. How quaint.

These documents acknowledged that free software products such as Linux were technologically competitive with some of Microsoft's products, and set out a strategy to combat them. The documents were embarrassing largely because they contradicted Microsoft's public pronouncements on the subject.

I wonder if the "strategy" was DRM and to adopt uncooperative practices. I guess that didn't turn out so well...

Re:Eh?

[abigor]

Well, a quick search found this for Office 2007 concerning its initial sales success:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011237
http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197006187

Speaking anecdotally, I can say that I've seen it widely deployed. Not the case for Vista though.

Re:Eh?

[masdog]

Anecdotal, mostly. Office 2007 isn't that bad...but my company (like many others) is having a hard time justifying an upgrade to 2007 when they can see the costs associated with user retraining. I personally own 2007, though, and I have a hard time trying to go back to 2003 or earlier versions.

Re:Eh?

[bigpicture]

Exactly, there are lots of big brand names that that no longer exist. All it takes is a short term business outlook, and/or wrong business model. Blackmail and holding your customers to ransom is never a good long term strategy. Because customers tend to have a very long term memory, and when a deal is no longer just about the money, (competitive) then other factors such as ethics and business relationships are considered.

Example: IBM used to be king of the PC world (no viable competition) they made a lot of "take it or leave it" PC deals. But when IBM eventually had dollar for dollar value competition, then the memory and past "business relationship" factors came into play. Result: IBM is no longer in the PC business.

Re:Eh?

[Darby]

Okay, I'll bite. Other than new systems preinstalled with Vista and Office 2007 (no choice available to the customer), which evidence suggests people are choosing to move from XP/Office 2003 to Vista/Office 2007?

My small company just hired a bunch of new employees and had to buy new office licenses. Office 2003 was not purchasable, so we had to buy 2007 licenses along with the media for 2003 and it included "down"grade licenses to 2003.

This evidence is used by MS to suggest that we chose to upgrade to 2007.
I suspect that a large chunk of the 2007 "installations" are similar given how widely reviled 2007 is.

Re:Eh?

[Score Whore]

Other than new systems preinstalled with Vista and Office 2007 (no choice available to the customer)...

A quick glance at Dell, it appears that there is certainly choice other than Vista for your new computer and none of the systems ships with Office 2007 as a default. If the largest PC seller on the planet doesn't follow your claims, I doubt that the little players are any different. You are a liar.

Re:Eh?

[symbolic]

And this is definitely consistent with Microsoft's tendency to buy their success, rather than derive it from innovation and products that are actually new.

Re:Eh?

[afabbro]

Let's google for the answer.

Of course, soon we'll all be saying "I msn-yahoo'd for the answer..."

Er, maybe not.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is "on the ropes" in online search and advertising. Nothing else.

Didn't they make $6B in *PROFIT* last quarter?

The main issue here is that they have been publicly crowing for years about how Google is in their crosshairs and what... Google's not standing still? Darn you Google!

It must drive Microsoft executives nuts that some other company is making lots of money off of software (not sales of but use of), I mean other companies aren't allowed to make money off of software, at least in the eyes of Microsoft.

Re:Eh?

[TheRaven64]

I googled for something on MSN the other day, but I haven't googled for anything on Yahoo since the '90s.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"How can a company that feels it has to pony up $44.6 bn possibly be described as being anything but "on the ropes"?!"

... with its CEO pulling the chair from under it to throw at Google.

Re:Eh?

[westlake]

when I pointed out that you didn't need to pay $150 for Office 2007 Home&Student to write letters, they were very open to the idea of trying out OOo. I think they'll be very happy with it, mostly because they saved $150.

MS Office 2007 has been insanely successful at retail.

The runaway best seller in PC software. Bigger than games. Bigger than anything.

Through end of November, U.S. retail PC software sales are up 10.3 percent year over year as measured in dollar volume, according to NPD. By comparison, Office sales are up 50.7 percent, by the same measure and in the same time frame.

"Here's the really interesting statistic," said Chris Swenson, NPD's director of Software Industry Analysis. "Over two-thirds of the dollar volume growth in the U.S. retail PC software market in 2007 can be attributed to Microsoft Office. In other words, the ratio of Office dollar growth to total PC software growth is 67 percent."

Office sales are so big, they make calculating broader PC software retail sales difficult.

Apple has had a great year selling Macs, which has helped boost Office 2004 sales. Version 2004 is doing so well that, ahead of the holiday sales period, Mac Office accounted for about 20 percent of all U.S. retail Office sales, according to NPD.

For Black Friday, Microsoft offered a surprising deal: for about 56 bucks, after rebates, Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition and the forthcoming Office 2008 Special Media Edition. The new, top-of-the-line Mac Office version would otherwise sell for about $500. The Year of Office 2007

MS Office Home is $120 at Amazon. Retail boxed. Free shipping. Three seat license.

Replacement ink jet cartridges typically list for around $60 the pair. You do the math. If you can afford the consumables, you can afford MS Office. The added expense is trivial.

If his employer has a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft, your neighbor may qualify for a full version of Office for the price of shipping and handling.

Re:Eh?

[Raphael Emportu]

Where else would you be if the floor collapses under your billions. Bill will soon be eating peanut butter sandwidches like the rest of us :-)

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does this matter? More importantly, why is it only Microsoft that gets bashed with this argument? Most companies do it, including several slashdot favorites like IBM, Sun, and yes, even Google.

Re:Eh?

[walter_f]

How can a company that can afford to pony up $44.6 bn possibly be described as being "on the ropes"?!

In terms of money, it couldn't, no, not Microsoft.
In terms of technology, it can, especially Microsoft.

In the past Microsoft has bought all the technology money can buy, but for the future, that's not enough. ;-)

Re:Eh?

[smallpaul]

Just about everything you said is incorrect. You said:

You said: People aren't buying Windows Vista and Office 2007 because they have Windows XP and Office 2003 that does the job just fine, and possibly better, and it costs nothing to continue using it.

But the facts are: "Better-than-expected worldwide PC shipments, tougher anti-piracy measures and growing numbers of businesses switching to long-term volume software licenses helped boost revenue for the two Microsoft divisions responsible for Windows and Office to a total of $9.14 billion, 50 percent more than a year ago."

Microsoft has never depended on people going out and buying Windows and Office as shrinkwrapped software. People buy them when they buy computers because it is the easiest thing to do.

You said: . None of their other attempts to diversify - Zune, X Box, Windows Live etc have been very succesful, so there are problems ahead.

But the facts are: "The division responsible for the Xbox 360 video game system swung to a profit on rising sales of games and accessories, which deliver better margins than the console itself. Microsoft said the division is still on track to be profitable in fiscal 2008."

You said: They aren't bankrupt yet, but they are taking action to try and avoid it while they still can.

But the facts say: "Microsoft blew by Wall Street's expectations for a second consecutive quarter." (announced just a couple of weeks ago) Quantitatively speaking they are not only "not bankrupt yet" but not even heading in that direction.

My reference: http://www.kval.com/news/business/14266747.html

Do I think that all is well in Microsoft land? No way: but no massively profitable company with a gargantuan bank account can be said to be "on the ropes". There is a big difference with "perhaps pointed in the wrong direction" and "on the ropes". It would be more accurate to say: "There are indications in the early rounds of fighting that the current champ will have to adjust strategy to win against a promising upstart competitor."

I'm no Microsoft fanboy: I think that they need to fire Ballmer and reform the culture. But that's actually an easier thing to do than the sorts of things that their competitors need to do to become as entrenched and powerful as Microsoft is. Or to put it another way: Microsoft will lose if they don't adjust strategy, but the fight is still theirs to lose. i.e. they are a bit bloodied, not "on the ropes".

Re:Eh?

[Yvanhoe]

Do not mistake cash for cashflow.

But I guess I can also say that one should not mistake Slashdotters' dreams for the reality.

Re:Eh?

[HW_Hack]

""How can a company that can afford to pony up $44.6 bn possibly be described as being "on the ropes"?!""

I hardly find this comment "insightful" --- both MS and Intel were at the right place at the right time when the PC was born. Now to be fair both companies also did some good work in the '90s and up to around 2001 (2001 saw the release of XP and the Pentium 4). Thus leading to their 80% - 90% market share positions today. And with that 80%-90% comes a ton of profit so frankly $44 billion is a chunk of change but by no means is a "sign of good health or innovation".

However both had major fuck-ups or major missed opportunities during the earlier years - and continue to struggle today to see the trends - make the right choices - or make the hard choices.

For MS alone:
- Remember Netscape ? MS totally missed the whole Internet trend
- Windows ME
- Their inability to grasp the net as a business model (i.e. Google)
- Making big promises while not focusing on fixing problems - doing neither and producing Vista

And these are just some of the biggies --- now both Apple and Linux are nibbling away at the market space

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, why is it only Microsoft that gets bashed with this argument? Most companies do it, including several slashdot favorites like IBM, Sun, and yes, even Google.

The companies you listed all buy innovations, but they also create there own. IBM, Sun, and Google have all created some totally amazing things from nothing, something Microsoft seem entirely unable to do.

Re:Eh?

[HalAtWork]

If their profits slow, investors will want to pull out, confidence will wane, they won't be able to sustain much less add to the profits they are getting now (especially considering how much research and development costs), and they won't be able to sustain their other ventures that aren't turning a profit yet. They won't be able to buy any new businesses if their own decisions and solutions aren't gaining them market share.

Re:Eh?

[mrchaotica]

I wonder if the "strategy" was DRM and to adopt uncooperative practices. I guess that didn't turn out so well...

They're still pursuing that strategy, and it remains to be seen how well it turns out. They've lost the using-SCO-as-a-front gambit, but they're still fighting on the bludgeon-ISO-into-making-OOXML-a-standard and kill-OLPC-in-favor-of-Windows-running-stuff fronts.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you know what you're talking about at all. Seriously, for all the bashing Mac and Linux fanboys line up to do, you need to get your facts in line.

XBox not making money? Ummm.... 2008 is the first year Microsoft projected to be profitable for XBox 360. Looks likely to happen.

Office not making money? Ummm....
"During the company's fourth-quarter earnings conference call last week, Microsoft officials said that revenue in its business division -- driven largely by enterprise sales of Office -- was up 19% year over year to $4.6 billion. Sales in that same division for the current quarter are expected to increase 14% to 15% from the same period a year ago."

Even lowly, much maligned Vista:
From the Washington Post: "Microsoft said Thursday that its fiscal second-quarter profit climbed 79 percent, buoyed by rising sales of Windows-based personal computers". What OS do you think those are shipping with? XP? Not!

But seriously, they're going to go under any minute now. You know they're just resting on their laurels, slacking off etc...

Re:Eh?

[srichard25]

People aren't buying Windows Vista? What do you think comes stock on virtually every single new computer? Did Dell suddenly stop selling computers?

Re:Eh?

[Danathar]

Yea, but the fact of the matter is Microsoft COULD make it an all cash bid which is scary.

Re:Eh?

[Rolgar]

But the applications are what keep people on Windows. Get people to move to a cross-platform software package, say Open Office, GnuCash, KDE desktop, FireFox browser, vlc and flash for video, and a couple of nice games, then when people have the option of getting Windows or Linux the next time around, Microsoft will lose a customer or have to drop their price to stay in the game.

Re:Eh?

[symbolic]

It matters because Microsoft's PR machine wants people to believe that it's an innovative company. It isn't.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is.

Re:Eh?

[jonbryce]

PC World, the largest computer store in Britain, issued a profits warning which said that people didn't want to buy their computers because they had Vista on them.

Re:Eh?

[Deadfyre_Deadsoul]

People shop and use Yahoo, simply because its Yahoo. A lot of people, who don't like MS, like me, would simply stop using Yahoo period and switch to Google, just to avoid MS. Should they buy Yahoo, but I personally hope they do not, mainly because I like Yahoo for Yahoo, and have for well over 10 years now. I like XP, but everything else, there is an alternative to use, OOo, Wii, Phillips mp3 players. There is only very little MS makes that most folks seem to want to use, are want to be forced into buying. MS how ever, doesn't seem to get this.

Re:Eh?

[tomhudson]

Actually, no, they can't. They have "only" $19 gigabux on hand.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT

Total Cash (mrq*): 19.09B

(* mrq: most recent quarter)

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just one more example of slashdot myopia. Remember Ajax? That little innovation that practically every web site - including Google - uses now? Yeah, Microsoft came up with that in order to make their Outlook webmail component work more like the desktop application.

I don't know how Microsoft compares to other companies in terms of total innovation, but they do introduce their own technologies from time to time and some of it actually changes the world. Give credit where it's due.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do we know they are not "managing earnings"?

Re:Eh?

[eshefer]

sure they can. they can do it if they finance it, IE take loans, IE get into debt. and it's not impossible: they can return that debt within a year of two. we are talking about a company that profits a few billion EACH quarter.

Re:Eh?

[barzok]

For letters, you could have just as easily pointed them at WordPad. It'll do the job just fine, without all the bloat of OOo.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Majority of the students just buy MS Office 2007. On any desktop with decent memory, MS office 2007 is quite fast and easy to use with just 30 minutes of re-training. You will not go back to older editions, once you start using Off-2007. Almost all college students are new to word processors and they need tools like spreadsheets and word processors. Office-2007 student edition for $150 is a no-brainer. OneNote that comes with Office-2007 student edition is a very good software tool as well. There are opensource choices, but who cares if you only have to pay $150 (after considering the cost of tuition and living).

Openoffice has a long way to go to improve usability. It may never get there.. The menu and the screen layout... almost everything about it sucks (except the price). Writer is neither completely like frame maker, nor completely like Word but completely a new animal. If you are new to office software suite, learning Office-2007 is way faster than OOo. Nobody cares if OOo becomes the best desktop publishing tool. It won't see increased usage, if the user-interface is not simple enough.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tsk tsk, a man of your years should know better...

• Exhibit A
• Exhibit B
• Exhibit C

And for the defence?

Re:Eh?

[cellocgw]

sure they can. they can do it if they finance it, IE take loans, IE get into debt.
So you expect Microsoft's web browser to take out the loan? :-)

Ask the grammar police: it's "i.e.," not "IE."

Re:Eh?

[inKubus]

Microsoft is a publishing company. The biggest publishing company, actually. They publish software.
Google is a advertising company. They sell ads.

Microsoft's main strength, they make the ubiquitous OS on all pre-built PCs, means they at least $100 of every PC sold.
Google's main strength, their search engine, can only be free.

Google's trying to make M$FT sweat by taking all that practically free money they're making selling ads to reinvest in the online services model. But the problem is the online service is ONLINE, not on your machine. So there's no way for them to ever get a piece of PC sales as long as Microsoft has the OS locked down. Thus they are going where it's easy, Mobile Devices. Google is always on a precipice. They rose so quickly, much more quickly than Microsoft, they can fall just as quickly. They are a reasonably small company with not that many employees and not that many products.

Microsoft has always done a good job of keeping their company small enough to make a shitload of money for the shareholders. They have 60 billion in cash, and they pay dividends. They could buy Yahoo, totally remove it from the internet and still make 20 times what Google makes. They are in two separate businesses and I hate it how people are always comparing them.

I guess the David n' Goliath thing is a classic meme in Journalism but Google is doing their own thing, not trying to fight Microsoft. I do think they'll do a better job than M$FT in the global market, what with Sir Gay being russian and everything. It is kindof funny how you hear stories about the communist atmosphere around the Google campuses, almost cult-like. Whereas Microsoft has really lightened up, especially since Ray Ozzie came on board.

Some things will never change, Microsoft will always try to structure their products to sell as many OS licenses as possible and Google will always only sell ads.

Re:Eh?

[tomhudson]

sure they can. they can do it if they finance it, IE take loans, IE get into debt. and it's not impossible: they can return that debt within a year of two. we are talking about a company that profits a few billion EACH quarter.

Now THAT would really be a watershed event ... and an indicator that all is really not well with the good ship VistaSoft.

Microsoft will never take out a loan. Ever. They'll issue more shares first.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read the headline that was exactly my thought (before even reading the article)

Re:Eh?

[antdude]

I know some people still using Office 97 and OpenOffice. I still use 2000 on my machines at home. It does fine.

Re:Eh?

[dmsuperman]

Until 2007, I was absolutely 100% for OO.o. Since using 2007, though, they've definitely passed OO.o back up. It's much faster (that was the main reason I went to OO.o) and Word has an absolutely perfect interface. They've finally done something right in the 2007 release.

Re:Eh?

[MightyMartian]

IBM and Sun may buy technology, but they generate a helluva lot of it, too. The computer revolution owes a great deal to IBM's labs.

Re:Eh?

[MightyMartian]

What you're talking about is one type of server-client asynchronous. Microsoft was hardly the first to do that with a browser. Yes, XMLHttpRequest has made things easier, but IFRAME has been around longer.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, 2 points here:

1. This argument doesn't apply only to Microsoft. Google was hardly the first company to build a web search engine, either. But they did develop an innovative algorithm that returned better results and thus became the most popular search engine. Same with Microsoft and XMLHttpRequest.

2. You're changing the argument. The original comment stated that Microsoft simply buys all of their technology and doesn't create anything new. I gave one example of a specific technology that was developed by Microsoft and that has gained widespread support on the internet through its own merits. The fact that the idea already existed is irrelevant.

Re:Eh?

[calebt3]

$19 gigabux Isn't the $ and the gigabux redundant?

Re:Eh?

[drseuk]

I did. Apparently if a Ballmer is fired from a chimps' tea party chair at between 24 and 36 mph at 55 degrees it can clear a 33 foot moat and a 12.5 foot high fence and still kill one googler on impact ... before being shot-gunned.

Re:Eh?

[Fishchip]

Ah, well, then, I should just ask Toshiba for the $300 I spent to buy XP again because they dint offer an XP load. How would that fly, do you think? You want to back me up as a witness in court if I sue? Since you implies all PC manufacturers offer an XP alternative load and all. C'mon, it'll be jokes.

Re:Eh?

[Lord Flipper]

MS Office 2007 has been insanely successful at retail.

Although I realize the Macintosh market is pretty small in comparison, I took a two-minute look at Office 2008 (from the Macintosh Business Unit at MS) and dumped Office:Mac 2004, just like that. They've done, as usual, a terrific job over there.

I grabbed the Standard version. Entourage is much improved (over here in Mac-land, at least), the newer 'main' fonts in Word (across the suite, really) are cleaner and tighter than the workhorses that they are replacing, and the menus and toolbars are relevant and easily negotiated. It's a winner, there's no two ways about it.

It's easy to 'hate' Microsoft, but with the regulatory and judiciary toads sitting on their own asses, who can blame MS for doing what they were all but encouraged to do? A company is expected to be profit-oriented, and 'by any means necessary' is the American Way. Just look around. But the regulators and Courts have no imperial/capitalist 'excuse'. Shame on them.

Even if Google got out of the personal info spy/data-hoarding biz and canceled all their eternally 'in-beta' projects, and went full tilt at the desktop, LAN-and WAN-based publishing, market they could never deal a productivity suite like Office. They wouldn't get near MS's Help and tutorials, either. But then again, so what? They have their own cash cow and the blind trust of millions who are feeding them data, so they don't 'need' an Office suite, do they?

Yahoo's in trouble. On the Mac they just don't cut it. The worst spam filtering on the planet, a mish-mash of messenger versions, etc.

My wild guess on the MS/Yahoo idea? The easy part is: Yahoo's on the ropes. But maybe the MS economics guys sense that MSFT has approached a 'top' in terms of it's stock's value, which is when smart companies like to use inflated stock, rather than cash, to buy up the other guys. Heheh, so if you see an announcement that Google is splitting 2 or 3 for 1, call your broker with market orders to sell; That is, of course, as long as the big switches aren't already jammed. (There was a serious 'bump' in orders of big Nortel switches by guys like Fidelity Investments, in the very late 90s, and lo and behold...)

Also, on a side note, the amount of 'cash' MS has at their disposal is probably dwarfed by other liquid investments. They won't be borrowing for a while, unless the interest rate they're offered is lower than the income on their investments.

Re:Eh?

[Lord Flipper]

Why does this matter? More importantly, why is it only Microsoft that gets bashed with this argument?

This AC poster is absolutely correct. Why the 'Zero' mod?

Let's include Apple here, while we're at it. I'm a long-time Apple user/buyer (who also ran Ataris, SGI's, and a SPARCstation or two), so I'll come with some facts here: For starters, some of Apple's biggest innovations were, in fact innovative, but they where that came from was in putting a better GUI on top of a product, or combination of products that already existed. With some rough edges developed out, and they were successful at it.

iTunes came from SoundJam, and it was owned by Casady & Greene, a company that had a number of winners, but lacked the money and muscle to take it to the next level.

Going back a bit further, to the Dawn of the age of Desktop Publishing, the one piece of equipment that really ignited this entire industry was the LaserWriter. The "Apple" Laserwriter, right? Sure, it was, that's true. But what was it, really? Answer: About a 50/50 collaboration between Canon and Adobe. One for the hardware (engine) and the other for a little old thing called 'PostScript". Apple drew up a front-end. The rest was history.

Bill Gates knew the guys at Apple were on to something, and it was Jobs that turned down Gates' advice to port to the Intel (way back there) and "take over the World." One of Microsoft's hugest cash cows was a direct result of their writing (heheh, sort of... [laughs]) a couple of apps, at the request of Apple, for Macintosh-only, called Word and Excel. And of course OS X is a great GUI on top of the Mach 2.5 kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with subsystems from 4.3BSD.

Anyway, AC was right. When I think of innovation I see smart guys, standing on the notebooks of other guys.

Re:Eh?

[dookiesan]

I agree. Office 2007 really is good. Many features in Word and Excel that I never knew about, but now use all the time, were introduced through the ribbon. Excel can now open enormous text files without hanging. The whole suite is very slick.

Re:Eh?

[tsa]

I will cancel my Flickr account when MS buys Yahoo, just to pester them! That'll teach them!

Re:Eh?

[tsa]

My father didn't want OO on his new laptop, 'because it is different from MS Office.' So I bought him Office 2007. Mwuhahahaahha!!!

Re:Eh?

[Auckerman]

But the facts are: "The division responsible for the Xbox 360 video game system swung to a profit on rising sales of games and accessories, which deliver better margins than the console itself. Microsoft said the division is still on track to be profitable in fiscal 2008."

No, their gaming division stopped taking a loss on new sales. That's not the same as making a profit (which is how it's spun). Microsoft has lost at least 4 BILLION dollars (the best numbers I could find were from 3 years ago) on the XBOX line. That's not including the additional estimated $1 Billion+ dollars for the RROD. On the 360 alone they have lost somewhere around a half billion dollars. Eventually, the XBOX line will make a profit, sometime in the next few years. As it is, one can easily say the 360 has not been, in any shape way or form, a profit for Microsoft. It's been such a travesty, I'm honestly surprised the shareholders didn't sue Microsoft to stop them from bleeding value from the company.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You will not go back to older editions, once you start using Off-2007

Of course not. You'd have to retype all your documents, because older versions won't understand the filr format, and Office 2007 would refuse to save in "old" formats.

Re:Eh?

[jacquesm]

moron. I've been doing under water javascript requests since *1998*, because there was no other way to stream video to a browser without using a plugin (unless you had netscape).

The script is pretty much unchanged from it's original, check any ww.com userpage, and no, I didn't even bother patenting it because it seemed pretty obvious to me at the time.

Re:Eh?

[shutdown -p now]

When I think of innovation I see smart guys, standing on the notebooks of other guys.

So you're saying that using a MacBook Air amounts to actively opposing innovation?

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the $ and the gigabux redundant?

Isn't your reply redundant? And mine?
What's your fucking point?

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Blip.TV spot is being "bleeped" out. I guess that politicians and their ilk are censoring the net now. Yes I did get to see it by using a backdoor method. 8-)

Re:Eh?

[michaeljpastor]

Google buys its success too

Re:Eh?

[symbolic]

Show me something that isn't PR.

Re:Eh?

[symbolic]

I did a quick read on this, and if Wikipedia is correct, the IFrame first appeared in Internet Explorer 3.0. In effect, the parent makes a valid point. In this case, Microsoft did manage to come up with something that I'd call "innovative".

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

... Which just shows how much you know about business.

Re:Eh?

[Lord Flipper]

So you're saying that using a MacBook Air amounts to actively opposing innovation?

Ha ha, funny, but no, not at all. As a matter of fact, I see the Air as being one more minor 'nudge', I hope, at Google, to start thinking seriously about a coast-to-coast wireless situation. The biggest enemies of innovation are the Phone and Cable companies, and their friends in DC, who'd love nothing more than to see the Internet turned into a nice, TV-like, 'read-only' affair.

I'll take a 'pass' on the Air, personally, since trudging around with an old Aluminum Powerbook and a Kensington Trackball is about the only exercise I get. :)

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you i... paid Microsoft $150,00 instead of keeping it yourself.

Re:Eh?

[tsa]

Luckily I work at en educational institution and I could get it for 15 euros. But I agree that that is much too much. But I'm tired of arguing with people about software so I bought it anyway.

Re:Eh?

[elrous0]

They keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what they think it does.

Re:Eh?

[ma1wrbu5tr]

How can a company that can afford to pony up $44.6 bn possibly be described as being "on the ropes"?! It's called a Quixote complex. Keep leaning towards that windmill, Bill.

It is not all bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Google and the Mozilla Foundation both compete well with Microsoft in a few areas and both make truckloads of cash. Microsoft needs this so it can eventually stop being treated like a monopoly. This would let Microsoft bundle their software however they wish.

Re:It is not all bad

[mordors9]

I still have a Yahoo! home page that I visit on a daily basis. If Microsoft buys them, I will quickly delete that bookmark and will never visit it again. I would highly doubt that I would be alone in that either. Google and Mozilla haven't alienated large groups of people (Google seems to be working on it at times) the way Microsoft have. So I don't think this is going to turn out to be such a great thing for them. Kind of like AOL. Look how valuable that looked to TW, how did that turn out?

Re:It is not all bad

[richg74]

I also have a Yahoo! home page that I look at many times a day. (I like it as a way of aggregating news headlines from different sources, along with market indicators, exchange rates, etc.) Although I don't have a very high opinion of Microsoft, I won't necessarily abandon it just because the deal goes through. But my expectation is that it won't be long before Microsoft manages to screw up the good parts of Yahoo! MS doesn't know how to run a Web site (of course, using Windows does give them a considerable handicap) -- try comparing the response times of ???.microsoft.com to Yahoo!, never mind Google.

And the idea that somehow a combined Yahoo! and Microsoft will be able to take on Google in search and advertising must be one of those faith-based initiatives. Two times clueless is still clueless.

Re:It is not all bad

[pherthyl]

Google also has personalized home pages where you can throw news boxes or RSS feeds or gadgets together on one page, in case you want to switch at some point. http://www.google.com/ig

Re:It is not all bad

[HouseOfMisterE]

The exact same thought was going through my mind when I read your post. I currently use "My Yahoo!" as my homepage, and almost always use Yahoo for my web searches, but would change both of those things immediately if Microsoft acquired Yahoo. I think that I would try to switch to Ask.com, though would probably end up using Google.

Re:It is not all bad

[richg74]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have actually looked at the customizable Google page, and have played with it a bit. That's probably where I'll end up, but I've had the My Yahoo! page since 2000.

Re:It is not all bad

[Skreems]

And the idea that somehow a combined Yahoo! and Microsoft will be able to take on Google in search and advertising must be one of those faith-based initiatives. Two times clueless is still clueless.

Not necessarily. When you're talking about creating a market like Google's AdSense, having more customers competing for the space is going to raise prices and increase the quality of the ads. And more than doubling your market share, as this purchase would do, is a great way to get more customers. The more market share you can offer them, the more it's worth it for smaller places to bother with putting ads in your system as well as Google's.

Re:It is not all bad

[falconwolf]

Not necessarily. When you're talking about creating a market like Google's AdSense, having more customers competing for the space is going to raise prices and increase the quality of the ads. And more than doubling your market share, as this purchase would do, is a great way to get more customers. The more market share you can offer them, the more it's worth it for smaller places to bother with putting ads in your system as well as Google's.

However Yahoo! may lose eyeballs if MS buys it. As others have pointed out when MS buys some company they tend to mess it up. Messing up Yahoo! will only drive users to another search engine, like Google. Yahoo! currently uses open source software and has many employees working on OSS. With Ballmer dead set against OSS, he's likely to end that, and switch Yahoo! to MS software. Google can then say, "come over here, we welcome you."

Falcon

I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[QuatermassX]

search algorithm ... it would certainly help make the "service" an actual service! Over the years I've watched as Microsoft has released meh product after meh product. Isn't that their real problem - when the vendor lock-in wears off, they have DAMN weak products.

I have never understood the popularity of Windows with consumers (beyond the obvious monopoly power they wield with personal computer manufacturers), I find their software mostly blech (frankly, anything NOT Word and Excel is just junk) and their online products and services NEVER work as advertised. NEVER.

If I were Microsoft, I'd try and refocus the company culture and align it with the interests of its customers and not ... well ... whatever hellish alliance of businessmen, content producers and bean counters they're currently serving.

I think the XBox 360 points the way, really ...

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[MonoSynth]

If I were Microsoft, I'd try and refocus the company culture and align it with the interests of its customers The 'customers' in the search engine industry are the advertisers, and the main interest of advertisers is reaching as many consumers as possible. A perfect search portal with a perfect algorithm doesn't work. Buying the world's number two might work.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Daengbo]

I think the XBox 360 points the way, really ...

Four letters: RROD ....

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[KokorHekkus]

Except that the Xbox and Xbox 360 has been major economic sinkholes. From 2002 to 2004 the then Home and Entertainment Division made an accumulated loss for 3.5 billion dollars. From 2005 to 2007 the new Entertainment and Devices division made an accumalted loss of 3.7 billion dollars. So over those 6 years they lost 7.2 billion dollars. Imagine how hard it will to make that money back (plus the lost interest on it) from a division that has a 6 billion revenue per year and never has shown a profit.

Microsoft has tried several directions when it comes to break into new markets but let's face it, they haven't done a very good job of it. Their money comes from the Server and Tools Division and the Business Division (Office etc.). And I don't think it's going to change... perhaps because they aren't used to competing on merits alone.

2004 10-K (has the 2002 to 2004 numbers) http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312504150689/d10k.htm 2007 10-K (has the 2005 to 2007 numbers) http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/drawFiling.asp?docKey=136-000119312507170817-22AR89VDNH3I307BANT6DSD928&docFormat=HTM&formType=10-K

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[dotancohen]

Actually, MS Office 2007 is a great improvement. If it would run on Ubuntu (and save in odf format without the stupid non-working plugin) then I would pony up the money for it. Media Player, up to version 10, was a great program as well. All they need to do is refocus and get a decent operating system out the door to save themselves. And no, I haven't used MS software in my house for over two years. But not because I hate them.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[DiarmuidBourke]

I was just thinking the same thing when reading the article.

People use microsoft products because of the monopoly, not because they are good products. What microsoft need to do online is to stop being d***s to their consumers and realise that online consumers dont want to be bombared with adverts for other microsoft products, they just want a product that aids the user to complete what they want to do, like what google does with search.

They seem to be stuck in the idea that their monopoly on Windows is going to be able to push their online service. They need to change that to their public image being able to push their online services. Yahoo had a good public image, until then they started getting envious of their new competitor Google, who were all cheery and happy.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[filbranden]

A perfect search portal with a perfect algorithm doesn't work.

This isn't about the search algorithm. Microsoft is clearly after Yahoo's user base and users that go to Yahoo for search. For what it's worth, they could scrap Yahoo's search algorithm completely, replace it with MSN, as long as they believe that users will still go to Yahoo after that.

Of course, Microsoft has done that before. Look at Hotmail for instance. They couldn't stand the fact that it was not Microsoft technology under it, so they just had to "improve" it on their way. Results? After Microsoft's "improvement" Hotmail ceased to be #1 in webmail and now must be around #957 in market share.

It's probable that if they finally buy Yahoo it will be just the same. Users will deflect in masses. First it will be the users that leave Yahoo because they don't trust Microsoft (say around 5-10%), then it will be the users that leave Yahoo because Microsoft "improves" the service with their own ways of "improvement" (say around 10-20%), and finally it will be the users that leave Yahoo because Microsoft will introduce its silly single platform locked-in technologies, like Silverlight, and they will try to integrate Yahoo with the desktop, which will make Yahoo no longer as "convenient" it is from the point of view that you can access it anywhere without restrictions (say around 20-40% users leaving because of this).

In the end, Yahoocrosoft will lose from 35% to 70% users, and Google will be a yet bigger #1 with a distant #2. I think Microsoft buying Yahoo will be bad for the search/ads market, but it will be good for the OS/desktop/browser market, because Microsoft will certainly weaken from this. I think it's worth to give Google that much power if we get rid of Microsoft in the process, so I'm happy with this and I actually want it to happen, as much sorry I am for Yahoo, but hey, if they take the bid, they're just asking for it.

If I were Microsoft, I'd try and refocus the company culture and align it with the interests of its customers

Yes! Exactly my point. If Microsoft tries to think "as Yahoo does" and doesn't intervene that much, it could use its money and power to actually make it grow and defy Google. But Microsoft is too clever! They'll want to turn Yahoo in Microsoft, they'll want to use their MSN knowledge to grow Yahoo. They'll want to "improve" Yahoo services by migrating them to Windows servers (as with Hotmail), they'll want to "leverage" the desktop on Yahoo services. That will be their biggest mistake. But it's inevitable, there's no way that Microsoft will buy Yahoo and not do that.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Rest of the post aside, Silverlight isn't a single platform technology.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[MightyMartian]

I've said it before. Microsoft and Yahoo both are stuck in the old "portal" paradigm, where the search engine had its home page filled beyond all reasoning with links, news items, adverts and all sorts of crap. Go to http://msn.com/ or http://yahoo.com/ and see what I mean. For krissakes, Yahoo has Flash on it.

Now go to http://google.com./ There's one image, a drop down menu, a few odd miscellaneous things like account and internal link info. The vast majority of the real-estate is bare. Google has never fucked with that fundamental formula. Even the ads are relatively discreet. Google has grown its dominance by trusting the consumer, not by trying to give them epileptic seizures with the sheer amount of crap on the main page.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[abigor]

People use microsoft products because of the monopoly, not because they are good products. Well, I am NOT a MS advocate, but this isn't always true. For example, in the corporate environment, there is no competitor for Exchange or Active Directory (that has the same ease-of-use). Those guys swear by this stuff, and it does seem to generally work well for them.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Bombula]

I have never understood the popularity of Windows with consumers (beyond the obvious monopoly power they wield with personal computer manufacturers), I find their software mostly blech (frankly, anything NOT Word and Excel is just junk)

Now I'm no M$ fanboy, but I think there are some clear and simple explanations for Microsoft's enormous success aside from simply their OS and Office suite market dominance as a near-monopoly. In a nutshell, I think they all boil down to the mass-market effect. I'll invoke the American Beer Analogy here.

Why are Miller and Budweiser and Coors so hugely successful as beers? No one would say it's because they're the best-tasting or highest-quality beers in the world. They're not the cheapest either. So why are they popular? Because they are nonoffensive and they are exactly what you expect them to be. That's all. Everyone has a different favorite beer, so it is impossible to be 'the best' because 'best' is far too subjective. All you can reasonably hope to do is put out a product that doesn't offend anyone, and that delivers exactly according to expectations: it's not mind-blowing, but it's not a let-down either.

This is a major part of mass-market positioning in any industry. If you pick any particular reason why Windows and Office are successful - the look and feel is familiar, the interface is intuitive, things are where you expect them to be, there is widespread hardware support, and on and on, and then look carefully you'll find that they all end up being part of this same mass-market pattern.

As another example to illustrate my point, I just recently installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop - the first Linux distro I've dual-booted in more than 5 years. I'm happy with it primarily because it just works. Look at what 'just works' means: it means it did what I expected without pissing me off. Ubuntu is based on GNOME, of course, and unlike the distros of my youth back in the 1990s whose unix GUIs were genuinely different, today's GNOME and KDE and other popular GUIs are essentially just clones or clone-hybrids of Windows and Mac OS. And THAT is why they're starting to get mass-market penetration and why they're starting to be successful. The mass-market doesn't want or need a Ferrari or Rolls Royce to go to the grocery store. The mass-market wants a reliable minivan or SUV. For far too long Linux distros tried to be either a Ferrari, Rolls or Humvee, and market share accurately reflected the reality of this marketing strategy.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[xeoron]

This makes me ask the question-- should Google do anything in response to this announcement? The first thing I thought of-- what if Google offered to buy Microsoft-- surely Google could run it far better than they can. And, just think of what they might release for a Post Visa OS...

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Skreems]

While you've got a point, you're not comparing the right things. MSN seems to intentionally be a portal site. And yes, it's cluttered and ugly, and we both hate it, but some people don't. It's there for them. However, it doesn't seem fair to compare it to www.google.com, because it's not the competitor. The actual competitor for www.google.com is www.live.com. And that is relatively clean and simple.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[wertigon]

Silverlight might as well be. I for one don't trust Microsoft will keep up their cross-platform commitment in the slightest; As soon as it's beaten Flash to the ground, the Mac version will mysteriously disappear and the Linux version will be lacking any significant modules. And all other platforms are unable to play the content.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent down for comparing apples with oranges.

Let us compare properly:

• search page: http://google.com/ http://search.yahoo.com/ http://live.com/
• portal/personalised page: http://google.com/ig http://my.yahoo.com/ http://msn.com/

Not so different anymore, is it? Especially the search pages are cloned off Google's look&feel, and have been since years.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently, the EU is in the process of anti-trust negotiations with Microsoft regarding Office file formats. Having learned a lot during the Justice Department anti-trust trial, Microsoft is currently trying to negotiate a deal which will preempt the EU from bringing anything to court. Mark my words--one part of that agreement will be adding native ODF support to the next version of Office currently under development.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[nazg00l]

While I am all for MS bashing where they deserve it, stating that ALL their products are crap is a bit over the top. Vista is a bomb and Office 2k7 won't sell, but what really drives a platform is developer tools -- and here Visual Studio is difficult to take on. Combined with .NET capabilities you get RAPID development with acceptable performance, which in turn causes zounds of new apps to be written every year, strengthening the lock-in. And remembering that XP SP1+ is s decent end-user OS, and now Vista licenses allow for downgrading... Don't get me wrong: I hate MS and wish they burned in Hell. But ignoring their strengths will only hamper any attempts to beat them.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[masdog]

You're right that Microsoft needs to refocus itself as a company and align itself with the primary customer - the businessman. That is where their primary source of income is.

But that will never actually happen. Microsoft has two major problems - the desire to be all things computing to everyone and a management staff that won't accept anything but the first point. Until they get their act together and focus on some core businesses, they will continue to over-extend themselves.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Exactly my point. If Microsoft tries to think "as Yahoo does" and doesn't intervene that much, it could use its money and power to actually make it grow and defy Google. But Microsoft is too clever! They'll want to turn Yahoo in Microsoft, they'll want to use their MSN knowledge to grow Yahoo. They'll want to "improve" Yahoo services by migrating them to Windows servers (as with Hotmail), they'll want to "leverage" the desktop on Yahoo services. That will be their biggest mistake. But it's inevitable, there's no way that Microsoft will buy Yahoo and not do that.

Here's hoping MS might in fact not pull a Hotmail. Assuming they keep Yahoo's current net revenue level and scrap their current Online division and its bleeding of red ink, it's going to take several decades to pay off the purchase (how many depends on how one values the assets Yahoo has; at best, the price seems to be about $20bn larger than the actual value) Factor in an expensive transition to 'Microsoft technologies' and the time interval will increase quite a bit, as the immediate income will drop abruptly due to massive disruptions. In the end, this looks very much like the biggest winners in the case the purchase goes through would be Yahoo's shareholders, while the biggest losers would be Microsoft's shareholders.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[curmudgeous]

...In the end, Yahoocrosoft...

Personally, I prefer "Microhoo".

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[DiarmuidBourke]

Aye, there is allways the exception to the rule.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's quarterly statements show that in the last two quarters, their Entertainment and Devices division has generated a profit. Also, the document that you link to shows that a big part of the division's losses for the year come from that billion dollar one time charge for Xbox 360 warranty repairs. Given those two factors, I'm going to disagree with your prediction.

Microsoft is executing well with their Xbox strategy and is second in units sold with the highest attach rate of the 3 console makers. Newer hardware revisions have reduced failure rates and manufacturing costs. While I don't expect this division to become as profitable as other Microsoft divisions, I don't think it will continue to be the money pit that it has been in the past.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Mongoose Disciple]

I guess as long as you're willing to admit that you're basing that on your own paranoia rather than the current state of reality then there's not much I can say to argue with it.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[msebast]

Is it paranoia when they really are out to get you? Wertigon's description is exactly what happened with Internet Explorer for Macintosh and Solaris. It's not that far fetched to think they might do the same thing again.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[wertigon]

More like, past experiences. It's happened every single time before, why should this time be different? I don't trust Microsoft for a reason. They've shown me time and time again that they're backstabbing lying bitches ever since the days of DOS, and been convicted of foul play atleast twice. So forgive me if I don't trust them. Because I really don't.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[mav[LAG]]

Paranoia not required, just a sober look at Microsoft's history of first supporting then abandoning what few apps it's bothered to port to other platforms.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[BeBoxer]

It's OK though, because judging from the recent news about spammers being able to solve Yahoo's captchka system with relatively high reliability and the amount of (Yahoo owned) Geocities-based malware sites I get SPAM about, Yahoo has about 4.05e17 active users and can lose 80% of them and still have more users than living being on the planet.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[ps2os2]

This story has caught my attention. I am an owner of over 30 YAHOO groups. If MS is successful in their bid quite a few of the YAHOO groups will be moved over to Google. Yahoo is bad enough with all their service interruptions but throw in MS and it will be all men overboard abandon ships. I certainly hope this does not happen. YAHOO for all its faults could not be any worse than MS and its total screw ups. Its gotten so bad at MSN that people are leaving that in droves to come over to Google and YAHOO. Yahoo for years has been selling email addresses and or sending out emails on clients behalf. Approximately 90 percent of the email I receive on YAHOO is SPAM. YAHOO spam filter don't work as I have been getting email from the same company for over 2 years and even though I tell YAHOO its spam it still gets through. Apple's email program is decent so is just about every non MS agent out there is decent at filtering out spam. Except for YAHOO's.
I will leave YAHOO if this goes through.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[westlake]

From 2002 to 2004 the then Home and Entertainment Division made an accumulated loss for 3.5 billion dollars

Pocket change.

Water under the bridge.

Revenue in the unit that includes Xbox rose 3.1 percent to $3.06 billion, exceeding Microsoft's forecast that it would decline as much as 8 percent. The division posted earnings of $357 million, the first time it has reported profits in back-to- back quarters. Liddell cited the high number of games sold per Xbox machine for the unit's revenue and profit increases. Consumers on average buy seven titles with each machine, which bolsters earnings because the games are profitable while the consoles usually lose money or break even. Morning Call [Jaunary 24]

Develop for the XBox 360 and get the Windows market as a bonus. The XBox helps anchor Microsoft's position in the hone.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[falconwolf]

Assuming they keep Yahoo's current net revenue level and scrap their current Online division and its bleeding of red ink, it's going to take several decades to pay off the purchase

It won't take that long for MS to pay off it's purchase of Yahoo! f they do buy it. Microsoft's gross profit for 2007 was $40,429,000,000.

Falcon

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[shutdown -p now]

The only good thing here is that Moonlight is open source, so Microsoft won't be able to pull down that one. Except maybe for the patents.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[sgt101]

This thing about "hellish alliance" vs. actual customers..
You know, the top 100 CIO's are probably MS's best customers. I mean, I work for a $40billion revenue company - I think we are in the top 30 tech companies in the world, and we have 100k desktop licenses from them.

I think that qualifies as a "customer"

Microsoft spend a huge effort on finding out what corporate customers want. They then deliver it.

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo! Mail is #1 in webmail, and Hotmail is #2. It's argued whether AOL or Gmail is #3, but since both are ~50 million users as opposed to Yahoo!'s 250 million and Hotmail's 230 million, no-one really cares.

Data sources:
Hitwise's top 20 websites (not just webmail sites)
Gmail traffic analysis by Hitwise

The bid is public ... so

[Gopal.V]

I think the public nature of the bid suggests that private behind-closed doors negotiations have failed and they're trying to attempt a near-hostile takeover. YHOO shares have jumped about 10 USD over friday and a lot of us have been getting rid of them. And I wonder who's buying all of these, in reality? Someone who'd pay 31 dollars for a share, when they could instead buy it in-market at 28?

I'd really hope it was some sort of last-ditch effort to put shareholder pressure onto Jerry Yang (yes, I do work at Y! and I do have a very nice job, which I'd be really sad to leave ...). And yeah, read my domain to figure out exactly why I would have to :)

Here's to hoping that it doesn't happen (for YUI, flickr, freebsd, hadoop and del.icio.us!)

Re:The bid is public ... so

[Anonymous Coward]

I made a comment over on another site about hoping that the buyout doesn't happen, specifically because of what Microsoft would do to the useful software/services that Yahoo! has built up and acquired (Y! mail, flickr, del.icio.us). Someone else responded with a "Quit being so childish. Look at all the money they'd make!" comment that quickly got modded up. The sad truth, however, is that one of the major assets that MS is buying is the customers, and if the buyout goes through, quite a few customers will leave. After all, many of us went to Yahoo! after being dissatisfied with the services that Microsoft offered.

Re:The bid is public ... so

[Gopal.V]

Just for the record, I'm on vacation and out of office (well, I'm on the wrong side of the equator from office).

So, my comment is completely uninformed, baseless speculation (wishful perhaps too).

PS: thanks to the dude who pinged me and told me to shut up :)

Re:The bid is public ... so

[DerekLyons]

I wonder who's buying all of these, in reality?

Probably short term speculators and day traders looking for a quick in and out profit. (Or, possibly Yahoo has one or more white knights.)
 
Actually, at current prices, buying YHOO and taking the cash (or the conversion) yields a small profit

Re:The bid is public ... so

[pangu]

From your link : "can be located at the pool table during office hours"
I'd be sad to leave that job too.

Re:The bid is public ... so

[OakLEE]

And I wonder who's buying all of these, in reality? Someone who'd pay 31 dollars for a share, when they could instead buy it in-market at 28?

To answer your first question, they are called risk arbitrageurs. They essentially buy the stock of the target company and short sell the stock of the acquiring company. They make a profit as the target's stock price appreciates to the offer price and as the acquiror's price decreases because of the costs of the takeover (e.g., cash paid out, dilution in stock value, debt taken on).

Their presence, and the reason Yahoo!'s stock only trades at ~$28 is due to the risk that the deal will not close. Deals have to go through a lot of vetting both by the government (DOJ, FTC) and by the parties making them. There is always a risk that at some point along the way either the government will not approve or one of the parties will get cold feet. This is especially true of hostile takeovers, which this offer is similar too, because the target is by its nature an unwilling participant.

As for why Microsoft is not buying in the open market, the short story is that there are a lot of rules and regulations that would just make it a stupid idea. For example, their are lots of disclosure rules that go into effect as an individual (or corporation's) stake in another company increases. Since Microsoft cannot buy all of Yahoo!'s shares on the open market all at once, it would have to fulfill these requirements and essentially announce to the world that it is acquiring Yahoo! before it has done so. This would probably cause a lot of investors to hold out from selling in an effort to get Microsoft to pay more for their shares. If Microsoft is far enough along in its purchases, it would have to capitulate because the cost of backing out and dumping all of its shares would be too high.

That's where the risk arbitrageurs step into the picture in a funcitonal way. Microsoft essentially announces what it will pay. All of the antsy Yahoo! shareholders sell to the arbitrageurs who then must try to help the deal close so they can make their money. This effectively allows Microsoft to offer $31 a share without incurring any of the hold out risk inherent in trying to buy in the open market.

Re:The bid is public ... so

[failedlogic]

I've always seen Yahoo as a bit of a "joke" search engine. There were always engines with better results like Altavista and HotBot in the early WWW days. I still can't understand how Yahoo has managed to succeed and thrive. I have only ever used them for the Directory and even that is horribly out of date. MS really screwed up with the MSN search engined. I don't know if buying Yahoo will help.

The only current -remotely popular- desktop app Yahoo has is their widget stuff which Mac users already have and Vista users (if they existed ;) ) would have. The e-mail service is more popular and they've taken over, under contract, some ISPs e-mail services. They have Messenger which MS will likely kill. But I've not seen anything about Yahoo having a Web-Office presence, FCC spectrum bid, or Operating System. These are 3 key areas that Google has over Yahoo and areas where MS could use.

I think it would be really interesting, if Google turned around and bought Microsoft. They don't have the cash. I wonder what kind of posts we'd have on that thread on Slashdot? Would MS become less evil or Google even more?

Re:The bid is public ... so

[falconwolf]

To answer your first question, they are called risk arbitrageurs. They essentially buy the stock of the target company and short sell the stock of the acquiring company

If they are buying stocks then they aren't selling short. Short selling is selling something you don't have in the hopes that it's price will decline. With an option to sell, a put option or just put, something at one price you make money by buying it later at a lower price. In this case it won't work though because MS offered more than the list price. You may be able to make money by buying a call option which allows you to buy something at a set price. When it's price increases you exercise the option then sell at the higher price.

Falcon

Re:The bid is public ... so

[dodobh]

Heh, if it does happen, send in a resume. I'll be glad to add the Y! folks to our staff. At least Rasmus, you, bluesmoon, lunatech and a bunch of others who I would rather not name ;).

You know where to find me, and when.

Re:The bid is public ... so

[OakLEE]

Risk arbitrageurs buy shares of the target, and short shares of the acquiror. As I said before, in these situations the target's shares will appreciate to the buyout price and the acquiror's price will depreciate by the cost per share of the acquisition. Therefore, assuming the deal goes through, that is why this strategy makes sense. Of course if the deal doesn't go through the arbitrageurs really take it on the chin, which makes these kinds of pair trades very risky.

Re:The bid is public ... so

[falconwolf]

Risk arbitrageurs buy shares of the target, and short shares of the acquiror

I think you misunderstand, short selling is when you sell something you don't possess.

Falcon

Re:The bid is public ... so

[Raenex]

I've always seen Yahoo as a bit of a "joke" search engine. There were always engines with better results like Altavista and HotBot in the early WWW days. I still can't understand how Yahoo has managed to succeed and thrive. Yahoo succeeded by being one of the first. HotBot came after Yahoo. When I started searching the web, I used AltaVista and Yahoo exclusively. Alta for finding specific information, and Yahoo for directory info. Then Google came along made both obsolete. But there still is that first mover advantage, explaining why Yahoo got so big.

Re:The bid is public ... so

[OakLEE]

No, I do understand. When you "short a stock" so to speak, your broker borrows stock from other accounts within the brokerage and sells it on the open market. You get the cash from this sale, but in turn are ultimately responsible for returning the stock to its original owner. This can be accomplished by either voluntarily buying the stock on the open market at a later date, or by your broker "calling-in" your short, which forces you to buy at whatever the price is when its called in. You ultimately hope to profit from a short position by being able to buy the stock back cheaper than you short sold it for, allowing you to profit the difference.

You can short sell almost any stock on the open market with regularity. I know, I do it frequently.

I Hate Bill Gates

[Anonymous Coward]

He makes me want to puke. He is an asshole.

Microsoft software sucks. It is retarded.

Re:I Hate Bill Gates

[pclminion]

Well, if somebody makes a bid like this for a publicly traded company, what exactly is supposed to happen? The only way to prevent it is through complete solidarity of the shareholders.

This is what you get when you go public.

WOOT!! Micro$oft near death

[Anonymous Coward]

What with Windoze Vi$ta and Office 2007 both being a failure, X-Box 360 hemorrhaging money from Micro$oft, and Zune being a total failure; no wonder Micro$oft is on the ropes. Now the only good thing left to happen to Micro$oft is for them to go totally out of business, forcing everyone to go to free software.
____________________________________
Friends don't help friends install M$ Junk.

Regulators?

[TubeSteak]

Will the regulators let this happen?
If MS buys Yahoo, the top 5 search engines will becomes the top 4.

Not to mention that many of the 2nd tier search engines are "powered by" Yahoo & MSN

Re:Regulators?

[Wowsers]

Will the regulators let this happen?
If MS buys Yahoo, the top 5 search engines will becomes the top 4. Microsoft a top search engine. Hmmmm, if you say so ;-).

Re:Regulators?

[STrinity]

Will the regulators let this happen?
If MS buys Yahoo, the top 5 search engines will becomes the top 4.

Considering that one of them is so far ahead of the others that people use its name as a verb for "Internet search," I don't see why the FEC would object to two competitors merging to become a stronger alternative.

Re:Regulators?

[dmgxmichael]

I don't see why not - They let Ma Bell reassemble herself, let Adobe buy Macromedia, and so on. Republican administrations do not enforce corporate laws well, and have never been known to enforce anti-monopoly laws. So as long as this deal is done while Bush is in office it will go through.

Re:Regulators?

[falconwolf]

I don't see why not - They let Ma Bell reassemble herself, let Adobe buy Macromedia, and so on. Republican administrations do not enforce corporate laws well, and have never been known to enforce anti-monopoly laws.

Actually one of the early monopoly and trust busters, was Theodore, Teddy, Roosevelt, a Republican though his appointed successor William Howard Taft "began the most of the anti-trust proceedings".

Another thing most people don't know about is about Republicans and the environment. Most people think Republicans are anti-environmentalists, however it was Teddy Roosevelt who "set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined, 194 million acres". And Republican President Nixon was the one who created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Falcon

Re:Regulators?

[dmgxmichael]

Teddy Roosevelt was Republican in name only. He never got along with the party bosses - the only reason he ended up president is the bosses didn't want him to run against them so they offered him the VP spot after the Spanish American war. Their plans got burned when McKinley got shot.

Nixon signed a Democratic Congress' act into law at the point of a political gun - the EPA was founded in response 3 mile Island and Love Canal. To veto the bill would have been political suicide and Nixon knew it.

The Republicans are the party of big business. They always have been and prided themselves in as much, then they try to hide that fact when big business enrages the public through greed as they have done under the Bush administration.

Using the warchest

[blind biker]

So, Microsoft is using its massive cash reserves to monopolize one more market? I for one hope they fail. Microsoft just can't seem to make a dime unless they utterly dominate a market. What next, genetic engineering? I heard that's the next big thing, but I'd hate to have MS meddle there, as well. The broken DVD players on the Xbox 360 just make me think they'd do a half-buttocked job at anything.

Seriously though: if MS overtakes the online business, there's no stopping them. They'll make back the $40 billion in no time and then some, and will point their greedy sight at yet another profitable market. Given enough money you can monopolize any market.

Re:Using the warchest

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay genius you figured them out I guess. Microsoft can't do anything without a monopoly in a market otherwise they would compete with Google another way.

So why is it that Yahoo, Ask.com, and every other competitor is not able to compete with Google either. They are not all evil monopolies.

This is a business move to complete with Google. Ranting little posts about monopolies are just retards bitching.

Re:Using the warchest

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the price was more like $80-100 billion when Microsoft was rumored to be making an offer a year or two ago. People were asking, is Yahoo worth $100 billion to Microsoft? At $45 billion the answer is obviously yes.

That's not a compliment to Yahoo's recent senior management.

Re:Using the warchest

[blind biker]

Overrated? Microsoft drones scouring /. I guess.

Re:Using the warchest

[Anonymous Coward]

What next, genetic engineering? I heard that's the next big thing, but I'd hate to have MS meddle there, as well.

They're trying very hard.

My father in law is chief nerd at $LARGE_BIO_TECH and Microsoft has threatened to sue them over using Linux and then been sued by them for putting out false press releases claiming to be working together on various large projects when they weren't.

So they're trying to meddle, but failing miserably so far.

Microsoft is always worried

[Anonymous Coward]

They are described as paranoid about the competition.

Maybe that's why it has been many years since they've provided fodder for these "imminent doom" stories that slashdot loves to post. And worried, on the ropes MS is still here and still standing and still playing the game better than almost anyone.

MSFT is learning ...

[Anonymous Coward]

what it's like to compete in a more open field. Since they can't force Windows users to use MSN Live, they're not getting any sort of business they wanted.

Frankly, I'm glad. Maybe 10 years from now we'll be buying individual software products from MSFT (like say Visual Studio) without the excess baggage they current force on people (e.g. vista).

wait

[ionix5891]

so who do we hate this week here on /.

microsoft or google?

Re:wait

[Obsi]

We have always hated Microsoft here at /..
Next week, though, we'll have always hated Google.

Competition is always good

[Opr33Opr33]

I'm not a big fan of either Microsoft or Yahoo(gmail user)but a MicroHoo will be in a better position to compete with Google. Which is good in that it will force/encourage/scare Google into further innovations. Say what you will about Microsoft but if they are committed to this (meaning they will continue to throw time and money at it) they can be a market force. The original X-box brought a lot of naysayers but look at the 360. Everyone laughs at the Zune but they continue to improve it and more importantly drop the price. Americans are first and foremost cheapskates.

Re:Competition is always good

[ScrewMaster]

Americans are first and foremost cheapskates.

Huh. And I was wondering why the iPod was so successful.

Re:Competition is always good

[A nonymous Coward]

So you are saying that, what, version 3.0 of whatever huge buyout they try will actually be useful? That they will screw up Yahoo and make it useless and laughable, that the next buyout will show promise after a while, and that the buyout after that will actually be useful.

Huh. I don't think they can afford two more of these $44B buyouts.

Re:Competition is always good

[noamsml]

Whoa; very appropriate sig.

Microsoft vs Google

[perlchild]

I wonder if any of Google's customers go there because it's more competitive, has better mindshare, etc... Or if a part of Microsoft's insuccess lies in its reputation, etc... Meaning if they are trying to go anywhere but Microsoft, merging with Yahoo would just doom Yahoo too...

Any thoughts?

Re:Microsoft vs Google

[sabinelr]

I use Google as, I suspect, do half of Microsoft employees, because it is simple, the results are easy to follow, the options easy to find, and it has that unmatched "search within results" link. None of which MSN search has ever attained to. You would think that unparallelled geniuses such as Ballmer and Gates would see these obvious things, but I guess those unparallelled geniuses also produced Vista and Office 2007, which confused novelty with improvement. Even at M$ there is argument about the relative merits of Vista and XP, Vista getting the edge for games and XP getting the edge for usability. What's that got to do with Yahoo! and search? Plenty. It's the same mentality that would end up turning Yahoo! into another Vista - maybe something good under the hood, but you won't be able to find it.

Re:Microsoft vs Google

[perlchild]

I wonder who noticed also, Yahoo is the IM MSN linked "with", so their "openness" to other protocols just gets closed when the deal goes through.

The portal companies are so staggeringly diverse now, it's hard to pinpoint what they are all doing.

Microsoft failed the minute

[Progman3K]

they stopped giving what the CUSTOMER wants.

Whenever you push an agenda different from the client's, the client walks.

Re:Microsoft failed the minute

[six11]

Whenever you push an agenda different from the client's, the client walks.

Not if the client is chained to their desk.

Re:Microsoft failed the minute

[whopub]

they stopped giving what the CUSTOMER wants. That's why they always end up buying something that works: they can't make anything work by themselves. Why? Because they only think about their own corporate asses, completely disregarding us, the users. Then they wonder why a turd like Vista doesn't do well... At least they seem to understand that, to some degree, so they target something that works, buy it and then proceed with screwing it up until it's worthy of the microsoft name brand.

SOP

[the_skywise]

This has always been Microsoft's way. They bought "Word" and (depending on how you interpret it) they bought "Dos".

Not 10 years ago people were proclaiming the death knell for Microsoft because it missed the internet... then they bought "Internet Explorer" and... well you know how that turned out.

Microsoft has always made stumbles. Where they've excelled is their resilience to find the right solution and implement it in a good enough/cheap enough fashion that it doesn't make sense to buy the other guy.

Can they do this against Google? From a customer stand-point I'm not sure. I'm not just going to use Microsoft Search(tm) over Google so long as Google remains free and provides decent results. So Microsoft can't really win there. But they can steal ad revenue from Google by making their business/web-ads side more appealing to businesses. Get that, control the ad market and you'll be able to embrace and extend Google...

But this is a sign that Microsoft is "failing"? Not on your life...

Re:SOP

[Alomex]

They bought "Word" and (depending on how you interpret it) they bought "Dos".


They didn't buy Word and anyway you interpret it, they bought Dos from Patterson (for about $50K upfront, and eventual payments of $500K to resolve some licensing issues later on).

then they bought "Internet Explorer" and... well you know how that turned out.

They bought the code base of Spyglass. They would have been better off starting from scratch, so the first IE based on Spyglass was a joke, the second IE based on internal development efforts was much better.

Re:SOP

[waa]

I once saw a site that had a detailed list of all the companies and the technologies that Microsoft has purchased over the years. The list was staggering...

In addition to DOS and Word that you mentioned, one thing that people might not know is that Microsoft bought a company called "Webcorp" in the '89-'91 range (I can not recall exactly). This company had created a rather slick Lantastic-like networking system on top of DOS. Being a BBS sysadmin (sysop in those days...) I was one of their beta testers and as a thank you for being a beta tester, I was always given the latest version of their software and watched it grow fro "functional" to "excellent."

long story short... Microsoft bought Webcorp and the Lan technologies they had created and hey... What do you know... Suddenly, out of Windows 3.1 was borne "Windows For Workgroups". Now with NETWORKING!... Another Microsoft triumph and INNOVATION...

The point of my long winded story? Microsoft is _NOT_ an innovator. Unless you define innovation as: a. Purchasing companies, or licensing technologies in order to incorporate them into an existing product or b. Purchase companies or technologies only to shelf said technology in order to promote their less capable, more buggy product.

I for one have been watching this endless cycle for years now (since '89 or '90) and have been fed up with it since just about that time. :(

Re:SOP

[Khuffie]

May I ask...who cares if Microsoft is not an innovator? In your example, Microsoft recognized a technology that, per your admittance, is excellent. So instead of them developing their own networking system for Windows, they realized that incoporating an already developed and tested system is far better for them and their users.

Everyone purchases other companies or licenses technologies from them. Guess what? OS X? Built off BSD and NextOS. Safari? Built off webkit. Google purchased Picasa, Sketchup and Earth Viewer (ie Google Earth). This 'endless cycle' you speak off is not limited to Microsoft.

Re:SOP

[RattFink]

Not 10 years ago people were proclaiming the death knell for Microsoft because it missed the internet... then they bought "Internet Explorer" and... well you know how that turned out.

It turned out not that great for them, the part where they actually make money, the server market has played out miserably for them because of that mistake. Yes they do have a high install rate of the browser but that is only due to aggressive bundling of it in windows, something that you cannot do with a search engine.

Re:SOP

[xtracto]

This has always been Microsoft's way. They bought "Word" and (depending on how you interpret it) they bought "Dos".

Exactly what I thought, this is what Microsoft knows how to do best. They bought DOS (CP/M QDOS), they bought SQL Server, they bought powerpoint (forethought), Fox, Sourcesafe, Visio, etc... among LOTS of other companies.

Microsoft does is not a "software" company per-se, it is a technology company which objective is to buy out the competition. They are just doing what they know to do best!

Re:SOP

[Skreems]

And hell, being bought out by Microsoft has become a tradition. There are dozens of startups out there doing their damndest to TRY to get bought out by Microsoft. If you can prove an idea in a startup and get enough word of mouth to get noticed, it's a much, much quicker paycheck to let Microsoft buy you. No slow building of your customer base, no bugfixes, no updates to support new APIs in Windows. Just a quick windfall payment, and then all those pesky details become Someone Else's Problem.

Re:SOP

[doktor-hladnjak]

I hate to break it to you, but this is by and large how the software business works. Daring, a small startup brings a risky, new idea to market. If it's successful, it most likely finds a niche market and starts to get the attention of others in the industry. A large company with money then buys it, then grows it (or tries to) into a product that's more widely sold to businesses and individuals around the world.

Large companies are good at taking a small successful product and growing it into something huge. They're not very good at thinking up the next great idea and getting it started by selling it as a small product to a niche audience. Small companies are better at coming up with those ideas, getting that idea into a product and out into the marketplace. However, they're not usually as good at growing that into a huge business. There are of course many exceptions (Google and Microsoft come to mind), but mostly the selling of small companies to large ones enables this two tier system to work.

Re:SOP

[doktor-hladnjak]

Wait, so how does the second graph on this page exactly indicate how "miserable" the server market is? Over the past 10 years, IIS and Apache have both eaten away the market share of competitors. When you look at server operating systems, the trend towards Windows and Linux over the Sun and IBM server OSs of the past is even more clear.

Re:SOP

[hachete]

Judging by the amount of spin they put on it, and the amount of talent they've shoveled in, Microsoft do: that's why they say they need the monopoly. To be innovative. Hell, Microsoft first started using the phrase "innovator".

So, if they buy virtually every thing in, what does that fucking massive research budget go on? Pizzas?

Re:SOP

[TheRaven64]

In which case, this acquisition is strong evidence of Microsoft failing. They have gone from buying the best to buying a second-rate has-been. Buying Yahoo in the mid '90s would have been a coup, as would buying Altavista a few years later. Now they should be buying Google and, for the first time, they can't.

Re:SOP

[man_of_mr_e]

According to this article:

http://www.betanews.com/article/1079773789

Microsoft bought Webcorp in 1993, Windows for Workgroups was first released in October of 1992 according to this document http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126746 from MS. WfWG was in development for more than a year before they bought Webcorp and was released at least several months before.

What's more, WfWG was not just an add-on for Windows. It was really the entire basis of Windows 95. It introduced the VMM model that Windows 95 was basically entirely based on. Also, the networking stack of WfWG was the same stack that was built into NT, which they had licensed from Spider Software and was based on a licensed version of the BSD stack (predating the first open source release of BSD) and STREAMS technology.

Re:SOP

[man_of_mr_e]

Microsoft did not buy Word. They hired Charles Simonyi from XEROX PARC, who had developed word processors in the past. Word was written entirely from scratch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_word

Re:SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only on little difference here...

Google purchased Picasa, Earth Viewer (now Google Earth) but made those applications available for free for everyone (yes I know there are also paid-for versions) and on several operating systems. If Microsoft has been in the same position it would made those applications Windows only, and even bury them deep in the Windows system itself. After that claiming it would be an unbreakable part of Windows.

I think Microsoft will strip Yahoo of everything that is useful, and bury those things deep in several "versions" of coming windows servers for Internet-businesses.

It will not take long before Yahoo will only function with windows .net and/or Silverlight (of whatever that proprietary crap is named).

Re:SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

This purchasing of technologies is what large companies do. Why not purchase a known quantity and integrate it into your products rather than reinvent the wheel from scratch. It is just plain smart.

Take a look at all of the companies that Google has bought: List of Acquisitions

Most /. folks would say that Google is "an innovator", but given your definition they apparently are not.

Re:SOP

[RightSaidFred99]

Their research budget goes to their development tools. And nobody's even close to Microsoft in the domain of development tools, libraries, leadership, etc... I'm not really a fan of their OS's, though their server OS's are pretty good, but I'm hooked on their development tools like a hooker on crack - they're _very_ good.

Re:SOP

[blind biker]

More examples:
Bought the company that made FoxPRO, and turned it into shite.
For Active Directory they bought Banyan (maker of Vines).
Bought Visio - couldn't even develop their own fscking network diagramming software?!

Re:SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

You *like* their developer tools? Admittedly, it's been a (very) long time since I used a microsoft developer tool, but Visual Studio is the reason I quit using microsoft products alltogether.

Perhaps they've improved from the days when the compiler was so borked it couldn't even manage microsoft's own sample code though. Though somehow I doubt it.

They probably keep pushing schools to use their product to teach with instead of something that works too.

Why yes, yes I am bitter.

Re:SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

> Now with NETWORKING!... Another Microsoft triumph and INNOVATION..

Around that time I was paying $500 per client x 300 clients for a TCPIP software stack - for the software alone! - so I could put PCs onto an ethernet network. So, yeah, Microsoft DID INNOVATE by making $500 network software part of $199 Windows.

Re:SOP

[naoursla]

What alternative would you prefer:

a) Microsoft develops the network software on their own. Webcorp goes out of business.

b) Microsoft does nothing. You buy Windows. Then you buy Webcorp.

Re:SOP

[ClamIAm]

Looks like the list is right on Microsoft's website.

Re:SOP

[10101001 10101001]

May I ask...who cares if Microsoft is not an innovator?

Investors who realize that if Microsoft is always forced to buy-out the latest technology, they will eventually implode as they try to graft together hundreds of questionably compatable technology to maintain their monopoly.

In your example, Microsoft recognized a technology that, per your admittance, is excellent. So instead of them developing their own networking system for Windows, they realized that incoporating an already developed and tested system is far better for them and their users.

You conveniently skipped over option b, buying out a technology just to shelve it. There's also the point that option a usually comes with strings attached, specificially that Microsoft tends to Microsoftize anything they decide to buy-out and release as made by Microsoft. This leads to the following:

Everyone purchases other companies or licenses technologies from them. Guess what? OS X? Built off BSD and NextOS. Safari? Built off webkit. Google purchased Picasa, Sketchup and Earth Viewer (ie Google Earth).

Webkit is an improvement off of KHTML. I can't say whether Google Earth, etc are improvements. I can't say OS X was really an improvement over BSD/NextOS technologies.

This 'endless cycle' you speak off is not limited to Microsoft.

Very true. And a lot of the time, companies who buy out other companies and incorporate their technology either (a) simply rebrand the product without touching it otherwise or (b) radical altere it in a way that cripples the original use and/or misuses the clear potential of the product. Microsoft is certainly not the only company that buys out other companies/products. Microsoft just happens to do it a lot more than other companies and often does it more visibly than other companies. And that translates into, by raw numbers, Microsoft being near the top (if not the top) offender* of destroying the innovation of other companies.

*Yea, obviously, all the private companies and the private investors that sell out are just as guilty. But, again, we're talking raw numbers, not percentages.

Re:SOP

[Skim123]

If you can prove an idea in a startup and get enough word of mouth to get noticed, it's a much, much quicker paycheck to let Microsoft buy you. No slow building of your customer base, no bugfixes, no updates to support new APIs in Windows. Just a quick windfall payment, and then all those pesky details become Someone Else's Problem.

Moreover, selling to MSFT or GOOG ensures (or whatever the dominant company is in your field) ensures that said dominant company won't make a competitive product line and squash your's.

Re:SOP

[GaryPatterson]

they bought Dos from Patterson (for about $50K upfront, and eventual payments...

I'm still waiting to see anything from that. Damn lousy Microsoft. ... oh... the other Patterson.

Re:SOP

[GaryPatterson]

Safari? Built off webkit.

Tiny correction - Apple created WebKit as the engine behind Safari, then open sourced it. Safari itself was built from Konquerer though, which is probably the point you were going for.

I'm not disagreeing, just adding a tiny footnote.

Re:SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, were you talking about Foxpro from Foxsoft, which could easily look at 2 billion records, only to be bought out by microsoft, and whoa! suddenly M$ Foxpro can only look at 4 million (and is buggy). Then microsoft pushed its craptacular single-user database (technically, a database is not a database when its only accessible by one user alone). Foxpro dies.

Re:SOP

[falconwolf]

Can they do this against Google? From a customer stand-point I'm not sure. I'm not just going to use Microsoft Search(tm) over Google so long as Google remains free and provides decent results. So Microsoft can't really win there. But they can steal ad revenue from Google by making their business/web-ads side more appealing to businesses. Get that, control the ad market and you'll be able to embrace and extend Google...

However to beat Google in ads a competitor has to deliver more eyeballs. Many people use Google because it's clean and returns relevant search results. MS may have a viable competitor with Live.com but until Google no longer provides decent results I won't switch and I don't think too many others will either. Even when Google doesn't return good results though I still won't use Live, as it is now when Google doesn't return what I'm looking for I use Teoma (now Ask.com), Mooter, or About.com. Once in a while I use Alta Vista.

Falcon

Re:SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'problem' is that Microsoft often takes said excellent product and ruins it while trying to "microsoft-ize" it.

The other problem is that they advertise said new product as an example of "Microsoft Innovation." They basically take credit for what someone else created. All they've done is buy it up and integrate into their product. While that may have taken some skill to integrate it is in no way 'innovative.' Recognizing a good product and making the business decision to buy it up for integration rather than trying to 'roll your own' is not innovation either. That is just called making-a-good-business-decision.

In the early days it was IBM

[VampireByte]

In the '80s Microsoft was constantly, and justifiably, worried about IBM, which was a huge powerhouse in those days. Google is not the first serious competitor that Microsoft has faced, IBM could have crushed them 20 years ago.

Re:In the early days it was IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that Google is forwarned. They know that they cannot partner with Microsoft any more than a mongoose can partner with a snake. It's kill or be killed. Microsoft has only ever succeeded in taking out those it caught unawares (compare Borland with Oracle).

Re:In the early days it was IBM

[A nonymous Coward]

The bigger difference is that Microsoft's competitor was glacially slow, far behind Microsoft in terms of up to date tech, and didn't have a clue how to catch up even if they had the means.

Whereas Google's competitor is glacially slow, far behind Google in terms of up to date tech, and doesn't have a clue how to catch up even if they had the means.

Re:In the early days it was IBM

[Alien Being]

"IBM could have crushed them 20 years ago."

I disagree. In 1988, IBM was trying to gain some control over the monster it had created by collaborating on OS/2. It didn't work. Gates realized that control of the desktop API was MS's biggest asset so he canned the IBM deal and launched the NT project.

Gates was right, but he did overestimate the importance of the API. He thought that he could beat the Internet with a proprietary MSWindows network. It took several years for him to realize his mistake, bundle TCP/IP and embrace the Net. They used their desktop monopoly to promote IE to dominance of the WWW. Then they tried to turn the Web inside-out with various tricks like Active-X.

MS cannot be crushed, but IMO they are likely to self-destruct. I hope we're witnessing that now.

Re:In the early days it was IBM

[abigor]

And don't forget the IE5-IIS nastiness, another example of trying to "own" the internet. MS munged the tcp stack to screw up the sequence numbering, allowing IE and IIS to know when they were communicating with one another, as opposed to Netscape or Apache or whatever. This allowed them to do such things as send RSTs rather than the normal FIN/ACK sequence, which made IE and IIS look faster when working in combination. We found this purely by accident when writing a packet sniffer for Windows. When they got called on it, they apparently fixed things. This was all back in the late '90s, quite a bad time web-wise really.

Want to know why Google is beating MS?

[christurkel]

Want to know why Google is beating MS, I mean besides the fact their search engine rocks?

Google gives you all this cool stuff for free, with minimal ads, or none at all. Gmail, Google Chat, Google Earth, etc, and all its all class platform. They don't try to lock you into IE and Windows Media. It isn't perfect but its far better than MS which makes no effort.

On top of this is the perception that Google is a cool company that really looks out for its users. People see MS and wonder what pile of horse puckies will be next.

That's why Google is beating MS.

Re:Want to know why Google is beating MS?

[thewiz]

Agreed. Don't forget, however, that Microsoft has a habit of MS-itizing everything they buy. Remember Hotmail? It originally ran on a Un*x-variant and Microsoft had many problems with the switchover to NT. Yahoo runs it's services on FreeBSD and Apache; I have the feeling that, if the deal goes through, we'll see similar issues. Doing so will probably drive YahooMS! into a lower rank or destroy it all together.

I'm hoping that Yahoo! sees the light and doesn't accept the offer, EVER!

Re:Want to know why Google is beating MS?

[the_rev_matt]

Actually I think it was Rob Enderle (of all people) on NPR this morning pointing out that Google has their ad network all over the web, whereas the Yahoo/MSFT portal model requires users to go to them. It's a merging of dinosaurs who can't adapt without starting over from scratch. Combined they barely have 20% of the market to google's 60%.

Re:Want to know why Google is beating MS?

[drspliff]

Honestly, I don't think they have a choice, they can either accept the offer.. or be witness to a hostile takeover.

Re:Want to know why Google is beating MS?

[STrinity]

Want to know why Google is beating MS, I mean besides the fact their search engine rocks?

Because Sergei Brin looked at the way MS got pilloried in the mid-90s and decided that Google should have a propaganda arm devoted to convincing people that the company isn't evil. Thankfully for Brin, people are gullible and will believe simple assertions of Google's goodness even after Google reaches the point where they have more information aggregated about every person on Earth than the NSA could ever dream about.

Re:Want to know why Google is beating MS?

[Antique Geekmeister]

While Google has made serious ethical and moral mistakes (such as their deals with China to permit governmental censorship of their search results), Google has been far, far, far less evil and nefarious than Microsoft. They haven't gathered the information illegally, or played the nasty spy games that the NSA has.

As "the lesser of two evils", Google actually comes out pretty well against almost any company.

Re:Want to know why Google is beating MS?

[STrinity]

Any company that wants to buy Doubleclick for any purpose other than dismantling it is, ipso facto, pure evil from the 8th Dimension.

Re:Want to know why Google is beating MS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's approach was different, when Msn and Yahoo had heavy, slow loading websites over the 56K modem, google had this simple, quick web page providing amazing search results. And as people grew internet smart, they preffered quality over quantity. And Google was able to convince everyone that it's the good guy. Now when I open my Gmail and see that the advertisements closely match the text in the emails I just received...I shudder. How many searches, how many emails, for how long do they keep all this? And which government wouldn't want to have this perceived 'good guy' that knows so much about so many as a close ally? I think that Google isn't any better than MS and in some way it is much worse. Btw, I switched back to using my Yahoo email account.

No need to innovate

[gilesjuk]

Buy buy buy, Microsoft simply can't come up with a winning online service to rival Google, they have to buy the competition.

It makes you wonder if they should forget software and make more hardware as the XBox 360 is fairly popular. But given the failure rate on the early 360s it would probably lose them even more money in warranty claims.

They're still living in the 1990s, they'll have to cut costs and start to shrink the company, it won't grow and make substantial profit for shareholders. Ballmer further tarnishes Microsoft's image.

Re:No need to innovate

[man_of_mr_e]

I think the problem is really more of a mindshare one. By the time Microsoft got serious about search, Google and Yahoo were already the number 1 and 2 search providers, with established entities like Alta Vista, Exite, etc.. dropping like flies because they couldn't keep up with the search results.

When you're using a product that works for all your needs, there is seldom a reason to move to another one. This is why Windows stays so far ahead of the game. People are happy with Google or Yahoo, and no matter what Microsoft does, no matter how good they could be, they won't get people off their muscle memory.

Look at Ask.com, by all accounts, they have a much better user interface, natural language processer, advertising, etc.. but they just can't seem to get any real customers.

Overconfidence

[Alomex]

Microsoft has been overconfident in its approach to the internet from day one. First by believing they could deploy an alternative, then ignoring the Netscape threat early on instead of buying them outright (back when they were still up for sale for a few hundred million). They repeated the same mistake with the search engine market, with a myriad of failed search engine initiatives from within rather than buying outright an external player.

About a decade ago, Microsoft balked at paying $8M for one of the key players, about three years ago, they were wincing at spending $20M in a decent search engine effort. "You'll end up paying billions for a search engine company if you don't spend this money now", was my advice. They didn't listen and here we are $46 billion dollars later after the FAST and Yahoo! acquisition.

Re:Overconfidence

[vcalzone]

Absolutely. Their unceasing quest to defeat Google and Apple has only hurt them in the long run. I remember a Slashdot poster a long time ago that said they'd be better off to give up and focus on their software, and they were correct. The new versions of their flagship software seem as if they completely ignored user input, and I have to think that they've got a great deal of their HCI focus on the Internet game. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel as a sphere, they should be focusing on fixing those squeaky axles and making the car run smarter and faster. If MS came out with a new version of Windows that used up LESS memory, that ran faster but utilized new features and the latest in design techniques, they would have no troubles reasserting their place at the forefront of the industry. They'd sell tons of copies simply because they're already on the top of the game and it would be a serious improvement. But while trying to beat Apple at the interface game (which they can't win, because Apple is passionately devoted to just that), they're losing the war. Microsoft would do better to listen to Kanye West: "Harder, Better, Faster, STRONGER!"

Re:Overconfidence

[MonoSynth]

Daft Punk: "Harder, Better, Faster, STRONGER!" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harder,_Better,_Faster,_Stronger

Re:Overconfidence

[Anonymous Coward]

> was my advice. They didn't listen

And you are in a position to offer advice to Microsoft because why exactly? Perhaps GE is eager for your advice too - or Exxon, or Citigroup, or the rest of the Fortune 500.

Re:Overconfidence

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are in a position to offer advice to Microsoft because why exactly?

It's a long story, but yes they were interested in what I had to say and spent a few $K to hear it. Sadly they did not agree with my evaluation, and hence did not heed my advice, then. Here we are a few years later, in a situation just like I predicted.

Re:Overconfidence

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'd be surprised at learning who has a /. account... Not that many here would wag their pricks around to show you they'd been consulting with microsoft :)

I do a lot of tdd and it takes me to lots of interesting places, but it is not ever something that I'll be talking about openly. For one my nda forbids me to, secondly I think it is 'bad form' to gain credit by showing you're in the know somehow.

Salon had a very similar piece today

[Scareduck]

Salon had a very similar piece today in its "How The World Works" column by Andrew Leonard. Leonard can be a very dogmatic statist when it comes to economic policy, but I think he pretty much nailed the tenor of this deal:

Except that this Microsoft bid, made at the late date of February 2008, even if it can't be considered a move made out of desperation, is at the very least a move generated by massive frustration. Try as it might, Microsoft cannot gain ground on Google -- the company that currently claims ownership of the soul of Silicon Valley (as in -- we can have fun and make a bazillion dollars). So where once a Microsoft bid for Yahoo would have been seen as presaging the long-awaited total triumph of Gates and Co. over the freewheeling Valley, now all it does is prove that winning every battle it fights is no longer a Microsoft birthright. Microsoft is playing catch-up from further behind than ever. The future requires a major beachhead on the Web. Microsoft, after at least a decade of Herculean effort, still doesn't have one. So it wants to buy the biggest one it can find.

I wonder what effect a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo would have on various open-source initiatives Yahoo is involved in. Microsoft wouldn't be so dumb as to kill them off immediately -- that would be bad press, and possibly invite retaliation from the next Attorney General -- but their history at Hotmail indicates a revulsion to all things open source.

Re:Salon had a very similar piece today

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what effect a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo would have on various open-source initiatives Yahoo is involved in. Microsoft wouldn't be so dumb as to kill them off immediately -- that would be bad press, and possibly invite retaliation from the next Attorney General

That was a good joke! We can trade humorous but completely irrational expectations of Microsoft all day!

Then we can both duck as the chairs fly. They'll probably be ejection seats with open source developers at Yahoo! strapped into them!

Re:Salon had a very similar piece today

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! And those open source servers run very lean and very fast. There is no M$ bloat in them. SO microsoft will have to put at least 2 machines in for every one they take out. The service will be less reliable (I've seen microsoft technology in action), and so they will require a 3rd machine in many cases for each one they remove. Yahoo goes the way of hotmail. What you are seeing now is the T-Rex, powerful, mighty, still able to chew on passing beasts and make meal of them, but stuck in the tar, unable to pull itself out. Its not dead yet, and still king. But its dying in its own bloat. It can no longer grow. It can only remain. I see in the near (NEAR) future, microsoft firing all of its programmers, shifting its CD/DVD stamping business to India or China, along with the call center, hiring a dozen more lawyers, and finally running the company as the dead horse that it is. The bright technology people left 10 years ago with their hundreds-of-millions. Gates got the most, even though he know the least. He's still there. Alone. No bright programmer goes to microsoft. Its a dead horse. Business types like it because they think the money can rub off on them. Technical types avoid it, because they are afraid some of the crap methods and ideas will rub off onto them.

More than near-hostile...

[DTemp]

Here is a quote from the letter Ballmer wrote to Yahoo:

Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.

That sounds like a full-fledged hostile takeover threat to me... "we can do this the easy way, or the hard way."

I think we can all agree that what Microsoft needs most is a complete change of corporate culture, not Yahoo. This would require a complete replacement of at least 80% of the Microsoft brass, however, so it's not likely to happen until the company is near-dead.

However, if Microsoft realizes that they need to change their corporate culture to attract a bigger audience/customer base, but doesn't want to go through the hassle of actually doing it, then theres one VERY EASY way to impart this realization onto the purchase of Yahoo: for the love of fucking god, DONT FUCK WITH YAHOO!! That means: no changing their servers from FOSS to Windows, no firing all of their managers, and no adulterating Yahoo's way of doing things with Microsoft's shittastic attitude (among other things).

Re:More than near-hostile...

[Dystopian Rebel]

for the love of fucking god, DONT FUCK WITH YAHOO!!

Unfortunately, at the end of the letter under his signature, Ballmer wrote in ballpoint pen, "Microsoft reserves the right to fuck with Yahoo."

Re:More than near-hostile...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we can all agree that what Microsoft needs most is a complete change of corporate culture, not Yahoo. This would require a complete replacement of at least 80% of the Microsoft brass

Hear! Hear!

- a Microsoft employee

Re:More than near-hostile...

[OakLEE]

DONT FUCK WITH YAHOO!!

From a business perspective, I think Microsoft has to fuck with Yahoo. The company's profit margins have been falling hand over fist for the last couple of years, and they've got way to much bloat, as evidenced by the fact that they will have to lay off 1000 people this year. They've gone through at least two CEO changes in the last year, and despite the increasing viewership of their sites, their ad revenue has been flat to decreasing. I think Microsoft must absolutely make management and culture changes to Yahoo unless it wants to see its purchase just fritter away and become the cash sink that AOL has become to Time Warner.

Re:More than near-hostile...

[adrianmonk]

From a business perspective, I think Microsoft has to fuck with Yahoo. The company's profit margins have been falling hand over fist for the last couple of years, and they've got way to much bloat, as evidenced by the fact that they will have to lay off 1000 people this year.

From a business perspective, I think somebody has to "fuck with Yahoo", but I don't think Microsoft is necessarily qualified to do it right. Microsoft and Yahoo compete directly in the same market (online search/portal), and Microsoft has more resources to put behind their efforts, but Yahoo has double the market share of Microsoft. Translation: Yahoo is doing kinda badly, but Microsoft is doing worse. Yahoo does not necessarily have a winning strategy, but Microsoft doesn't either. Change is probably necessary, but there is little evidence to point to the idea that Yahoo would be better off with Microsoft in control than some other alternative.

Re:More than near-hostile...

[OakLEE]

I agree with your points here. Microsoft is definitely not king of search, and I think they are trying to buy Yahoo to make up for their deficiencies in that area since Yahoo has a great infrastructure and Microsoft is betting that they can bring in management that will make better use of it than Yahoo's current management. I'm not saying they'll succeed, I'm just pointing out their rationale. My original post was directed at the great-grandparent's post, which implied that Microsoft, if it buys Yahoo, should not touch anything and let Yahoo run itself. We both know that hasn't been working out so well recently.

Ballmer's in charge

[MLCT]

He is now in the driving seat. While MS have always bumbled along with things I now see this getting a bit personal and a bit more precarious. Ballmer is an interesting character. A lot on here (probably rightly) have characterised him as mental. He seems like a deranged and obsessed guy. I mentioned MS "bumbling" along because that is what they did under Gates (sure they embraced, extinguished), but they never took vast risks. Now that Ballmer is in charge I can't shake the feeling that MS's future is a lot more risky - for Ballmer's personal obsession with "destroying" Google could take MS into a very different neighbourhood from Gate's more careful approach. Ballmer is now starting to risk the family silver on beating Google. You only have to look at the comments from the conference call yesterday to realise it - "The market continues to grow, and the leader continues to consolidate position," - never mentioned them by name, but he is clearly obsessed about Google - if I were a shareholder I would be worried that his personal obsession is impairing his business decisions.

Re:Ballmer's in charge

[Shados]

Correct. Average slashdotters may agree, but aside for the whole monopolist part (which, I'll agree, is a pretty big issue), Microsoft has been a decent company, deliver quite a few decent products (2 bads for each good, but the good ones are really good), and I can't shake the feeling that Ballmer is going to make em lose it all. Beating Google is just not worth it. Stop it Microsoft.

Re:Ballmer's in charge

[Dystopian Rebel]

The Ascension of Ballboy to the Throne of Microsoft is the clearest sign that Microsoft has weak senior management and is embarrassingly impoverished in vision.
Ballboy's unwillingness to speak the name of the "fucking guys" he was supposed to "kill" years ago shows how charmless and obsessive he can be. He is like a less personable Joseph Stalin with no big fur hat. His reign of terror will come to an end when Microsoft's shareholders start worrying about ~their~ value.

Microsoft has muscle, big teeth and claws and a walnut-sized brain. People like a company with cool ideas and vision. Google hits many notes perfectly. Apple hits some notes extremely well. Sun can sing but its ears are plugged. IBM gave up singing and now likes to set up the microphones. And Microsoft is the Michael Bolton of software.

Re:Ballmer's in charge

[bball99]

- thank you for making my day... best post i've read here in a while... definitely brought a chuckle!

- i'm just wondering how much work it's going to take to change all my email contacts to a new gmail account from my current yahoo mail account... (gathering the list now) :-(

Re:Ballmer's in charge

[doktor-hladnjak]

Agreed. The one thing this merger has shown is that Microsoft executive leadership is more obsessed with beating Google than delivering value to shareholders or quality products to customers.

Re:Ballmer's in charge

[KefabiMe]

Which explains why Bob and Bob insist on Microsoft...

Re:Ballmer's in charge

[GaryPatterson]

There's an attitude in some company's senior management of being prepared to take the big risks, to bet the company and win big. I've seen it in some companies I've worked for, and when the bet pays off people look great. Money's being made hand over fist, kudos are flying around and egos are being thoroughly stroked.

Bets don't always pay off though, and then it's not a good time to be near the managers involved - the stench of death and all that.

To me, this kind of attitude - bet big, win big - is all about ego and very little about what's good for the company. I'm clearly not a fan, preferring slower but surer growth.

I see this deal as one of those 'bet the company' deals, and I'd be very nervous if I were a Microsoft shareholder.

Google will gain more than Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember giving an interview for Yahoo in India and from whatever devs I spoke to the impression I got was they were uber proud of Perl and BSD and more or less rabidly anti-Windows/VC++/.NET. If Microsoft aquires Yahoo I'll bet anything most of the smarties there will leave Y! and jump right into Google's lap.

In this day and age when skilled manpower is in huge demand, this will be a serious blow for MS.

(YHOO+MSFT) = $6.5 bn loss in value

[G4from128k]

Looking at the market's response to this announcement, it seems that the merged YHOO+MSFT are worth at least $6.5 billion less than they were as separate entities. Yesterday MSFT lost $19.3 billion in market cap, but YHOO only gained $12.8. (If you factor in NASDAQ's overall rise, then these numbers are even worse -- suggesting perhaps a $9 billion loss of value from the merger.)

Re:(YHOO+MSFT) = $6.5 bn loss in value

[rbarreira]

You made an interesting observation there, but let's wait until the merge actually happens (if it does happen), and then we'll see how the calculation looks like at that time.

Re:(YHOO+MSFT) = $6.5 bn loss in value

[RegularFry]

Yup. That calculation doesn't factor in the risk that the deal might not happen.

What if Google bought Yahoo first?

[lems1]

Would Google become a super giant in the online business if it were to buy Yahoo before MS? C'mon Google, beat them at their own game!

Re:What if Google bought Yahoo first?

[ScrewMaster]

Why? The odds are great that the combined Microsoft-Yahoo would be less of a long-term threat than either of them are now.

Ballmer wants to buy himself a chip in the big game. I'm not so sure it's going to work out like he's hoping it will.

Re:What if Google bought Yahoo first?

[markov_chain]

Meh, let them merge. It's like two little piles of crap joining together into one large pile of crap.

MS should merge with ...

[iknownuttin]

Exxon Mobile. They're a bit more profitable than Google (ROE: 33.33% (XOM) vs. 22.74% (GOOG))and the synergy towards a truly evil empire would be achieved faster.

I think, I need to send my resume over to MS for the position of V.P. of Evil Strategy because they're just not cutting it anymore. I mean, really, Google is still around!? Geeze!

Re:MS should merge with ...

[ruiner13]

Exxon Mobile. They're a bit more profitable than Google (ROE: 33.33% (XOM) vs. 22.74% (GOOG))and the synergy towards a truly evil empire would be achieved faster.
Makes sense to me, Exxon is almost as notorious for crashes as Microsoft is. Just ask Alaska!

Re:MS should merge with ...

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft is a very old-fashioned evil empire, complete with the Evil Lord wearing a Great Ring imbued with the ultimate ancient magical DRM Master Key spell sitting on his Dark Executive Throne in the Land of Shadows, torturing minions for fun, and throwing fireballs and other suitable objects (such as Chairs of Doom) in the general direction of his opponents. Whereas Google is a very modern and open-minded villain, doing its business quietly, and having a very good propaganda department to explain slips and generally maintain morale and breed loyalty in the captured territories. It just shows that the latter approach is more effective in today's pragmatic world.

Re:MS should merge with ...

[xhrit]

lol.
I'm tagging all 'vista' stories deadhorse!!!

Some people just don't like MSFT

[NotQuiteReal]

For example, here's an unrelated article about "OS share" where they count the iPhone as an OS.

What possible reason do you have to count iPhone, the Wii and Playstation (even in sub-percentage amounts) in a story of "Mac OS" gaining ground on "Windows"? (BTW, they have it at 7.57% MacOS vs 91.46% Windows, that's 99.03, Linux is at .63%). I guess tossing in random stuff is more interesting than saying Windows still has 90%+ of the desktop...

Re:Some people just don't like MSFT

[filbranden]

Actually, considering mobile devices OSs makes sense, if you consider that in 10-15 years fewer people will be using desktops than mobile devices. Though mobile devices make for a small percentage of OSs today, the tendency is that they'll make a bigger percentage every year, until they surpass the desktop OSs.

That's why all desktop companies are struggling to get their OSs running on mobile devices. Microsoft has Windows CE, Apple has OSX running on the iPhone. There's been a lot of buzz on Linux for mobile devices as well. Although the desktop is the battle being fought today, everyone knows that the war of tomorrow will be on mobile devices.

So, I would say that considering mobile device OSs when talking OS share may make sense.

Re:Some people just don't like MSFT

[HiThere]

Any evidence that those statistics have any relationship to reality?

Considering the source, I wouldn't be surprised if they made them up....or asked people attending a MS hosted convention. (I don't trust Fortune magazine, and I don't recognize marketing companies. NetApplications could be anyone upto and including an alias for MS.)

Re:Some people just don't like MSFT

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no proof of a reality based survey.

The gist seemed pro-Apple.

Maybe not on the ropes, but not in good health

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm not sure Microsoft is on the ropes, the Yahoo bid shows certainly that among other total or partial failures from them in the OS, software, hardware and entertainment field (Zune, Vista, Xbox360, Office 2007), they admit to have failed in the web and service market too. Think about how much Live Search was trumpeted during the past years. All that money poured on those projects, especially that wasted on the failed ones, will harm their monopoly.

Regardless, they both scare the hell out of me.

[emil]

With rumors of NSA backdoors into MS operating systems, and Google maintaining search history until the end of time, both of these companies practically have the power on their own to become George Orwell's big brother. If we had any sense as citizens and consumers, there would be a huge rush for the exits (yet here I sit on Windows searching with Google).

I don't like this power over society. Whichever one takes more effective means in demonstrating that their power is benign will have my support. Neither has taken effective measures to prove their goodwill towards consumers as of yet.

Oh, and you can throw in AT&T in that mix, too.

Re:Regardless, they both scare the hell out of me.

[smurgy]

I'm sure they're not scaring you with these rumours.

I think you're scaring yourself.

Or maybe your friend over there in the sleeping bag shining a torch under his chin is.

Re:Regardless, they both scare the hell out of me.

[Ethanol-fueled]

Note: in the U.S., we call torches "flashlights".

Re:Regardless, they both scare the hell out of me.

[smurgy]

Thank you, I'd forgotten that!

There goes my carefully crafted sleepover-ghost-story (itself more a US tradition than it is anywhere else) image...

I'm still of the opinion that being scared by what you know are rumours about MS and google is to take them more seriously than they deserve.

Re:Regardless, they both scare the hell out of me.

[fat_mike]

I love you guys. You're the reason I have shitloads of stock in Alcoa Inc.!

I feel sorry for Yahoo

[nizo]

But is there any way possible Microsoft can buy Yahoo and not destroy it? Converting all of the Yahoo services to the Microsoft platform (just the red ink this will make Microsoft bleed boggles the mind), hordes of the employees being laid off or leaving, every open source project they currently support fleeing to greener pastures (hint Google, you might consider offering them a safe place to flee to?) And any service interruptions will cause viewers to go elsewhere (Google). Is there any way possible this takeover won't cause Yahoo value to take a steep nosedive, and be a huge bonus for Google?

Re:I feel sorry for Yahoo

[miffo.swe]

That was what i first thought. If MS remakes Yahoo into MSN people will just jump ship. I cant really imagine what MS gets out of this except a short term gain in marketshare. The really big downside for Microsoft is that the people jumping ship will most probably go to Google so the net result is even bigger marketshare for Google. I think Google is the ones least worried about this.

Re:I feel sorry for Yahoo

[mdfst13]

If MS remakes Yahoo into MSN people will just jump ship. If I were Microsoft and buying Yahoo, I would be planning to remake MSN into Yahoo, not the other way around. If MSN's growth is stalling, I don't think that increasing its size will help. Microsoft already has huge advantages over the other players with their control over the desktop. They shouldn't need to buy market. Tech on the other hand is always good to have.

Now, they could be doing this to buy market share for MSN. IMO, if they are, they are doing the wrong thing. IMO, it would be far easier to redirect their internal advantages in Yahoo's favor than to redirect Yahoo's market to MSN.

I wonder what happens with Hotmail versus Yahoo! Mail? I could see that going either way. I don't normally use Hotmail, but I looked at it today and it's not immediately obvious to me which is better. The Hotmail client may be a bit more flexible and fully featured.

Premature to be calling them "On the ropes"

[imasu]

As much as I would like to see them lose out to the Goog here, it's important to remember:

MSFT:
market cap: $283.4 billion
P/E: 17.32

Google:
market cap: $161.39 billion
P/E: 38.83

I wouldn't be calling them "on the ropes" just yet. Then again, I did just get those numbers from Google :)

schadenfreude for Microsoft and Giuliani

[victorvodka]

Their comeuppance is happening at the same time, so (when I'm not thinking consciously) I have trouble distinguishing in my mind the feeling of schadenfreude I feel for Microsoft (particularly the Vista OS) from the one I feel for Giuliani.

There's no way Microsoft can catch Google just like there was no way anyone could catch Microsoft. That train has already left. The only way to catch Google is for someone to develop something entirely new that can be dominated with new network effects. Something new like Facebook or Ebay.

MS a victim of what made it a success

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

When microsoft started, it was a young company, with a new view of technology. they "got" that microcomputer toy thingie a lot better than traditional mainframe and minicomputer makers like IBM, DEC, honeywell, etc. this allowed them grow exponentially, based not only on their own capabilities, but also on the series of mistakes and fuckups of the competition.

well, now it's against them. now THEY are the "traditional" guys with a backwards vision of computers, while google, yahoo and - surprisingly - apple have a grasp of how people see the digital world. google and yahoo caters to the connected crowd, and apple to the people that sees digital gadgets as fashion statements, two things MS with can't get a foot on.

of, course, MS is not going away anytime soon, the same way IBM, unisys, bull and HP are still around. what they need to do is recognize that they're pretty much irrelevant in those two markets, find a stable but big niche and stay on it. we don't see HP or IBM making atempts on the on-line or digital fashion markets, yet they're still huge and profitable.

so, here's a tip for microsoft: leave online services and fashion for the likes of nokia, apple, google, yahoo, etc. and go take care of what you do well: corporative operating systems like win2k (the only version of windows i dare saying i liked) and office tools.

What you haven't heard

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one of the most important things about this purchase is not being discussed. That is the patent yahoo owns for an online auctioning of ad space. This may be the single most important patent in the search engine revenue space. Google has to license this patent from yahoo to be able to use its current structure. I remember a few years ago google agreeing to license this technology from yahoo for a certain number of years. If MS buys yahoo they may be less likely to let google use this patent so they can capitalize on it themselves.

And who has the last laugh...

[locust]

Boy, what can you say. XBox should have completely kicked PS3's ass. But despite the better games portfolio, and much higher US adoption rates, it was bleeding money... Which goes to show what happens when an software company tries to do hardware. Then there's HD-DVD. Someone at Sony is laughing his ass of right now.

Zune... lost and continues to lose to Apple.

Live looses to Google (and the web in general).

So here we are. The problem for MS at this point is that they see some kind of revolution coming that is going to (they think) dethrone them. So they try to cover each of these areas, and do each one of them, not poorly, but not with enough focus and attention that they win. In the end, no-one at MS seems to care if Zune or anything else fails.

Re:And who has the last laugh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the magic random flaimbait mod, this is why I give +2 to flamebait mods people. (when logged in, obviously).

zune will never be a market leader, obviously, ipod is far too cemented in place, and too many people have (expensive) music that won't play on anything but an ipod. It is however, taking a not insignificant part of the market. And at the very least, convinced the retailers to stock non-ipod music players. (If still nothing that's worth a damn).

This is what happens when Vista fails...

[s1oan]

Only new users keep live.com as the default search engine in Vista (IE7)... until they discover everyone else is using google because it's a much better search engine. Exeprienced users change it to google as soon as possible or they just remove Vista and install any other OS. In this situation any big corporation will buy another big company in that field and hope it's enough to beat the google juggernaut.

YHOO went up almost 50% yesterday

[pclminion]

If I had owned any YHOO I would have sold late yesterday. At this point they could withdraw the bid, various people have already made craploads of money.

YHOO should find better bedfellows

[wsgeek]

MSFT is only buying YHOO for their marketshare and perhaps more importantly their brand and reputation. Microsoft has a horrible rep; even if Live Search were technologically "better", consumers still have lingering memories of Microsoft's shifty tactics and attempts to force standards on the online community. This, combines with Google's reputation for "doing no evil" are what has kept them out of search. Criminy, people even prefer the Google Desktop Search to Microsoft's own product on their own OS! This is NOT about Google being better technologically; it's about feeling comfortable with Google and not feeling comfortable with Microsoft. It's reputation. If this deal goes through, Microsoft will basically put their own tech underneath the Yahoo domain name (Yahoo IT people, you might want to start looking for new jobs). They are so arrogant about their technology and the "built by Microsoft" mantra. Don't get me wrong; I like competition and I certainly think this deal would keep Google on its toes. But let's see through the veil and realize what's really going on. Microsoft has no friends and they are trying to buy Yahoo's (somewhat) friendly brand as well as their current marketshare.

danger for my data!

[treat]

What about the sensitive data saved in my email? Or the fact that access to my email account gives access to a lot of more sensitive services because they are willing to email me passwords?

Vulnerability to random hackers is one thing (My individual odds of becoming a victim are very small). Microsoft having access to this data is pretty dangerous. They could determine that I use Linux from the email, gain access to online banking, and transfer themselves the money as payment for their unspecified intellectual property. If I am victimized by Microsoft, will I have the same recourse as if it was eastern European hackers?

Microsoft has shown, with the SCOX evilness, that it will do anything to scare people from using Linux - without regards to what is legal. Someone who is willing to do this, and with these kinds of resources, is quite dangerous.

This is a wake-up-call for me. I am going to stop using Yahoo mail, and make sure that all online banking and other sensitive services do not allow elevation of email acccess to the ability to transfer money.

Why prefer Microhoo over Google?

[Nomen Publicus]

How does this deal improve matters for end users? (I don't say customers as it is obvious that Microsoft now listens to third parties such as RIAA rather than the end users.)

The problem that is being addressed is that the end users prefer Google right now. Why would end users prefer Microhoo over Google?

How does it feel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has faced competitive threats before, but none with the size, strength, profitability and momentum of Google.

Note to Microsoft: now you know how all other companies on the planet feel about you.

How do you think...

[Swampash]

...the MS teams who have been slaving on Search, Advertising, and Windows Live feel? Ballmer has just admitted that everything they did was so shit that the only way to fix the situation is to spend nearly 50billion on acquiring another company.

Re:How do you think...

[Faylone]

Advertising? I'm sorry, it's just hard for me to feel sorry for a marketer.

How MS can make millions

[lymond01]

Put ads on their knowledgebase site.

Re:How MS can make millions

[DrEldarion]

That's a wonderful idea!

I hear there's a really good text-based advertising system available.

With a recession, ad buys with #2 get cut.

[tomhudson]

The 'customers' in the search engine industry are the advertisers, and the main interest of advertisers is reaching as many consumers as possible.

And in a recession, advertisers scale back their ad buys. Instead of buying in the top 2 in any market, they buy from #1 only. Even Microsoft admits that Google is #1.

Why I use Google

[whistlingtony]

Huh...

Buying Yahoo won't help them. Why do I use Google? They have a beautiful clean interface with easy to ignore ads. When I want to look something up I don't want to wait for a million ads and scripts to load. MSN is a nightmare to me. Yahoo isn't far behind. Google has no flashing dancing monkeys or half naked women or seizure causing "You may have won a hojillion dollars!" with half the screen real estate devoted to ads I don't care about and text broken up into pages so they can load new ads all over again.

When I do want to spend my money, I hit up google... It's fast, it's relevant, and the ads don't beat me over the head.

Simple is Beautiful.

-Tony

What about Zimbra?

[Teilo]

I just about choked when I heard the news of this acquisition. We just migrated to the Zimbra Open Source Edition at my company. I adore this product. Now Microsoft will own Zimbra, which is a direct competitor to Exchange. This sucks royally. In the past they have - to a degree - continued to develop competing packages (Fox Pro vs. Access for instance - I know, not a real fair comparison). How will this play into an open source acquisition? My only question is can Zimbra, if necessary, be forked?

Re:What about Zimbra?

[orkysoft]

Read: http://www.zimbra.com/license/. It is distributed under the Yahoo Public Licence, which is described as:

YPL requires that any modifications to the ZCS source code files that you redistribute outside of your organization be published for all in source code form. YPL also requires the preservation of all copyright and attribution notices within modified versions of the ZCS Open Source Edition.

which seems similar to the GPL. But do read it, and google for it, to find out if there are any surprises in store for you.

Re:What about Zimbra?

[Air-conditioned cowh]

The problem would be with the non-open source components that are required to migrate from Exchange and work with Outlook. The open source edition by itself doesn't compete with Exchange because it can't replace it. Also missing from the open source edition is replication and clustering so it is only useful in small shops.

The best thing Zimbra can do if this goes ahead is open source the whole lot......quick!

Mod up please

[Weaselmancer]

I'm without mod points at the moment, and this guy is spot-on.

Re:Eh? _ Madness to their methods (tongue-in-cheek

[az-saguaro]

Now, now. Before all you naysayers and Slashdot cynics read too much into this, consider that there may be some real madness to their methods. Consider this report, on the front page of my newspaper, retrieved by my time-traveling teletype machine.

Reprinted from the Bizarro World Times
April 1, 2010

Headline:
BALLMER PLAYS FIDDLE AS MICROSOFT BURNS
Reported by Peter Perplexed and Wally Whathehelljusthappened

Federal investigators with the SEC and FBI, along with Interpol authorities, today released preliminary information about the sudden and dramatic collapse of Microsoft. Investors, employees and customers, still largely in the dark about the sudden seeming evaporation of the company, were none to happy to hear this news, but at least there was a sense of relief that some answers are starting to come through.

Employees at all Microsoft campuses worldwide showed up to work today to find their buildings padlocked, the workforce locked out. Customer support at all levels, the phones at all of the corporate offices, and the MS website and MSN are all completely offline. Shareholders seem to have lost their entire investment in Microsoft as the NASDAQ has eliminated the company form the exchange. What happened? How could it happen so suddenly and so thoroughly? Where are the company principals (not to mention their principles)?

And even more peculiar, we are starting to receive worldwide reports of their latest operating system, Windows Smokescreen (aka Windows 7) suddenly quitting - wiping hard drives on systems that it is installed on, or otherwise refusing to boot a computer. Here at the Times, we first noted problems when many users started getting the following message: "You do not seem to have the properly signed and verified digital rights to the email and txt files you just created - you are hereby prohibited from using Windows again."

Based on the public reporting by the above agencies, plus investigations from multiple news agencies and tech and financial reporters, we believe that the following is an accurate, albeit sketchy recreation of events at the world's largest software vendor, beginning about 2 years ago, leading up to today's dramatic events:

January 2008 - Numerous events indicate that MS is aware of the fiasco that is Vista, its latest release of Windows. Regardless that the new OS has a variety of merits, it simply has too many demerits, and it has garnered no loyalty nor market share among home and business users - especially among businesses - meaning a serious interruption of revenue and credibility for the company and its flagship product. MS announces an accelerated schedule for creating and releasing its next proposed Windows OS - version 7. Many are skeptical.

February, 2008 - MS announces a hostile takeover bid for Yahoo! No one can understand a legitimate or business-responsible rationale for this move. General opinions take the dim cynical view that this is an expensive but lame attempt to compete with Google, by eliminating the third major player in the online search and advertising market. The offer is made at nearly TWICE the outstanding market capitalization of Yahoo!

March, 2008 - Until now, Yahoo! has made no official reply. The unofficial discussion from Yahoo! execs is that the bid is a disgrace, that they will never capitulate to the rapacious so-and-so's at the Evil Empire, that market consolidation is a losing proposition for the public, that the deal will NEVER go through. Nevertheless, market speculation on Yahoo! and MS stock drives up share prices.

April, 2008 - Over the past month, the MS bid for Yahoo! has risen another 30%, to a net of nearly $58 B (billion), keeping ahead of the speculative price rises and nominal Yahoo! value. All of the fuzzy warm sentiments about corporate independence, freedom, mom, baseball, and apple pie go by the wayside, as money talks. At a hurried and hastily organized Yahoo! shareholders meeting, the merger-buyout is accepted.

May, 2008 - F

Yahoo may not be that profitable

[plopez]

They seem to be losing profitability as well. Probably MS sees a turn around soon, but they may be paying too much. I Yahoo continues to slide MS may be able to pick up Yahoo at a better price.

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/298769

BTW, MS is very much following the GM model. A bunch of investors saw the automobiles as the next big thing and pasted together a mega car company by buying up smaller compaines (Pontiac, Chevy, Buick etc.). Nothing new or innovative here.

Microsoft: More money than brains.

[Futurepower(R)]

The Bush Coins video is excellent!

Not only does the high price show Microsoft's desperation, it indicates that the real lack at Microsoft is not money, but brains. Yahoo is only a web site. The fact that Microsoft has not been able to compete shows the serious mental poverty that is a common symptom of those who have put money first in their lives. (Bush and Cheney are other examples, as the video shows.)

Re:Microsoft: More money than brains.

[rtb61]

The silence from ballmer shows a even greater embarrassment.

'I'll fucking kill Google', 'We will bury google', attempting to buy yahoo shows ballmer's abject failure. The money thrown away on rebranding MSN to Live has proven a complete waste.

M$'s biggest problem is that ballmer has completely surrounded himself with yes men, agree or get fired, so they all squat in their various board rooms convincing themselves that they are really smart and that ballmer is a genius, which invariably leads to ballmer making another immature boast.

Will ballmer apologise to M$'s shareholders or will his behaviour and the behaviour of his executive chorus more closely align with this http://www.sott.net/articles/show/148141-The-Trick-of-the-Psychopath-s-Trade-Make-Us-Believe-that-Evil-Comes-from-Others, an interesting read that does really reflect the behaviour of some governments and a lot of corporations.

Re:Microsoft: More money than brains.

[falconwolf]

the real lack at Microsoft is not money, but brains.

Microsoft has some good brains, unfortunately none of them are running the company.

Falcon

Will the new Microsoft-Yahoo! look like this?

[gaetanomarano]

Will the new Microsoft-Yahoo! look like this? http://www.ghostnasa.com/newYahoo.jpg

Chair throw'n fool

[Nonillion]

So if YAHOO says "Thanks, but NO thanks" Microsoft could use that money to replace chairs.

problem with logic

[ILuvRamen]

If they want to improve their business, why would they want to buy Yahoo?! They're worse than microsoft when it comes to their reputation for online advertising. All they do is put up uncontrolled ads pushing spyware, invade your privacy, and try and get you to install ad-pkaced toolbars. Wouldn't they buy a company that's...oh you know...GOOD? Yahoo has turned into a greedy version of AOL. They should just die. Speaking of that, their company is tanking so that's another reason why Microsoft shouldn't be interested. If they wanted to improve their own business, they just wouldn't buy some failing company with a horrible reputation that everyone with a brain hates. I think this all has something to do with SBC and Microsoft being an ISP.

Nothing to fear but fear itself

[nagora]

Where is Google's OS? Where is Google Office?

MS should be putting 44Bn into improving its products instead of buying failing web companies in order to compete with a company which has yet to enter MS's market.

The bid does show a Microsoft on the ropes, but from bad management not competition from Google.

TWW

No idea why that's marked as a troll

[goldcd]

MS DO make some good products. Console division keeps on being dragged up as an example of them messing up, but honestly I like their consoles.
Original Xbox was a bit rough around the edges (and an ugly great brick of off the shelf components) - but it did bring proper networking to consoles (something PC users had taken for granted for years and pretty much ignored through 2 (and possibly 3) generations of Playstation).
360 itself is a very nice console - and whilst the piss may be taken out of the red ring of death, I do seem to remember a whole load of PS1s having to be run on their sides, upside down and eventually packing up completely (and that's putting aside the shading bug on early models that Sony never admitted to).
Console division was losing money yes, but that's a problem for MS, not for the end users - my only worry would be if I felt MS was going to bail out of the market and leave me clutching one of their worthless consoles. Same with the Zune, it's not an ipod beater yet, but I like the fact that it's there and getting better with every generation (as Apple has added f'all the original apart from a colour screen and a larger HD).

Re:No idea why that's marked as a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm ...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61688#scrollwheel
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61688#ipodtouch

Is Microsoft REALLY gonna rebuild Yahoo with .NET?

[PRR]

The real question I've been wondering about... is Microsoft REALLY going to eventually try to rebuild Yahoo (which uses BSD and PhP) with Windows servers and ASP.NET?

Because if it does, that's not only going to be a HUGE job, but it'll probably encourage the departure of a LOT of good open-source programmers to go over to Google or some other worthy LAMP-style startup or competitor!

Popularity Explained

[RexDevious]

People DON'T LIKE computers. This is very hard for people like us to relate to. So here's what happened.

The business folks in offices used IBM stuff, which was better than paper, but still unpleasant.
IBM started pitching them "PC's". Not as pleasant as Mac's, but more compatible and "no ever got fired for buying IBM products".

Then the support guys (me) come in. We work with Macs and PC's, and know that PC's are worse. But... the business folks already kinda know PC's, and they don't want to learn anything new (and you can't make them). The want word processing, spreadsheets, slide shows, database, and eventually email.

You try to give them the best packages available to meet these needs (Word Perfect, Lotus 123/Symphony, ect); but Microsoft continually throws stuff in their security updates that make all these other programs break. People are pissed, and you're frustrated. You don't want to, but you buy Microsoft Office during the next upgrade to avoid dealing with the sabotages. Office still isn't stable, or the best batch of products - but no one blames you for it; and it's still more stable than trying to run other programs Microsoft's updates corrupt.

Soon you being automating things. You try out Delphi because even the Visual Basic Programmers journal recommends it.

Then when you update to the next version of Windows to support long files names (which is a must because your office is creating too many documents to manage them with 8.3 filenames), the new OS trashes all the Delphi programs. So you have to switch to VB.

While Office makes it very easy to switch from other programs to it's own programs - it throws up warning if you try to save these documents in any other format. Office workers are scared of these warnings, and eventually just save everything as native Office formatted documents.

Now you've all the people in the company with any power firmly stuck on MS products, and all your company's work is stored in Office only formats. Switching away from that is just not viable.

Along comes the internet, and decent PC only games like Doom.

Now these office workers, not wanting to learn anything new, choose PC's for their home computers. They use Outlook, download porn, and play Doom and Myst at home.

Then Microsoft finally gets IE working just well enough, and Netscape sabatoged enough, to make IE a viable browser.

The get sued for it, and so they purposely put the code for the GUI of Windows in the IE code - so you can't remove IE anymore without trashing the operating system. They "run out the clock" on making it the default browser, so when web development really becomes crucial - the IE marketshare is so great that designers eventually stop "branch coding" and only QA their sites on IE.

The postive feed back loop gets stronger, pushing traditional Mac developers to switch to PC only releases. Adobe follows suit, removing one of the last few justifications even the Art departments had for adding Mac's to the mix. The die hard hold outs, such as Netscape, Borland, and Bungie, find their best employees poached away with the huge profits MS has been making.

The IT departments see the opportunity to cut costs by only have to deal with one OS, and take it.

And thus you have apparent "popularity" of all things Microsoft.

But then computers and the internet go from becoming useful tools, to vital pieces of company's business models. Crashes, viruses, and security breaches are no longer acceptable risks.

And along comes Linux. The server guys start using it, because it meets their needs for security and stability - and they don't need cute little graphics to do their jobs. Plus, they remember all the times Microsoft made their lives hell - and want to avoid repeating the experience.

Linux starts to get it's own positive feed back loop. PHP and MySQL become viable options. Thunderbird and Firefox become viable options. Everyone who counts on computers working properly to do their jobs take the on

Re:Popularity Explained

[H3six]

Apple releases the coloured iMacs Hard to forget that. The iMacs were a breath of fresh air from those great big, clunking Microsoft boxes all over the place.

Re:Popularity Explained

[falconwolf]

Along comes the internet, and decent PC only games like Doom.

You know, well actually you probably don't, but 10 years ago a statement like that would really have amused a lot of people I knew then seeing as how they said Macs were only good for playing games. I'd get into debates with them about what Macs, and Amigas, were capable of. There were plenty of business apps for Macs but if you still weren't convinced Macs could also run Windows and any Windows program they wanted. As for the Amigas, they could not only run Amiga software but they could also run both Mac and Windows software as well. Using Apple ROM the Amiga would run Mac OS and with an addon card they could run DOS/Windows.

The postive feed back loop gets stronger, pushing traditional Mac developers to switch to PC only releases. Adobe follows suit,

Excuse me but Adobe still releases software, including Creative Suite 3 for Macs. Looking at system requirements CS3 runs on both PPC and Intel Macs. Hundreds if not 1000s of programs are still available for Macs, some of them only come with Mac versions. While not as many titles as there are for Windows, I can find a lot of software for Macs, in brick and mortar stores and online.

Oh yeah - it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to thrown Solitaire into Leopard either.

Apple has more than 700 games Mac users can download, including Solitaire. You know now that I think about it when I used Windows and Linux I spent maybe a quarter of the tyme I was using my PCs playing games, but I haven't spent 1 minute playing any game on my Mac in the 5 months I've had it. I didn't even know chess was on it. There it is, in the application folder, along with MS Office 2004 for Mac test drive.

Falcon

Re:Popularity Explained

[RexDevious]

Thanks for the reply.
With regards to Adobe, I was referring to it becoming available on PC's, not *only* available on PC's.

I sighted Doom being PC only not because Macs didn't have games back then (Myst was huuuuge); but because it was one of the first really good 3D engines game made, that also supported network play, and was released in a shareware model that let people get the entire first 1/3 of the game for free. Those 3 factors played an enormous role it's popularity. Popularity that pushed PC's.

Must be a slow news day

[davmoo]

I've heard all of this since the day after Microsoft released the second version of DOS. Anyone who interprets Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! as Microsoft being "on the ropes" needs to put the cap back on their glue and seek medical treatment.

Major ISPs in bed with both = Monopoly?

[IllogicalStudent]

Here in Canada, our two largest ISPs, Rogers (Rogers/Yahoo! Cable Internet Service) and Bell (Sympatico/MSN DSL Internet Service) are aligned with Yahoo! and MSN, respectively. If Microsoft's bid goes through, does this not create an unhealthy lack of competition (sure, there are other ISPs, but they are very significantly dwarfed by these two) bordering on Monopoly?

UNIX servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo all runs on BSD UNIX, or so I read.

If you were the CEO of some other company deciding to buy Yahoo, would your first step be to tear up all the infrastructure and move it to Windows Server?

I mean, if you value Yahoo at $45B, must be because you feel their product / approach has merit, a lot of merit.

Microsoft (or maybe just Ballmer) might have the balls to essentially admit that Yahoo has a better approach or stronger position in the market... but they probably don't quite have the stomach to leave Yahoo's formula alone.

Remember Hotmail ?

Are you out of your mind?

[eples]

Microsoft reported their earnings just a couple of weeks ago on 1/24. Their profits were UP amidst an ocean of companies reporting either losses or lower than expected profits.

You sir, Mr. poster, are a fucking retard.

Madness to their methods (tongue-in-cheek)

[az-saguaro]

[Apologies - I posted this already, buried somewhere deep in this thread. Sorry if you see the duplicate - this is my first Slashdot post, and I got it all bolloxed and in the wrong place - but I think I got it all straight now.]

Now, now. Before all you naysayers and Slashdot cynics read too much into this, consider that there may be some real madness to their methods. Consider this report, on the front page of my newspaper, retrieved by my time-traveling teletype machine.

Reprinted from the Bizarro World Times
April 1, 2010

Headline:
BALLMER PLAYS FIDDLE AS MICROSOFT BURNS
Reported by Peter Perplexed and Wally Whathehelljusthappened

Federal investigators with the SEC and FBI, along with Interpol authorities, today released preliminary information about the sudden and dramatic collapse of Microsoft. Investors, employees and customers, still largely in the dark about the sudden seeming evaporation of the company, were none to happy to hear this news, but at least there was a sense of relief that some answers are starting to come through.

Employees at all Microsoft campuses worldwide showed up to work today to find their buildings padlocked, the workforce locked out. Customer support at all levels, the phones at all of the corporate offices, and the MS website and MSN are all completely offline. Shareholders seem to have lost their entire investment in Microsoft as the NASDAQ has eliminated the company form the exchange. What happened? How could it happen so suddenly and so thoroughly? Where are the company principals (not to mention their principles)?

And even more peculiar, we are starting to receive worldwide reports of their latest operating system, Windows Smokescreen (aka Windows 7) suddenly quitting - wiping hard drives on systems that it is installed on, or otherwise refusing to boot a computer. Here at the Times, we first noted problems when many users started getting the following message: "You do not seem to have the properly signed and verified digital rights to the email and txt files you just created - you are hereby prohibited from using Windows again."

Based on the public reporting by the above agencies, plus investigations from multiple news agencies and tech and financial reporters, we believe that the following is an accurate, albeit sketchy recreation of events at the world's largest software vendor, beginning about 2 years ago, leading up to today's dramatic events:

January 2008 - Numerous events indicate that MS is aware of the fiasco that is Vista, its latest release of Windows. Regardless that the new OS has a variety of merits, it simply has too many demerits, and it has garnered no loyalty nor market share among home and business users - especially among businesses - meaning a serious interruption of revenue and credibility for the company and its flagship product. MS announces an accelerated schedule for creating and releasing its next proposed Windows OS - version 7. Many are skeptical.

February, 2008 - MS announces a hostile takeover bid for Yahoo! No one can understand a legitimate or business-responsible rationale for this move. General opinions take the dim cynical view that this is an expensive but lame attempt to compete with Google, by eliminating the third major player in the online search and advertising market. The offer is made at nearly TWICE the outstanding market capitalization of Yahoo!

March, 2008 - Until now, Yahoo! has made no official reply. The unofficial discussion from Yahoo! execs is that the bid is a disgrace, that they will never capitulate to the rapacious so-and-so's at the Evil Empire, that market consolidation is a losing proposition for the public, that the deal will NEVER go through. Nevertheless, market speculation on Yahoo! and MS stock drives up share prices.

April, 2008 - Over the past month, the MS bid for Yahoo! has risen another 30%, to a net of nearly $58 B (billion), keeping ahead of the speculative price rises and nominal Yahoo! value. All of the fuz

Reminds me of AOL-Time/Warner

[Anonymous Coward]

Synergy, as in the AOL-Time/Warner deal. Everyone made out like bandits on that one, eh?

It's Microsoft's cash to flush away. Once again, I only amazed by their lack of creativity. Actual creative new concepts, such as facebook, float to the top. At MS, something else is floating all right.

"Don't be evil"

[Dammital]

A lot of people have faith in Sergey Brin's corporate motto. The creation of class B stock at Google, which gives Sergey and Larry ten votes for every share, ensures that they will be able to keep Google from being corrupted, so long as they themselves remain uncorrupt.

Microsoft has no such public image. They were found to use their monopolist position to kill Navigator and hurt Java. Their CEO is belligerent and takes shots at the FOSS community. More recently they've tried to buy the ISO vote for OOXML. They don't trust their own customers, as evidenced by periodic, rude and disruptive Genuine Advantage challenges.

We're about to enjoy a big, fat, open class C block in the US spectrum, courtesy of Google. They purchased Android, and then opened its SDK to the world. In contrast, Microsoft has promoted hardware restrictions, media restrictions, and discourages use of unemcumbered codecs such as Ogg Vorbis.

Which company would you rather do business with, all things being equal? That is Microsoft's problem. They can spend all the $billions they like on buying market share... but they can't buy a reputation. When the FTC clears the Yahoo deal... Microsoft will still be Microsoft.

Re:"Don't be evil"

[Anonymous Coward]

The creation of class B stock at Google, which gives Sergey and Larry ten votes for every share, ensures that they will be able to keep Google from being corrupted, so long as they themselves remain uncorrupt.


I don't think this would block a bid like this. Look at what happend: the day MS made the bid YHOO stock is up 47%. Even with clabb B stock, if YHOO founders turn down the bid then their stock will plumit and they will be *legally* liable to shareholders. No matter how you slice it, when you have shareholders you must do what is best for the stock. If you want to be altruistic you better not sell off part of your company w/o strings attached and you sure as hell better not go public.

Re:"Don't be evil"

[ClosedSource]

"A lot of people have faith in Sergey Brin's corporate motto. The creation of class B stock at Google, which gives Sergey and Larry ten votes for every share, ensures that they will be able to keep Google from being corrupted, so long as they themselves remain uncorrupt."

Thanks for giving us an authoritative finding that Sergey and Larry aren't corrupt yet. How else would the rest of us know, if not for you?

Microsoft is either overpaying or bluffing

[Animats]

It makes sense for Microsoft to acquire parts of Yahoo, but $44 billion in cash for the whole thing? That's way overpriced. Yahoo, based on their declining earnings, is worth $12-$15 billion. If that. Microsoft will have to issue stock or take on debt to buy Yahoo for cash.

I suspect the hostile offer of $44 billion is a bluff. The real idea is to pressure Yahoo's board into a friendly merger structured as a stock swap. Then Microsoft becomes a bigger company and Yahoo shareholders are issued Microsoft stock to replace their Yahoo stock.

What we can look forward to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Microsoft buys Yahoo, we can look forward to repeated downtime as they rip out FreeBSD servers and replace them with Windows, the technical staff quits, settings get lost as Yahoo IDs are replaced with Windows Live IDs, Yahoo News is replaced with Microsoft Propaganda and all the Linux stories are removed, Yahoo Messanger is replaced with MSN, Yahoo Mail becomes hotmail-ified, all the flash videos get removed and replaced with Windows Media, the flash games get replaced with ActiveX and Silverlight crap, and all their former customers go somewhere else.

In the end, we'll be left with the same shitty MSN, and $44.6 billion down the drain. Good job, Microsoft.

Great News

[Vengance Daemon]

As much as Microsoft gives me rectal itch, a merger between Microsoft and Yahoo! would be terrific news for everyone. The services and products that Google is offering are amazing, and even Microsoft/Yahoo! have a few nice offerings. Can you imagine the products and services we will get if Google and Microhoo start a serious bloody competition with each other? I read the other day that Firefox has some 26 percent and growing of the European market, which is going to force Microsoft to offer products for browsers other than IE.

This capitalism thing could bring amazing stuff to us. (Have you used Google Earth lately?)

Re:Great News

[zIRtrON]

Yes it could be good times.

From what has happened, it looks like M$ is really trying to get the next generation of users......(1)
I think that's great if they want eyeballs. We have the facebook crowd. Of which I am a user.....(2)
Google offers great services - the apps for your domain means I can work from anywhere ............(3)

I check facebook once a week/fortnight depends if there's been a party or photos to put up etc....(from 2)
I work for myself these days (from 3), so don't choose to waste time doing (2).
If M$ aims for the 'next-generation-of-user'(from 1), they'll get the 25 group. Problem is, with great services
from google and facebook, each in their own good times of day/week, the users from (1) above, will have less and less
time to actually poke each other and get on with real work.

So, whilst it may be cool to own a zune now, or run anti-virus software - in 5 years time, the (1) crowd won't have as
much time as now to (2), and will be more interested in just running their own show (3).

Unless they are women - they can do many more things at a time than us men can. They know what they're doing on the
weekend on any given Tuesday (which would constitute good use of (3) or (2))...

Does Yahoo! or MSN offer an apps-for-your-domain equivalent?

It adds nothing new

[SnuffySmith]

Microsoft wins by traction, the art of the foist, always tied to the PC (Windows) or tied to a bundle tied to the PC (MS Office). The XBox is the one exception I can think of where people went out and bought their product because it was really good (vid. Zune). The success of Windows-based PDAs and smart phones is an extension of people's use of Office/Outlook and thus an extension of Windows' PC base. Right now, Windows is infrastructure. It's everywhere: in business, in almost everyone's home. It's like asphalt: poured out, steam-rolled, and solidified into semi-permanence, and as in Baltimore, where I live, given to potholes, constant ad hoc repairs, and uneven, poorly done patches.

Internet victories seem to always arise from companies that do one small thing well, an unencumbered product that's new or better than the other guy in a very crucial way. Unless you stay better (Google) or manage to build a suite of stuff that people get accustomed to or dependent upon (Yahoo!) you will fall by the way (Hotbot, Altavista, all the other poor schmoes I'm forgetting).

In the online space, Microsoft has been unable to foist stuff on people, try as they might, and they're too un-nimble to build a toehold technology/site that people fall in love with and then build on that. Everything they do starts out encumbered. In that same space Yahoo survives because early on they built their initial success at ordering the web (before searches did it better) into a mail and portal product people came to rely on. It looks like now Yahoo is merely in a position of holding on to mail and portal clients as long as they can before Google chips them away.

I use Yahoo for: (1) the Yahoo mail plus service with disposable email addresses; this I live by, but use it only for online accounts and stuff I don't want coming to my Gmail account; (2) weather; they rely on Weather.com, and present a three-day forecast that I like better than Google's weather. I don't think people are discovering or switching their homepages to Yahoo.

Gluing Yahoo onto Microsoft doesn't seem to to add anything to either company. How is MS going to build business based on Yahoo's slipping market share? How is a desktop monopoly going to help Yahoo gain share when that desktop monopoly has never succeeded at that? Microsoft typically crowds and clutters web pages with ads and MS branding. Yahoo already has busy-ness and clutter down pat. Both Yahoo and Microsoft could be good if they were to think creatively about how to be good: focus on online services that are better than what Google's strategies will allow (NOT search), or, in MS's case, hone instead inflate their OS (vid. Vista) and Office applications. But Microsoft has demonstrated again and again that they are constitutionally incapable of doing these things with their own or anyone else's technologies.

Punctuates 5+ Years of PPC/Search Co-opetition

[Small Business Compu]

From a search advertising perspective, the merger/acquisition makes sense. Although Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft make up the 3 dominant PPC search advertising platforms, Google is AT LEAST 1-2 full generations ahead of Yahoo! and Microsoft on virtually every possible metric/feature. The integration of 2 vastly different corporate cultures however could prove to be a VERY daunting task. There's a LOT of history here. As a little as 4-5 years ago, the 3 search giants were still in arrangements where they were displaying some of each others' organic search results data. Microsoft was the last one to get into the PPC advertising business. (They were originally working with LookSmart on the paid side and Inktomi on the organic side if I remember correctly.) And although Yahoo! (GoTo/Overture) was really first in PPC advertising, Google has REALLY chipped away at their once dominant position over the past several years.

They never did that

[Tony]

Microsoft was never about giving the customer what they wanted. Microsoft has been about making sure the customer only had access to Microsoft products. That meant they had to have products in the first place, sure; but Microsoft has manipulated the market so they were the only ones available. (This is heavily documented in their anti-trust trials).

They started doing this once IBM gave them an exclusive contract to provide MS-DOS for the original IBM PC. By the time Compaq and co. had their clones ready, MS-DOS was the only game in town. Later, when DR-DOS came around, it started making *serious* inroads. Microsoft then made per-processor deals with the OEMs, making sure a copy of MS-DOS was sold with every processor, whether it *shipped* with the processor or not. This made it economically difficult for the OEMs to sell DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS. (DR-DOS was *far* superior to MS-DOS.)

It's these bundling deals that kept Microsoft at the head of the market all those years. Once they got a significant lead, it became impossible for any other competitor to create a competing product.

Microsoft was helped by some incredibly stupid decisions by other companies, true. (SEE Novell, and their handling of Word Perfect and Novell Office, for instance.) However, it' Microsoft's ability to warp the market to their own ends that has kept them on top, *not* giving the customer what they wanted. (They were so successful at market manipulation, the customer often never knew there *was* an option.)

When there's only one trail, the customer can't walk. That's what monopoly abuse is all about. We don't call it "lock-in" just to amuse ourselves.

"credible"

[Maxo-Texas]

That's the key problem.

If MS had been a white hat in the 90's, they would own this market today.

Like so many businesses, they went for short term profit at long term cost.

I would never use MS search results because I do not trust them to give me fair results.
They scammed too many times.

A question

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obviously (and often justifiably) popular here to vilify all things Microsoft. I'm just wondering, when they are finally unseated as the dominant company, will you all be happier when some other company assumes the same role? Would it somehow be better if it were Apple? It would be a shinier, hipper monopoly?

It will not be Linux (unless the maker of some distro finally acquires some marketing savvy, and I loftier goals than 10% of .08% of the entire market.)

The warm fuzzy feeling that you get from your favorite OS aside, all corporations are out to dominate the market.

Re:A question

[spitzak]

I think the general hope is that Microsoft would be replaced by several companies, each of about the power of the current PC manufacturers such as Dell and IBM, and with the ability for tiny companies to compete in some way, just like it is possible to go to a little computer store and buy a computer that works in a way that is competitive with a Dell. It does seem very likely that these machines will run Linux as a fallen Microsoft would probably be unable to release Windows sufficiently to make it an option for price-concious companies, and basing it on Linux will allow them to hire people with experience and cross-hire from their competitors. However the companies will compete on closed-source applications with tight integration into their web services, so it's not like it's going to be some OSS nirvana where you can mess with any program you want and improve it.

I suspect more likely one of those companies would end up dominating, by technology lockin just like Microsoft does. A closed program running on Linux can use an obfuscated proprietary data just as well as one running on Windows. Hardware manufacturers and the RIAA/MPAA might wise up and realize that DRM can be done with a piece of sealed hardware with an api that is like a DVD remote control (ie stop, play, etc) so that the api can be published and nice controls integrated into any system that uses this hardware, and the company with the rights to insert this hardware into their machine could be the winner.

I don't want Yahoo to look like this!

[Doug52392]

What could happen to Yahoo --

Re:I don't want Yahoo to look like this!

[peektwice]

Hadn't seen that one in a while, but thanks for the laugh again...

Aha... ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

But just so you know: I think there is a superfluous "a" in your nickname... ;P

Altalavista Baby!

[Laxator2]

M$ will screw up this time too, just like they did with www.mapblast.com and many other acquisitions.
Ballmer's Google tunnel vision must be in such an advanced state that their next move will be to make a bid
to acquire Google.
But here is my suggestion for the new slogan of the new company called MicroHoo: instead of the "Where do you want to go today?" ti should be "Altalavista Baby !".

Re:Eh? - Car analogy

[BcNexus]

Microsoft dwarfs Google in both revenue and profit. It's just lost out in the online services market (where despite rising revenues it still makes a loss), and wants to catch up.

It seems like a big risk for MS to buy yahoo just to try to make it big in the online world. Why can't MS focus on what it does best?

This could go down like the Daimler/Chrysler merger where the "network effect" was supposed to build an uber car company, but didn't.

Poor M$ - Not!

[kurt555gs]

I do not think that M$ is close to being on the ropes. I think M$ is just upset that they don't control absolutely everything.

It is the M$ psychopathic greed, that is not changed.

One thing that I wish would happen from a Democratic Presidency next year would be a renewed effort to again break up M$ to put an end to these monopolistic tendencies.

The Bush DOJ did nothing but allow Gates and company to laugh at the laws of the United States, and by this action let M$ destroy whatever software or high tech innovation our country could come up with.

Unlsee we really want to be dependent on the rest of the world for software, it really is time to break up M$ into small enough peices, that they will never again be a threat to innovation.

I can just wish, but who knows, some time just and good things do happen in this world.

Cheers

Re:Poor M$ - Not!

[gujo-odori]

I agree with much of what you said, but not the part about destroying whatever software or high tech innovation our country could come up with. Unless you're talking about some country other than the United States (in which I case I apologize for the coming non sequitur), if it was MSFT's intention to do that, they failed miserably.

Apple has come up with tons of neat stuff since Bush took office. All sorts of open source projects have been very innovative and successful during that same time period. Open source is harder to qualify as being from any one country, since people from all over the world work on it, but MSFT has been singularly unsuccessful in harming or destroying it.

My former employer became so successful during the Bush administration that it was acquired by Microsoft in 2005 (no kidding; and it's been rather flat since then, AFAICT. I went to work for the competition). My current employer also became very successful during the Bush administration, so much so that it was also recently acquired. Not by MSFT, thankfully, but by a company that believes in keeping our corporate culture and our successful team both intact and in place (no relocation for us, w00t!).

I'm certain as only a former MSFT blue badge can be that MSFT *wishes* it could destroy any software innovation it doesn't create itself and can't buy, but Microsoft was far better at that kind of thing during the Clinton years than it has been during the Bush years. Not that I mean to imply Clinton was soft on Microsoft and Bush tough, or anything like that. I think Presidents Clinton and Bush have both been relatively insignificant to MSFT. Microsoft dominated so thoroughly during the Clinton years because it had previously been so good at crushing or buying competition and really did have monopoly power. That power, especially because it was abused so much and so blatantly, made Microsoft a lightning rod for all kinds of competition, open source or not, and made a lot of people just hate MSFT. I believe that by the time they understood the threat, and that it was for real, it was already too late.

Plus, as others have said, they have too much going on outside of their core business. Not that I entirely blame them for that; the writing is on the wall that someday the Office franchise won't be worth anything like what it's worth today, and even the Windows franchise will face a real drop in value from competition by Apple (completely superior to Windows) on one side and open source operating systems (improving all the time, and already better than Windows in many areas) on the other. However, I think it's fair to say that Microsoft's core business of operating systems and office productivity applications has suffered as a result of how large Microsoft has become in its attempt to be an everything company of technology. MSN. Hotmail. XBox. Hardware (granted, Microsoft makes nice keyboards and mice, but I don't think they need to do it). Probably a bunch of other things I'm not even thinking of right now. Companies in many businesses have overextended themselves and paid for it. The ones that wise up tend to dump non-core businesses and get back to their fundamentals. MSFT shows no sign at all of such wisdom so far.

MS is 4X Google

[ChrisMaple]

Microsoft's sales and profits are both about 4 times as large as Google's. Based upon most recent quarter results, Google is growing sales faster but Microsoft is growing profits faster. Microsoft has challenges and places of vulnerability, but they are a long way from being in danger of extinction.

What I get from Google

[symbolset]

What I get from Google is the answer I'm looking for with the least time and trouble.

In my view that's why Google is winning in search. It's not any more complicated than that.

Yahoocrosoft...

[big_paul76]

"In the end, Yahoocrosoft will lose from 35% to 70% users"

Is is just me, or is "MicroYahoo" a much funnier name?

MSFT is missing it: Kill Online Advertising

[onebadmutha]

If MSFT put ad-block, on, by default, on internet explorer, and purposefully blocked all online advertising: 1. they'd be heros with the masses, who hate ads. 2. they'd DESTROY google's profit system 3. the story would be back about who can get on the desktop. It's a thought....

One the ropes?

[nurb432]

It looks like typical operating procedures to me.

I'm not happy with the O/S owningthe search engine

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one will not use Yahoo when it becomes Bill-hoo.
He already has enough access to my life. I don't want
his buggy O/S correlating my searches with my other
activities.

MSN Yahoo

[MrCopilot]

I posted my take on this last night @ Yahoo vs MSN vs Google

But here is the brief, Yahoo has no choice, MS has no shot at being Number 2 without buying it, and Google stands to gain by watching it happen and grabbing disaffected Yahoo users who promise to leave in droves if the deal goes through.

Business problems at Microsoft?

[mveloso]

Two things stand out from this bid:

1. Microsoft's Internet Strategy has succeeded all too well. Their Internet strategy was to tie IE to Windows, and preserve their desktop monopoly. They have done that very effectively. Unfortunately, the Internet really did pass them by, as was predicted back in the Netscape days. It just took a lot longer than anyone expected.

2. Microsoft is practically incapable of creating a profitable business that's outside its Office and Windows franchise. The XBox 360 division showed a profit this quarter, but has been running at a net loss (billions) since its inception. The Internet properties (MSN, Windows Live) have been, at best, mediocre, and another net loss. The enterprise division is OK, but it's an extension of Office and Windows; would anyone care about them if the desktop monopoly wasn't there? No.

Ask yourself this: if Microsoft invested $10 billion in MSN, would they be able to compete with Yahoo! and google? If not, why do they think that buying Yahoo! for $45 billion is going to help them compete with google?

Microsoft can't even compete with itself effectively; look at the Vista vs XP war that's being waged right now, and the battle to upgrade Office. Really, the only reason people are buying Windows right now is it comes on their PC. If there was a real alternative, one that was able to play games + internet + multimedia that was easy to deal with, Windows would be gone from retail in 3 years. Of course, it would need to be Windows-compatible, which is a bummer.

Linux, fans, linux as it is today is not the answer. But it might be down the road, with a better, more integrated and responsive UI.

Doesn't make sense, MS Bungle-Land

[Tablizer]

Microsoft tried to create their own Yahoo/Google-like services, but they bungled it. If they buy and manage Yahoo, most likely the bungling will continue and they will do to Yahoo what they did to MSN. It's a dumb move for either company (unless you take the selling profits and run).

Don't be surprised if the deal falls through ...

[tomhudson]

The deal is still below what Yahoo! was worth a year ago ($47 billion), and also, with Friday's rise, not much of a premium http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=YHOO

Now add in that Microsoft is only offering $21 billion in cash, and the rest in stock, and that's no longer much of a premium for buying out the whole business.

Yahoo! could also do a "poison pill" - buy Redhat. There's no way that Microsoft would be allowed to buy Yahoo! under such circumstances.

Google will be pleased

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that whilst Google will make very effort to tie this up with the regulators for years they'll actually be quite pleased - our largest competitor has gone - in much the same way that Microsoft was when IBM gobbled up their competitors (Lotus for instance) in the PC software space.

It is quite an interesting article this, but misses a couple of key points. Microsoft's problem as a convicted monopolist is that a deal like this will take a long,long time to scrutinize - maybe a year or more. Moral in Microsoft's own web development teams, and their opposite numbers at Yahoo, will plummet and most of the talent will go elsewhere - probably to Google. Their is no meeting of minds in technology terms between the two companies - Yahoo is Free BSD, PHP and Java primarily - MS is unlikely to tolerate this so even when the deal goes through expect another year or more of porting code, re-writing apps and so on. And by that time Google will be even harder to catch.

Re:Don't be surprised if the deal falls through ..

[Deadfyre_Deadsoul]

Yahoo! could also do a "poison pill" - buy Redhat. There's no way that Microsoft would be allowed to buy Yahoo! under such circumstances. I wouldnt see that as a poison pill, more like red pill or blue pill.

Re:Don't be surprised if the deal falls through ..

[kill-1]

Friday's rise was because of the premium. It was a 60% premium when they made the offer, which is hefty.

On the ropes? Really?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I mean, if making over 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS a month in NET profit is being on the ropes, then put me down for the 10 count, Rocky!

All you wanna do is search!

[zIRtrON]

So when you fire up, msn.com yahoo.com and google.com in three tabs in that order, google.com loads the fastest still - I AM A HUMAN OPENING 3 TABS AND GOOGLE STILL OPENS FASTER!!!!!!!

All i wanna do is search!

That's what 44billion dollar tit-for-tat trading is doing - nothing...

Re:I think MS really SHOULD improve that xbox 360

[debrain]

I was given an Xbox 360. It's a wonderful idea, and impossibly poorly implemented. In fact, I'm astonished at how bad it is. Consumer-grade product this is not.

From the shoddy controller (constantly scrolls upwards --- you have to hold the stick "down" to centre it), to the constant lock-ups, to the bugs, impossibly confusing and no-less-than ludicrious interface, jet-engine-like white-noise from the ineffective cooling fans, and incompatibility with standards, I'm bewildered that it ever got made. And apparently this is an improvement over the Xbox.

All that being said, the functionality it purports to provide is stellar in breadth. It's a dedicated video gaming console, a DVD video player, and a method for watching shared videos and music over a network (mind you, you have to purchase 3rd party software, e.g. Connect360, if you're not a Microsoft PC user).

In the Xbox 360, we see Microsoft's strength: They pull a bunch of ideas together and create a feature-overloaded product.

We also see their weaknesses: Deer-in-headlights HORRIFIC implementation; Fundamentally flawed hardware design; A human-computer interface straight from the short-bus; Vendor lock-in and poor standards support (nigh anti-standards).

In all, if I were to spend my own money, I'd get a Nintendo Wii and an Apple TV, and I'd love to forget about being constantly confronted by the weaknesses typical of an Microsoft product.

All this being said, I expect that someone at MS is paying attention- this isn't the free income of a monopoly like their OS and Office software. They're competing, which a great deal of evidence suggests is an entirely new idea to them (is anyone else reminded of a spoiled rich kid who has never been introduced to consequence?), but with time and pressure I'm sure they'll improve. I expect that someday, there may be an Xbox worth spending money on. In my opinion, the Xbox 360 is not it. So I don't believe the Xbox 360 is the direction and future of Microsoft. However, I don't think this is the last word- I think we won't see the real direction and future of Microsoft until they've had their monopolies ripped from their greedy little paws. ;o)

Clearly Ballmer likes Yahoo because .....

[failedlogic]

Ballmer like Yahoo because, unlike the current MSN site, Yahoo's directory service, it helps him as a busy CEOs make easier. An easy to read lists such as the following example, helps answer the question to What Chair do you Want to Throw Today?

But who are the real customers?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The share holders.

The users of MS products are like a herd of cows standing around to be milked. Micrososfts considers these its assests, not its customers.

The only places MS actually conducts meaningful profitable business are in Office and Windows. All the other attempts to diversify (mobile, services, gaming, music) have failed and such the company. In these areas they are far from competing.

MS buys Yahoo so Live can compete with Google?

[David Rolfe]

Live can never be successful as a competitor in search because verbing its product produces absolute nonsense. This is a case where Microsoft's rather unimaginative 'penchant' for naming its products after common words really bites them in the ass. Their products become generics from the start (vs. xeroxing, kleenex, bandaids, googling, etc.) "My GUI has windows. My office software works, but rarely excels."

Evidence that Live search will never dominate in mindshare:
"I Lived for my old highschool classmates." Huh?
"Just Live my resume." Ok.
"You guys just sit around in your mom's basement Living for pr0n." And?

If people are using Live to google shit, they've lost.

(Captcha is 'hopeless'.)

Re:MS buys Yahoo so Live can compete with Google?

[Skreems]

True. Maybe they'll realize it and do something about it. Either way, at least the layout is a lot cleaner than MSN.

Re:MS buys Yahoo so Live can compete with Google?

[fermion]

MS has few long range plans other than extracting a cut from every computer sold. We saw this at the very beginning with Mr. Gates temper tantrum over not receiving payment for his primitive attempt to write a programming language.

IMHO, MS online services were very successful. They provided a research and development bed for MS server software products. If the MS online division is not making money, it is likely because the division is not covering all perceived costs, not because it does not cover all real costs. I do not think that competition with anyone was initially a concern, as it was assumed that customers would just use ISS and related products as they moved online, and MS would continue to get the cut.

The problem developed when, just like Mr. Gates first product, and later with the lack of vision on the Internet, MS realized that the quality of the products were not sufficient to compete in a changing market and heavy handed vendor lock in was required if MS was to continue to get it's cut. MS IE was developed specifically to make the Internet a MS only product. Yahoo is being bought to make online services an MS only product. If MS can continue to make it painful to use non MS sanctioned products, like google, for a few more years, then MS will likely be able to move to online services. What is happening with Google is not that MS is not competing in ad revenue, but MS can no longer maintain a monopoly in the desktop market. So it is using some of it's reserve cash to make a bet that it can create the same monopoly in the online market as it did in the desktop.

Re:MS buys Yahoo so Live can compete with Google?

[David Rolfe]

Right on. I don't disagree that MS can be come a "competitor" (as they know the term) in the online and software services space. But, imho, it's a forgone conclusion that they can't compete in (at the very least) search (and maybe webmail -- at least for now). People are not going to live for recipes online (because that would sound so obviously stupid, even worse than the verbs blog or google!). And they sure aren't going to say, "I (Live-search | msn | microsoft-live) for recipes online," unless there is some seismic shift away from, "googling for recipes." If people are using your competitor's name to describe the experience or activity of your service you are losing. Badly. "I use Microsoft Live Search to google!" is like a nail in the coffin.

All of Google's other 'betas', picasa, desktop search, 'google office' etc. those are all vulnerable to MS' modus operandi. They can leverage their existing lock-ins to keep people away from those services. Google doesn't have the traction there.

Re:MS buys Yahoo so Live can compete with Google?

[falconwolf]

All of Google's other 'betas', picasa, desktop search, 'google office' etc. those are all vulnerable to MS' modus operandi. They can leverage their existing lock-ins to keep people away from those services. Google doesn't have the traction there.

I don't see how MS could prevent people from using these tools Google offers. They are free, can be used online, and at least some, can be used offline as well.

Falcon

MS profits are all FOREIGN EXCHANGE RESULTS!!!!

[cheekyboy]

Dude, the US dollar has slowed markedly in the past 6months 12 months and 4 years. Duh... if the US$ falls 60%, then obviously their Euro/UK profits can be static and thus translate in US$ terms
into a large rise. Ofcourse US corporations increase their foreign retail prices as this happens to even more maximise the falling sales/profits inside USA.

Same goes for MOST US corporations. This is how the FED is helping the stock market rally or keep static compared to 2001 rates. Shrink the dollar, ramp up external currency profits.
Meanwhile everyone outside usa who has foolishly bought tbills/bonds etc.. have seen not only a 10-20% fall in value, but their returns in interest be pathetic compared to local cash rates. But the
banks/govt still buy them so as to keep their currencies not appreciating too much against the dollar. So , they are willing to loose $10-$100billion in investments to prevent a potential
export/GDP loss of $500billion or more. Its pure and simple market manipulation. Just like Gordan Brown was stupid to sell billions in gold at $240po from the BoE, when he could have waited
and sold now at slower intervals and made 4x more profits. His and his bankers were only interested in keeping the price of gold DOWN, so as to make sure the US$ doesnt fall too fast downwards, but
more orderly so most people don't notice.

MS has an inferiority complex of a teenager.

[cheekyboy]

They simply cannot stand to just let it be and not be in some market somewhere, they have to do everything and everywhere. See IBM doesnt do this, you dont
see IBM mice or IBM mp3 players, IBM consoles. They are smarter, they are the suppliers of many technologies, and thus will make money no matter who wins or looses.

Cannot MS just give and not compete in everything that it gets a fancy off, they just cannot stand any one else being successful in IT. They are the MAFIA of IT.

Re:Eh? _ Madness to their methods (tongue-in-cheek

[renbear]

Where are my mod points when I need them? Well-written, sir. (And apparently, based on your nick, from my own backyard.)

An interesting speculation. Wishful thinking aside, there does seem to be a certain degree of oddly panicky behaviour coming out of Redmond lately. Well, perhaps "panicky" is too strong a word, but something's Just Not Right. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next year or two, especially if the gPhone (or whatever) has as much of an effect on things as I suspect it will... not to mention the deep, deep threat to MS's business model that Google Apps represents (over the long-term).

$1.6 billion a quarter spend!

[mattpalmer1086]

Wow - so Microsoft's office division *spend* $1.6 billion each quarter on Office? $6 billion a year? Just, wow.

Dvorak got it right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Long suffering PC Magazine Columnist John Dvorak complains that Microsoft should focus on its OS and PC Apps business . Microsoft doesn't get it. The industry used to be tiny when Microsoft entered it and could only support one major player. Now the industry is gigantic and growing a fantastic rates. Microsoft is not on the ropes at all, only in the sense that they do not completely dominate the tech sphere. Microsoft should claim victory and focus on its core business, to the glee of its customers. After all in a sense, it is Microsoft's customers who are funding all these wild, unfocused incursions. To Microsoft, you won your survival back when Windows 3x became successful. The world of computing is now huge, allow others to enjoy success as well. You do not have to be dominant - just be very good at what you do.

Re:Google will be pleased - Me too

[walterbyrd]

IMO: this deal will weaken both msft and yhoo. People will use yhoo even less. Msft will have spent way too much.

Yahoo Live?

[calebt3]

Any chance of us seeing a Yahoo Live Services in the near future?
Honestly, I believe that Google is such a popular search engine because they have kept their homepage a simple search (unless you use iGoogle). No distracting headlines, mail notifications, no joke/comic strip of the day, etc. Just a Logo, a text box, and two buttons (and some unobtrusive text links)

Office 2007

[falconwolf]

Until 2007, I was absolutely 100% for OO.o. Since using 2007, though, they've definitely passed OO.o back up. It's much faster (that was the main reason I went to OO.o) and Word has an absolutely perfect interface. They've finally done something right in the 2007 release.

You still have to pay a lot for Office 2007, unless you get the education version. I'm using native Mac port of OO.o NeoOffice. And though I haven't created a 2007 .docx document, though there is an option to save in that format, with it I have downloaded and read Office 2007 documents with NeoOffice without a problem.

Falcon

Re:Office 2007

[dmsuperman]

My school (DeVry) decided to throw in the Cost of Vista, XP, and Office into my tuition, so I figured I may as well use it if I'm paying for it.

Re:Office 2007

[falconwolf]

My school (DeVry) decided to throw in the Cost of Vista, XP, and Office into my tuition, so I figured I may as well use it if I'm paying for it.

If you have to pay anyway go ahead and use them. More and more colleges are requiring laptops and apps to use on them. I don't mind that so much bt what I f mind is when they specific specific OSes and apps. What they should do instead is tell the students what they will need in general then allow the students to pick apps that can handle it. Only when there's a specific requirement should a specific app be required. Several years ago I ran into this, at the college I was attending for my major in computer science they required required a class in MS Frontpage. However in the art department for web design they required Dreamweaver. I had used Frontpage before and didn't like it so I was able to get permission to take the Dreamweaver class in place of the Frontpage class. Also the computer classes used Windows and the art classes used Macs.

Falcon

Re:Office 2007

[dmsuperman]

The main reason is that they have the whole school going on Blackboard, and most assignments are submitted online. They want a universal format, and it's just easier to tell everyone to use the same thing. Yes, OO.o saves in Word format, but it doesn't always look the same and it defaults to .odt, which I'm sure would be a pain in the ass because most people wouldn't think to change the type every time.

Re:Office 2007

[falconwolf]

The main reason is that they have the whole school going on Blackboard, and most assignments are submitted online.

Yea for some of my classes we had to submit all our work online. However colleges can still use an open format, simply there's no reason to require .docx or any other proprietary document format.

Yes, OO.o saves in Word format, but it doesn't always look the same and it defaults to .odt, which I'm sure would be a pain in the ass because most people wouldn't think to change the type every time.

By using OO.org colleges can save money, even colleges pay for Office. So what if there's costs to switch to OO.org, there's also costs to switch to the new version of Office. They both require users to be trained to use them. And colleges should be training, when they aren't educating students, to be able to work with the rest of the world. And there are many countries who's population can afford MS products. In countries like China and India MS has to practically give Windows and Office away free, well not really free but at tremendously reduced costs. I'm not sure about the "R", Russia, in "BRIC", but in Brazil, India, and China open source is growing. MS has to use bribery to get public officials to use Windows or Office. And despite what complaints people in the US make they have to be able to work in the international arena.

Falcon

switching windows and apps

[falconwolf]

But the applications are what keep people on Windows. Get people to move to a cross-platform software package, say Open Office, GnuCash, KDE desktop, FireFox browser, vlc and flash for video, and a couple of nice games, then when people have the option of getting Windows or Linux the next time around, Microsoft will lose a customer or have to drop their price to stay in the game.

As much as I'd like this to be true many people will stay with what they are comfortable with. Even if the alternative is free.

Falcon

The American Way?

[falconwolf]

A company is expected to be profit-oriented, and 'by any means necessary' is the American Way.

Actually "by any means" isn't part of the American way. A good introduction to the American Way is Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America". Thomas Jefferson warned about a corporate aristocracy saying "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of their country."

Yahoo's in trouble. On the Mac they just don't cut it.

I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro and I have no problem with displaying Yahoo! in Firefox, I hadn't tried Safari though. I'm a member of some Yahoo! Groups and have my homepage set as the Groups homepage.

if you see an announcement that Google is splitting 2 or 3 for 1, call your broker with market orders to sell

That's a bad move. Sometimes when a stock splits the value actually goes up, if a stock is listed for $100 and there's a 2 for 1 split afterwards each stock may be worth $60. I'd be more worried if a corporation said it were going to do a reverse split, combining 2 or more stocks into one.

Falcon

Yahoo Email

[morsed2]

If M$ buys Yahoo I will cancel my paid 'Yahoo Mail' account with them. Nuf said

Re:Yahoo Email

[falconwolf]

If M$ buys Yahoo I will cancel my paid 'Yahoo Mail' account with them. Nuf said

I'll cancel my free Yahoo! Mail. Oops, I've never seen how to cancel it. However I am a member of some Yahoo! Groups, my homepage is set as Yahoo! Groups' homepage. In one of my groups I posted about the MS offer and said if MS did buy Yahoo! I'd cancel my membership in every group. Then I'd have to find another webmail provider.

Falcon

buying innovation or creating inhouse?

[falconwolf]

And this is definitely consistent with Microsoft's tendency to buy their success, rather than derive it from innovation and products that are actually new.

That was something that got me about TFA, it says "In the past, when Microsoft moved beyond its stronghold in desktop computer software -- and into areas like video games and data-center software -- it has done so mainly with in-house investment, patience and tenacity." About the only thing it sales MS bought was an online ad agency.

Falcon

Yahoo! email and Groups

[falconwolf]

Yahoo for years has been selling email addresses and or sending out emails on clients behalf. Approximately 90 percent of the email I receive on YAHOO is SPAM. YAHOO spam filter don't work as I have been getting email from the same company for over 2 years

I wonder why you get as much spam as you do, less than 10% of the spam I get with Yahoo! email gets past the bulk filter. I might get one or two spam messages that makes it past the filter a day.

I will leave YAHOO if this goes through.

Though not a founder of any, I am a member of several Yahoo! Groups, in one I posted a TFA about the MS offer. I asked what others thought about it saying if MS did buy Yahoo! I'd resign from all of my groups.

Falcon

Re:Yahoo! email and Groups

[ps2os2]

I rarely get any real email at YAHOO and even if I report it as spam the same companies just keep on with the spam. I somehow think they pay YAHOO extra to get past the SPAM filters. It will even be worse with MS in charge. I think this is why YAHOO makes so much money (not compared to MS) but still a nice chunk. I am also guessing that MS MESSENGER will also be the only way to communicate. If they do that will kill all the MAC users as well.

Re:Yahoo! email and Groups

[falconwolf]

I rarely get any real email at YAHOO and even if I report it as spam the same companies just keep on with the spam.

I don't get much email with Yahoo! either but I use it as a dummy address.

I am also guessing that MS MESSENGER will also be the only way to communicate. If they do that will kill all the MAC users as well.

On my Windows PCs I had Yahoo Messenger I used but since I've been using my Mac I haven't downloaded or installed the Mac port. In my groups I came across number of members who used Macs as well and if Yahoo! starts using IM that doesn't have a Mac port I think a lot of people will be shut out. Which if MS wants to buy Yahoo! because of the eyeballs the number of those eyeballs will drop a lot.

Falcon

Not about Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about Google. It's at least partly about the increasingly disproportionate cost of software in relation to hardware. When Windows costs as much as the hardware required to run it then Microsoft has a serious problem, and this is already happening in developing markets with the introduction of low cost PCs such as the Classmate. They need a new revenue model, packaged software is going to continue to have increasingly thin margins in many markets and in particular the vast emerging ones.

MS buying Yahoo!

[falconwolf]

should Google do anything in response to this announcement?

No!

Falcon

Microsoft just doesn't "get it."

[nilbog]

Just another example of how Microsoft doesn't "get it." They do great on things until real competition shows up - then they copy the competition and think it's good enough. Look at the Zune - they didn't do anything new or original with it (at least nothing big). Their search engine is the same - just a Google clone. They don't give people a reason to change.

Google won by bringing something new to the table. Exceptional search was only a part of it - but they did something else new on the net - they did it in a simple, clean way that focused on getting people the information they wanted.

Microsoft will never win by competing with Google. Microsoft will only win if they give Google something to compete with. Get it?

Silverlight

[falconwolf]

Silverlight might as well be. I for one don't trust Microsoft will keep up their cross-platform commitment in the slightest; As soon as it's beaten Flash to the ground, the Mac version will mysteriously disappear and the Linux version will be lacking any significant modules. And all other platforms are unable to play the content.

I guess as long as you're willing to admit that you're basing that on your own paranoia rather than the current state of reality then there's not much I can say to argue with it.

There are very good reasons to believe MS will in fact do this. MS has already threatened Apple to discontinue Mac software.

Falcon

DR DOS

[falconwolf]

They started doing this once IBM gave them an exclusive contract to provide MS-DOS for the original IBM PC. By the time Compaq and co. had their clones ready, MS-DOS was the only game in town. Later, when DR-DOS came around, it started making *serious* inroads.

You have things mixed up here, originally IBM went to DR DOS creator Digital Research to create DOS. But because of a disagreement between the two companies IBM eventually went to Microsoft.

Falcon

Precious quotation from Gates

[rcastro0]

I don't know about you, but this had me smiling:

Mr. Gates, Microsoft's largest shareholder, has said that Google is the company that most reminds him of Microsoft in terms of its broad ambitions and demanding corporate culture.

Re:Don't be surprised if the deal falls through ..

[jdickey]

Mined metaphors - what would /. be without them? He means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pill of course, Bunky... and Yahoo buying Red Hat wouldn't work if HRC or another Republican winds up in the White House come January.

who cares if Microsoft is not an innovator?

[falconwolf]

Except it's Microsoft who calls themselves an innovator. The Ayn Rand Institute even said during the MS trial that MS should be allowed to innovate. And MS had it's own Freedom to Innovate campaign.

Falcon

Re:who cares if Microsoft is not an innovator?

[Khuffie]

Uhh...all of those documents are 7 years old. Not to mention, all companies call themselves innovators; it's called marketing, otherwise known as pure and utter bullshit. Frankly, Apple is one of the biggest offenders with their BS.

Re:who cares if Microsoft is not an innovator?

[falconwolf]

But it was Microsoft who called themselves innovators.

Falcon

Re:Don't be surprised if the deal falls through ..

[mgv]

Even more interesting, from the same web site:

Apple Inc most recent quarter of cash reserves is 18.45 billion. Microsoft has 19 billion.

Surprisingly close.

MS servers

[falconwolf]

Not 10 years ago people were proclaiming the death knell for Microsoft because it missed the internet... then they bought "Internet Explorer" and... well you know how that turned out.

It turned out not that great for them, the part where they actually make money, the server market has played out miserably for them because of that mistake.

MS is second in webservers. According to Netcraft as of this month, January 2008, MS's market share for webservers is more than 35%. Port80 reports MS IIS Server is on 55% of the Fortune 1000's servers. Doing a search of webservers iis marketshare shows IIS is gaining market share and Apache is losing it.

Falcon

what good products has MS done?

[falconwolf]

Microsoft has been a decent company, deliver quite a few decent products

What are these good, "decent" products MS has released? The last, only maybe?, product I can think of half way decent product MS released was the Altair BASIC Bill Gates programmed.

And with "decent" I mean software that does what it's supposed to do and is stable and usable. Then again, using that definition I have to say Windows NT4.0 was decent for me.

Falcon

Re:what good products has MS done?

[Shados]

Win2k, WinXP SP2, SQL Server 2005, SSIS and SSAS with their related tools, VS2005 and VS2008 (especially 2008), .NET 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 (1.0 and 1.1 were trash). MSDN in general. Office 2007 (the price may not be right, but the product is good). Windows Powershell. Windows Server 2003. IIS 6 and 7.

These are just the known one that an average Slashdoter MAY have heard about. But there's also a LOT of stuff Microsoft makes that isn't everyday news that are excellent products, too, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Re:what good products has MS done?

[falconwolf]

Win2k, WinXP SP2, SQL Server 2005, SSIS and SSAS with their related tools, VS2005 and VS2008 (especially 2008), .NET 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 (1.0 and 1.1 were trash). MSDN in general. Office 2007 (the price may not be right, but the product is good). Windows Powershell. Windows Server 2003. IIS 6 and 7.

These are just the known one that an average Slashdoter MAY have heard about. But there's also a LOT of stuff Microsoft makes that isn't everyday news that are excellent products, too, but I'll leave it at that for now.

But none of these was innovative, they were just improved from previous versions. Except .net, which if I recall right was aimed at other technologies like Java and JSP, perl, php, or Ruby on Rail. Your XP SP2 gives it away, SP2 meaning Service Pack 2. MS had to release SP2 because XP was buggy. And Apple has had something like MSDN for years, the Apple Developer Connection. Linux has had it's versions for years as well. Maybe I'm wrong, but can you say what .net brought that wasn't already available in one form or another?

Falcon

Re:what good products has MS done?

[Shados]

A lot of it is copied, but Microsoft's flavor is often better, or has a different take at it. I don't have dates, but i'm fairly sure MSDN predated the others you mentionned, since it was there before Linux was even on the map, but I didn't check... it is, however, vastly more comprehensive than most people would realise.

Powershell is an object oriented shell (you don't pipe text output around, you pipe objects). .NET has its roots in Java, but the resemblance ends there. Visual Studio has no equals in its features. Other IDEs (which came much, much later) have been trying to clone it for most (if not all) of their lives. They did better than it in some instances, aren't close in others, but it did a large amount of it before Eclipse even -existed-. SQL Server Analysis Service's query language is now the de facto standard across OLAP systems (its used everywhere now), and its Microsoft that made it. Oh, and how many Outlook clones are there (I'm not even talking about outlook replacements because companies are stuck with the server.. I'm talking about projects to clone its functionalities over a different server...Outlook must be doing something right eh?). The whole AJAX fad... it was MS that made the first implementation of an http request object (which was made to fuel Outlook Web Access).

For the rest, it was just products that are very, very good takes, or great alternatives at existing ideas. SQL Server's dev tools are top notch and mostly unrivalled in the industry. I mentionned XP SP2 because no matter how you look at it (unless its with foggy glasses), it is an excellent OS.
You can't just look at things at face value. .NET is the best example of that. To someone who didn't try it much, it looks like a Java clone (And why are you even mentionning Ruby on Rails? Its roots existed, but it was not released until 2 years after .NET's official release), but aside the core language, the framework itself doesn't resemble it whatsoever (and no, comparing the basic data structures doesn't count...). Also, the web framework is quite different from the other languages (which is why recently they had to make an MVC implementation.. ASP.NET was -TOO- different for people moving from Java or Ruby to .NET)

Even that considered, it is rare for something to be truly innovative in the software world (thats why software patents are bogus), its almost always about taking something existing and making it better. Isn't that part of the OSS community's moto? That monocultures are bad? And that what makes Linux great is that you have 15 window managers and desktop environments, 18 boot loaders, 26 mail clients, and so on? That was my point. MS makes good products, and have interesting takes on existing ideas, on top of adding a few of their own.

MS needs a reality check and to be put in its place, I'll never argue that. The BEST thing that ever happened to MS was Apple actually making a real OS (as opposed to the old joke that was the original MacOS), and Linux puts heavy economic pressure on them. MS would have stagnated to oblivion without them. But with that said and done, I think the software world would be taking a net loss if MS went bankrupt.

Re:what good products has MS done?

[falconwolf]

For the rest, it was just products that are very, very good takes, or great alternatives at existing ideas.

Seeing as how innovative is being or producing something new that hasn't been seen before I can't see how any of these are innovative.

I mentionned XP SP2 because no matter how you look at it (unless its with foggy glasses), it is an excellent OS.

But as I said it wasn't something new, SP2 was bug fix for XP.

And why are you even mentionning Ruby on Rails? Its roots existed, but it was not released until 2 years after .NET's official release

Okay, thanks for correcting me, I didn't know .net came before Ruby, bad RAM, er memory. That, my memory, is something I have to struggle with daily.

it is rare for something to be truly innovative in the software world (thats why software patents are bogus)

Oh, I totally agree about software patents. I'm not sure about patents for hardware, whether it be for computers, cars, or TVs but I oppose software patents.

That monocultures are bad?

That's why when another/.er said in another thread about TFA he or she wanted to see Microsoft gone I said I didn't want to see MS gone but I wanted it to compeat in a free market, and not use bullying tactics. If there's one thing I hate it's monoculture, whether it is in agriculture, hardware, or in software.

The BEST thing that ever happened to MS was Apple actually making a real OS (as opposed to the old joke that was the original MacOS)

I don't know about Mac OS 8 or 9 but I started using Macs at about the same tyme I started using DOS. Even when Win 95 came out I still preferred the Mac but for some reason I bought PCs, one running 95 and the other one running NT4, which is the best Windows version I've owned or used. Since then until last August, almost 10 years later, I stayed with Windows. And I probably would have stayed with Windows except I was tired of Windows constantly crashing and having to reinstall it, having the replace hardware, AND not wanting to deal with Activation or WGA/WPA. That was the final straw that broke the camel's back for me.

Falcon

Yes, but AAPL makes money "the old-fashioned way"

[jdickey]

They earn it. You've always got alternatives to any product or service Apple does - usually not as good in one way or another, but that's a large part of the point. And it's not just the cash on hand - if you'd bought 1,000 shares of MSFT and 1,000 shares of AAPL three years ago, which would be worth hanging on to now? Markets aren't *always* rigged....

Microsoft is always 'on the ropes'

[webview]

That is the primary reason they are the leader (regardless if you think their technology sucks)...

Microsoft always acts like it is on the ropes. Something most big companies rarely do.

Take a look at their latest financials, pretty impressive (except for their Live services, but this should take care of that...)

Microsoft dwarfs Google now

[2nd Post!]

But how about in 10 years?

Imagine this: Cheap PCs cost $79, like a DVD player. Windows costs $5, Office $10. Even at these disposable prices, people still don't buy more than three PCs per household and each PC has a three year lifespan, which translates to roughly 3 PCs per 4 people. This severely caps Microsoft's income if Windows/PCs become commodities.

Google, on the other hand, now controls advertising. Billboards, print ads, online ads, in game ads, TV ads, YouTube ads, etc. Their annual profit now, instead of being just $3b, is now $30b a year.

Yahoos @ Google

[OneFix]

The funniest thing about this whole buyout is that if the purchase goes through and M$ gets rid of the FOSS developers on Yahoo's staff, I am pretty certain that most of those developers will go to Google.

Re:Eh? _ Madness to their methods (tongue-in-cheek

[az-saguaro]

Living in Phoenix.

Some of the comments in this thread refer to Ballmer and madness. In the end, that may be indeed what brings down MS - simple human arrogance, pride, prejudice, and hubris - to an obsessive degree. Poets and artists throughout the ages have dramatized or memorialized similar events. It does make you wonder what is going on - or not - in the chambers of the Board of Directors. Do they know what's going on? Do they get it? Do they care? None of this activity makes sense - Just Not Right, as you said. That's why my silly fanciful story makes as much sense as anything - it at least fits some of the facts as well as anything.

Teddy Roosevelt was Republican in name only.

[falconwolf]

Republican in name only? So a Banana Republic isn't Republican enough for you? Or didn't you know the derogatory name "Banana Republic" came from when Teddy Roosevelt used gunboat diplomacy to protect banana-peddling United Fruit Co's trade in bananas? Or that he wanted to build a canal linking the Atlantic to the Pacific in what is now called Panama but was then part of Colombia, so he did what he could to make Panama "independent"? Teddy Roosevelt did a lot a Republican would be proud of.

Falcon

XP but not for long

[Snaller]

"People aren't buying Windows Vista and Office 2007 because they have Windows XP and Office 2003 that does the job just fine, and possibly better, and it costs nothing to continue using it. "

But when MS discontinues support, they will most likely also closed down validation - so as people need to reinstall ... they can't ... and are forced to buy another system.

Ballmer throws a tantrum.

[Futurepower(R)]

The comment above is referring to this: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google". (Taken from a court document in a legal case started by Microsoft.)

No, I do understand.

[falconwolf]

Then why did you say: "Risk arbitrageurs buy shares of the target, and short shares of the acquiror"? If they are buying shares then they aren't selling short, unless of course they sell more than they buy.

Falcon

Re:No, I do understand.

[OakLEE]

The information below is present in the wikipedia article I linked to originally which you clearly did not read. If you are still unclear after reading this, then please feel free to take a course in finance or buy a book off Amazon.

Risk arbitrageurs buy shares of the target, and short shares of the acquiror

This sentence describes a two-step transaction to looks something like this:
(1) Buy shares of the target company.
(2) Short shares of the acquiring company.

Thus, at the end of this transaction, the arbitrageur's position is now this,
(1) Owners in stock (i.e., Long) of the target.
(2) Short in stock (i.e., Short) of the acquiror.

Remember, until the merger or buyout is finalized, the target and acqurior are two separate companies with two separately trading stocks. Thus, it is possible to be long of one of the stocks and short of the other.

Risk arbitrageurs do not buy and short the exact same stock. I honestly do not know how you could have construed the sentence to mean such.

Re:No, I do understand.

[falconwolf]

This sentence describes a two-step transaction to looks something like this:
(1) Buy shares of the target company.
(2) Short shares of the acquiring company.

Okay, so the article you linked to was wrong then because you're not short short selling if you own the stock. Short selling is specifically about selling what you don't own.

Falcon

Re:No, I do understand.

[OakLEE]

No the article was correct. From the article:

In a stock for stock merger, the acquirer proposes to buy the target by exchanging its own stock for the stock of the target. An arbitrageur may then short sell the acquirer and buy the stock of the target. This process is called "setting a spread". After the merger is completed, the target's stock will be converted into stock of the acquirer based on the exchange ratio determined by the merger agreement. The arbitrageur delivers the converted stock into his short position to complete the arbitrage.

(emphasis added)

Re:No, I do understand.

[falconwolf]

short sell the acquirer and buy the stock of the target

Somehow I miss understood this. So what they are doing is shorting MS and buying Yahoo! Then when, if, MS acquires Yahoo! those Yahoo! shares are converted to MS shares which they can then sell.

Is that what you meant?

Falcon

Re:No, I do understand.

[OakLEE]

Yup, if its an stock-for-stock deal, the conversion of the Yahoo stock into MS stock is used to cover their short position, and they make the spread between the two companies in profit.

[Fun] Prepare for the new Yahoo!

[kaizouman]

Ok, this doesn't bring anything to the discussion, but it was fun doing it.
Yahoo! users, be prepared for the new Yahoo! home page:
http://www.kaizou.org/kaizou/60

FUnd managers ....

[jotaeleemeese]

... are not impressed.

MS share value keeps sliding.

If they are doing so great....

[jotaeleemeese]

... why:

- Has their share price fallen 40% since 2000 and remained pretty flat? (compare with exponential raise of Google's).
- Do they need to spend in an also ran, depleting badly their dwindling cash reserves?

People actually evaluating the success of the company where it matters (buying shares for their investment funds) ahve very mixed feelings about the company, which is reflected in the share price.

All the quotes you provide, although good news for the monopolist, are not placating all fund managers out there.

Pocket change?

[jotaeleemeese]

In which planet?

People that matter (investors, fund managers) have ran away from MS as an investment because it is clearly a troubled company.

The share price drop of 40% since Ballmer took over says all what we need to know about how people that matter feel about MS losing "pocket change".

MS could be a great company.

[jotaeleemeese]

But they are control freaks and see their costumers as entities to be milked, not served.

Nope.

[jotaeleemeese]

The shareholders are the owners of the company, the company works for them by providing goods and/or services to paying costumers. Shareholders risk their money in the expectation that the company will provide such a good service that they will get a better return on their investment than if they would leave the money in a bank account.

Without servicing costumers the shareholders have nothing but a piece of paper with little value (look at SCO for example).

How can you possibly claim with a straight face that the real costumers are the shareholders? It is truw that a company has to please both groups of people, but confusing one with the other is basic ignorance. Please never go into business....

If losing 40% of your value....

[jotaeleemeese]

... in 6 years, is not being in the ropes, then well, I fail to see which other accurate allegory we could use.

Typical short termism.

[jotaeleemeese]

One quarter is great and everybody goes around praising the people involved.

No matter if the same sods have lost 40% of the value of the company and completely depleted the once famous cash reserves at the same time. Oh wait, but that was during the last six years. If the do well one quarter everything is hunky dory.

You should not go fucking retarding anybody around here, you may be hoist by your own petard.

He didn't claim they weren't

[jotaeleemeese]

Read the post again. You may be surprised....

Yes, really.

[jotaeleemeese]

Because they have lost 40% of their share value since the dot com implosion.

That means that people paying attention to them do not see the company as a worthwhile investment anymore. These are the people beting their money and their client's money on this....