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."

Comments

Re:Given Yahoo's assistance in Totalitarian China.

[Brian Gordon]

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.

McCue has no direct connections to Yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

Re:Biased

[DarkOx]

While I think you're point is generally correct SQL Server has little to do with Oracle. SQL Server is instread the poster child for why you never partner with M$ on a development project. M$ licensed Sybase for the core of SQL Server and the two oranization agreed to continue to share code. Now M$ went and spent all their engergy doing things very tightly coupled to Windows and therfore not useful to the cross platform Sybase product.

They then marketed SQL Server more agressively and cheaper, sucking up all the oxygen as per usual. This has turned Sybase into pretty much a legacy vendor like Novell without Suse. Really its kinda similar to Windows and OS/2.