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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."
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.
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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.
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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...
For 800 million dollars I'd be willing to tell people pretty much anything about how great MSFT is.