Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Takeover Offer
mksmac writes "According to the KOMO TV Website, Microsoft has withdrawn its bid for Yahoo after presenting them with an increased offer that was subsequently declined by Yahoo. Frankly, this seems like a smarter decision on Microsoft's part, but I'd like to hear how other people feel about the deal. Should Microsoft have walked away, pressured Yahoo via a hostile takeover or sweetened the pot until Yahoo gave in?" For those who prefer it, the NYT also has coverage, and the story is also at news.com, among many others. I like the Beeb's version as well. And for the Microsoft-centric explanation of why the courtship is over, see Steve Balmer's letter to Jerry Yang.
This doesn't seem to have been a particularly well-handled, or deeply-sincere, attempt by Microsoft... so what were they really doing?
This is a sincere question; I've seen a lot of acquisitions (and even hostile takeovers) happen, and this seemed lacking in many ways. Maybe I've missed some of the machinations; maybe not.
Competitive Value of Yahoo! Demolished!
Ballmer creates AOL Redux.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Well, as an employee, I saw it as a win-win, assuming I could find another job. Either Microsoft would turn over a new leaf and actually make the combo work well. Or it would be the death of Microsoft.
And, unlike a lot of the folks there, I'm fairly confident that I'd be able to find a new job the second it became official.
It's one of those dangerous ideas that you really need to be a nerd and know microsofties, googlers, and yahoos in order to understand exactly how stupid of an idea it really is.
This doesn't seem to have been a particularly well-handled, or deeply-sincere, attempt by Microsoft... so what were they really doing?
I don't know, but am I the only thinking Microsoft lost credibility in the process? Am I just not understanding what this was all about?I'm happy because it means more competition, but I admit I'm also somewhat confused as you are about what they are really doing...
Maybe it really is about some high-level finance strategy that only people in the know can grasp?
Animoog.org
Yahoo's market cap takes a hit, shareholders initiate lawsuits against the Yahoo board. Microsoft may be able to swoop in next quarter and accomplish this via hostile takeover for significantly less. Surprised Microsoft didn't do this sooner
Instead, you should invest that money in your operating system, the APIs for your OS, the tools to make it easy to create applications for your OS. Make a serious real time OS. Unify your OSs. Architect them so that you can crank them out faster and safer. Make your driver model easy to understand and code for. DirectX seems to do good for you, but you had better keep up on it. The same is true of C#. Give these Java folks some stiff competition in language, libraries, and tools. Make the speed of your CLR rock. Make it vectorize, use the SIMD, automatically use multiple cores, etc.
This is kinda a silly mindset as you seem to think the limiting factor in all of the above is money. I highly doubt on any project within Microsoft, the limiting factor is ever budgetary. Throwing more money at something that is already sufficently funded has *ZERO* positive results and infact can cause a negative.
Frankly that is part of why MS was making such boneheaded deals... they have too much money and too much of a lock on their own markets. They need to expand into new areas, or die. This is why they are willing to lose 10 billion dollars on the Xbox and are willing to pay 32 billion for a washed out internet company. Well that, and Balmer is a fucking idiot.
The time when Microsoft's primary concern was making money is long since past. These days they want control. Lots of it. What they worry about is not a few pesky billion dollars, what they worry about is alternatives to their operating system destroying their ALL their profits. They are worried because Google supports Firefox, Google supports Linux. Google supports ODF, Google competes with Microsoft's e-mail services. What is worse, is that it isn't just google. It is Sun, IBM, Redhat, ASUS , Dell , Intel, AMD
Therefore Microsoft will fight Google, they will fight Sun, they will fight IBM. They have to cooperate with Intel and AMD , but deep down they are sort of fighting them too. If they could run yahoo at a loss for 20 years merely to prevent google from taking over the web, they would do so, because they know Google has the potential to fuck up their office monopoly. They don't know how to fight Google tho, and thus they try every desperate attempt they can think of.
Shareholders don't care. Shareholders cash out. Again, watch stock prices on Monday. MSFT will be up YHOO will be down, YHOO is overvalued as-is, and MSFT was offering a premium at that.
Zimbra has effectively painted itself into a corner when it comes to value in terms of cost/benefit. They helped themselves to FOSS underpinnings in order to develop their product quickly, and because of this they are obligated to offer a feature-crippled free version. Because of their well-funded PR department they were able to spin this as "see, we're an open source company" in order to gain some street cred, but anyone who has taken a serious look at Zimbra knows that if you want it to be useful to anything more than the most simplistic of installations, you have to buy the "Network Edition."
This effectively locks them out of the marketplace for true open source solutions such as Citadel and Kolab and eGroupware because they're not true end-to-end FOSS. At the same time, they can't raise their prices high enough to make real money with the product, because customers would just as soon go with Exchange.
Disclaimer: I'm a Citadel developer, and a proponent of end-to-end FOSS solutions rather than weird commercial hybrids such as Zimbra (or Scalix, for that matter). But I think there's a lot of weight to what I'm saying here.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Actually, I've been part of two Ziwbra installs at companies now and both were due to constant problews with Exchange. After switching to Zimbra, all users (mac, Linux and Windows) were able to interoperate smoothly and since the server was on Linux, we had no downtime. The stability in Zimbra and cross platform capabilities puts the original product to shame.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Why would Microsoft be down for refusing to overpay for Yahoo? The anti-Microsoft and financial ignorance at Slashdot is staggering.
I see why you're for McCain, as you believe that all stockholders practice the bad habits which have led to the current economic conditions (cashing-out). Truth is, Yahoo is incredibly undervalued as demonstrated by the value of it's customer information, software solutions, etc. In addition, Yahoo rolled out new products after the initial bid, showing a growing company with a dynamic development, not a company needing Microsoft. Investors worth billions, such as Buffet, do not "cash out", they invest long-term. And as a long term investor, I saw the deal for what it was, a bad idea. A merged company would have bled staff, and customers would have fled, diminishing it's core value.
Microsoft's attempt to takeover Yahoo was a demonstration of MSFT's inability to even grasp the new paradigm of the internet, even today. MSFT has all of the tools they need to win in the market, but cannot wrap their heads around such concepts as "openness" and "sharing". They can no longer take their ball and go home, and will continue to suffer.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Could you possibly make that praise any fainter? FreeBSD is still the preferred choice of many server admins for a lot of reasons, including the fact that the newly-released 7-STABLE series is ludicrously fast. For example, when researching PostgreSQL performance tuning, a fairly common recommendation is to run it on FreeBSD.
It's not exactly the limping dinosaur some people around here seem to imagine.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?