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Tellme Founder Tells Yahoo Not to Worry Over Microsoft Takeover
Tellme founder and previous Yahoo co-founder, Mike McCue hasn't spoken to past-partner Jerry Yang since the Microsoft takeover bid for Yahoo, but he wanted to let his friend know that being acquired by Microsoft isn't such a terrible proposition. "After being assured that Tellme would be able to retain its Silicon Valley office, identity and quirky culture, McCue negotiated an $800 million sale to Microsoft and agreed to stay on as general manager. It's a decision that he says he doesn't regret 10 months into the marriage. 'We are pretty much doing everything we were doing before - just a lot more of it,' said McCue, 40. Because of the vast differences in size, the Tellme deal obviously isn't an apples-to-apples comparison to Microsoft's proposed $40 billion acquisition of Yahoo, which contends it's worth even more money despite a two-year earnings slump."
They told us we could keep our independence but almost immediately a VP decided we should be assimilated.
...it'd be employees of Microsoft in that part of the world that need fear this takeover. Of course, when you let Wall Street rule the world, human rights gets thrown out of the window and into the next county.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I wouldn't exactly be complaining about it.
Getting paid $800 million i would gladly let Bill Gates rape my company anyday. Asking someone recently given that kind of money what they think is pretty useless.
HTTP/1.1 400
it's impossible to be a "previous co-founder" without a time machine. You're always the co-founder no matter if you're still with the company or not.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
So I take it you've never bought anything made in China? Or is it only evil if other people help totalitarian governments and if you don't have to pay more money for your toys?
Yahoo by Microsoft will give Google lots of headache. It won't be named MicroWho? It's going to be Yahoo by Microsoft..... YAHMic!
What does that have anything to do with it? And nobody give me some smart answer- I mean directly, that has nothing to do with what we think about Yahoo's decisions about China.
Tellme is so popular I had to Google them to find out WTF they do.
Either that or I live under a rock...
I will give up my Flickr account the moment MS takes over Yahoo. That'll teach them!
-- Cheers!
This is the first time in a long time that the borg icon for MS makes entirely too much sense...you will be assimilated, etc.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Oddly enough the original poster's comment had two sentences, the second of which was a general note about the effect of money. I simply wanted to point out that getting on a high horse doesn't have much effect when you're covered in shit yourself already. The US government and probably every single person on slashdot helps the Chinese government grow and maintaining it's power. We give it money, we give it economic growth, we give it technological progress and we all ignore it's continual humanitarian abuses. We argue that this is better in the long term ,we argue that we are actually helping the Chinese people and so on.
Nonetheless every large company is China has probably had one government order or another requesting information on it's workers, or on it's customers or wiretaps or whatever. The exact same thing is done in the US, the police sometimes request things from companies and companies give that information up. If your company does business in China it can either follow it's laws or not do business there, no one seems to mind the former as long as they can save some money (including likely every single slashdot poster when they buy computer parts).
I dunno about popular.
But I know of them, because part of their service line is to do Directory Assistance matches which gleefully tells you they are "powered by Tellme".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
> Tellme founder and previous Yahoo co-founder, Mike McCue hasn't spoken to past-partner Jerry Yang
This is wrong. McCue has no direct connections to Yahoo in his past. He founded Paper Software which was purchased by Netscape where he stayed on as a VP. He eventually started Tellme Networks with Angus Davis in 1999. Prior to Paper I believe he was at IBM.
I'm not saying that the guy is biased but let's just think about this for a second. Anyone who've agreed to be bought by Microsoft has already found Microsoft to be a good match. In other words, if Microsoft wasn't a good match, the deal would have never gone through and we wouldn't have this article. It's kind of like asking a bunch of BMW owners what they think of BMWs. Most of them would have positive things to say, especially the new owners (which is similar in this case). To get an accurate picture we need to ask those who turned down Microsoft why did they turn them down as well as those who accepted the offer.
To be fair, many of my coworkers are former Microsoft employees and most of them did have positive things to say about the work environment. Obviously, it wasn't the end all and be all of places since they did leave after all.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
While I think a good segment of Yahoo's workforce won't have to worry so much, an acquisition like this is not going to happen without dead weight being trimmed off.
Assuming the merger occurs Microsoft, regardless of its promises, will have to start integrating Yahoo into MSN or vice versa. It would make no sense to run two competing operations under one roof. Thus we can safely assume that either MSN or Yahoo's upper management are toast, unless Microsoft is completely idiotic and wants to integrate the two, which would create all sorts of loyalty and corporate culture conflicts.
After management, who gets fired next depends on what Microsoft is buying Yahoo for.
If you believe what Microsoft says, it is buying Yahoo for engineering talent, then most of the Yahoo's content departments become redundant and will be eliminated, while the engineers and IT people stay.
If you believe that Microsoft is buying Yahoo because MSN's content is shit poor, then the content people are safe. The engineers and IT people become redundant as Yahoo moves over to a Microsoft-based back end. (For those who think that's impossible, remember that Microsoft moved Hotmail from BSD to Windows 2k with relative efficiency.)
If you believe (as I do) that Microsoft is buying Yahoo for its account/user base, then every employee at Yahoo is conceivably expendable since the value in Yahoo would lie in one of its raw assets (users) and not in the organizational structure of the company itself. Buying solely for the user accounts, would obviate the need for Yahoo as an entity.
Regardless of how you view it though, Yahoo as a completely separate and intact operation under the Microsoft umbrella is impossible just because it competes on a lot of fronts with MSN, and unless Microsoft's plan involves completely dismantling its MSN unit, some consolidation of the two is going to have to occur.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Mike McCue is not a co-founder of Yahoo. Prior to starting Tellme in 1999, he founded a company called Paper Software, which was subsequently bought by Netscape, but he was never directly involved with Yahoo.
The article is admittedly ambiguous about this point--it introduces Jerry Yang as a co-founder of Yahoo, and in the process, it inadvertently implies that he co-founded it with McCue.
Locutis of Borg tells Riker that "it's not so bad in here!"
Maybe this means that the bid on Yahoo should have been $400 billion instead.
But they should also consider the fact that a company is strongly depending on it's employees, and this means that if enough employees disagrees they just leaves and the purchase will be an empty shell.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
For 800 million dollars I'd be willing to tell people pretty much anything about how great MSFT is.
Brain slug infected man tells non-brain slug infected man not to worry about brain slug infection.
You know, there are hundreds of hungry VPs in Redmond and they have buddies who they might not mind seeing in Tellme's general manager seat. They're a lot better connected than he is.
Moe: [slowly] It's not so bad, Homer. They...go in through your
nose and...they let you keep the piece of brain they cut out.
Look!
[holds up a jar with a piece of brain in it]
Ooh! Hello! Hello there! Who's that big man there? Who's
that?
Bart+Lisa: [droning] Join us, father.
Marge: [droning] It's bliiiissss...
Homer: Nooo!
- "Treehouse of Horror V"
I had never heard of this $800 million company, so I immediately visited their website http://www.tellme.com/.
Actually, that's a lie, after watching Flash load their site for about 30 seconds (on a 4 Meg broadband connection) I gave up.
Can someone please tell me what this Tellme thing is please.
You are right that they money counts, but the guy was probably rich anyway. He probably believes what he is saying. The thing he's not pointing out is that his was a friendly take over. That means that the board and management all the way down the line stay intact. Yahoo is a hostile takeover and that's going to be a nightmare. In this guys case, they clearly agreed with him and trust him. In the Yahoo case, they are automatically kicking out the top level and so will be changing the entire direction of the company. In Yahoo's case, they have to; as quickly as possible; put their own people in charge of everything. Just for the simple fact that the people at the bottom will realise that all their own projects and work are now threatened and will so many of them will hate Microsoft.
I think that; if this is the best example they can come up with then the entirety of Yahoo should now be preparing for total war on Microsoft. History says that you can't work with or even discuss with Microsoft. There are only two possibilities. Be submerged into Microsoft like this guy or alternatively fight them with all your energy. The middle road of doing your own thing whilst not giving in as taken by Lotus, Borland, Netscape etc. and now handset manufacturers like Ericsson and even to some extent Nokia leads to long term Extinction. The mistake Yahoo has made is that it should have invested more into Linux but at the same time try to make that investment untouchable by Microsoft. As many people as possible should be trying to get the Yahoo board to agree to relicence their work projects under the AGPLv3. Things which will not allow MS to close them down just in order to destroy them.
"They float all down here, Richie. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!"
I like your comparison, and would like to use it as a source of causation!
I really like my BMW. It turns 13 (and 160k) soon. We've only been together for about three short years -- far longer than a lot of tech companies ever last, but it's a very short time in BMW years. Since the acquisition, this car has taught me much, such as:
1. How to countersteer. I thought I'd already known how to countersteer from my years of driving a Firebird, which was loose like a two-dollar whore. I've since learned that all that an American car can teach is how to handle slight corrections at relatively low speeds, since they suffer from such comparatively lousy handling. By the time I get the rear end of the 325i to break loose, I find that the car is invariably either going sideways into oncoming traffic down a rain-slicked hill at 50MPH, or headed sideways toward a concrete wall at more than 80MPH. It is thus a far better teacher than the Firebird, and this makes me an even more attentive and alert student. (Though I swear that my beard grows another grey hair every time it decides that I've got something new to learn.)
2. Thou Shalt Not use Aftermarket Pads and Rotors, lest Thou shall Suffer Interminable Brake Squeal, and Lo, heads will Turn.
3. Driving and working on the BMW is a lot like operating a UNIX box in that the car, like UNIX, is perfect. If something isn't going right, it's obviously because I've done something wrong. It might seem to the lay person that the rear shock mounts, which were plainly designed to rip themselves apart, and the alarmingly-expensive-to-fix/astoundingly-expensive-to-prevent way in which the differential may exit vehicle (!) while ripping a huge hole in the sheet metal that it bolts to, but make no mistake. These seemingly faulty items do not detract from the pure and honest perfection in which it was created. And, much like ksh, more, yacc, and dd's stupidly unique command line syntax, these characteristics do defy any clear explanation as to why they exist. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, as they say, and I think it's just God's will that one become proficient at fixing the rear end of an E36 BMW, just as one should spend some months trapped in ksh (instead of bash) while using more (instead of less) in order to fully appreciate all the simple beauty that life offers every day.
Based on this, I'd like to conclude, based on my experience as a BMW owner, that a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo would entail the following:
1. Microsoft will learn from its younger acquisition how to start with a simple and universally popular resource, and then turn it busy and hideous, only to simplify it again, before finally letting just some of the bloat back in, just like yahoo.com. This plainly suggests that, with Yahoo's teachings, whatever follows Vista is sure to be an improvement. Unless they manage to turn themselves into a sausage creature first.
2. Clearly, this means that Yahoo will continue to run FreeBSD (however dead it may be) instead of some incarnation of Windows, lest the noise of grinding metal deafen all who bear witness.
3. Since BMWs are like UNIX, and UNIX is like FreeBSD, then all of these are perfect. However, if Microsoft is to Windows as Yahoo is to FreeBSD, then Windows must also be perfect. This part obviously should NOT be permitted to transpire; A perfect incarnation of Windows would create a time rift with a strong likelihood of sending us all back to the stone age. It's shameful that the EU seems to be rather impotent against Microsoft, because the US sure isn't going to do anything even AFTER Diebold gives the next election to McCain.
Which means, in conclusion, that we're fucked. In the event of a Microsoft-Yahoo buyout, please collect your cyanide tablet by the door on your way out. Thank you.
(Aren't you glad you used a car analogy on Slashdot?)
Kid-proof tablet..
Soooo????? TellUs!!!!! WTF do they do?
thx e
MSN also turned over evidence. It was not just Yahoo. The only SE that did not turn over direct evidence was Google (though they do censor, like the others, but they point out that censoring took place, unlike the other 2).
"Drink the cool aid. We'll all be fine."
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
(Thanks to a hotmail victim friend)
Safari 3 on OS X Leopard:
Hotmail: "This is hotmail light version, to get all hotmail features upgrade to Internet Explorer 6"
Yahoo: "Yahoo mail beta works with Safari 3 now!"
That is the difference between MS and Yahoo.
...it'd be employees of Microsoft in that part of the world that need fear this takeover. Of course, when you let Wall Street rule the world, human rights gets thrown out of the window and into the next county. Since when Microsoft is heroically fighting for human rights in China?Stop that illusion, no Fortune 500 company with billions of dollars plans will stand up against Chinese politics. Some do it publicly, some doesn't. The so called "good guys" bothers me more since they think I am stupid.
brief summery of the text:
"I, for one, welcome our new redmondian overlords. You should too"
Isn't this where import taxes are supposed to come into play?
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
The cash that they'll give you and your shareholders to acquire Yahoo will make the ass-ramming less painful, unless you use Yahoo or work in the trenches at Yahoo. Then it'll just be a regular painful M$ ass-ramming.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
After that, money is just power. If you only get $800m instead of $900m you'd feel screwed over. You gave Bill some of your power.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Microsoft gave the once-proud company wads of cash and pretty much clusterfucked their creativity. C'mon, let's work on ANOTHER version of Halo. Microsoft will rape Yahoo, pure and simple.
Tellme has never been involved in anything like that.
and only "lol" is all i can say.
if how a marriage is to be in future was to be understood from its first 10 months - man, i cant even find anything to say on that
Read radical news here
It's an 80K+ people company. Couple dozen folks leave - big deal. Makes it easier to move these jobs to Hyderabad.