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Why Microsoft Is Chasing Yahoo
latif writes "Microsoft has been chasing Yahoo for quite a while now. Most people think that it all started with Microsoft's acquisition bid for Yahoo, but this is not so. It is well-known that Microsoft and Yahoo have been negotiating since at least May of 2006, and may have been negotiating since 2003. I have done a thorough analysis utilizing information made public over the past five years and my analysis suggests that most people are completely wrong about what Microsoft wants from Yahoo."
They goofed wft a lot of internet things. Too little too late though.
Microsoft just wants to make their name really exciting. When they buy / merge with Yahoo! they can combine the names and all of a sudden "Microsoft" becomes, "Microsoft!" - the most exciting company ever! When that happens be on the look out for "Windows 7!"
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
From the linked article: The Microsoft bid never made sense from a business perspective either. Yahoo has always had stale search offerings, second rate search technology, and a mediocre unmotivated workforce. Yahoo derives its value primarily from the massive web-traffic the company controls, but the cost of controlling this web-traffic is likely to be prohibitive for Microsoft
Second rate, stale, mediocre, unmotivated: sounds like a perfect fit for the Microsoft empire.
ARE there software companies that people actually like?! Google used to be up there, but they keep poking at the "do no evil" mantra. Every other software company I can think of has a core group of users that like the product, but those same folks also seem pretty ambivalent about the company.
It seems that the hardware companies get the love because you can touch the shiny. Examples: Tivo, Apple, Harley Davidson, Crispy Creme...
Sheldon
Krispy Kremes have a soft filling though...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They have to show revenue growth but it is impossible. What do they have without their monopoly? A lot of third rate code that no one wants. Between Vista and Open Office, they are showing revenue problems. Buying Yahoo makes it look like they can extend their monopoly to the web but it's Hotamail all over again. They are proving that they can spend even more money to be an also ran. At best they can crush and rob Yahoo, but that won't do anything to Google or anyone else who wants to run services with free software. The harder M$ tries, the more obvious it is that their game is over.
I can't stand the use (utilization) of "utilize" instead of the simpler, more correct "use".
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Once again a business method patent has stymied the development of a market. A bad idea that was obvious to everyone but lawyers and the courts for its ability to damage competition.
The article writer couldn't make up his mind if he was penning (1) an opinion piece, (2) a history of the deal, or (3) just trying to beat 19th century french novelists on wordiness.
I skimmed it, but all I got is: they wanted to put Yahoo into play. Is that it? Anyone have the abstract?
"In July 2001, the US patent office granted Overture US patent number 6,269,361. Also known as the '361 patent, it covered the basic paid-search bid-for-placement advertising model"
.. By simple elimination it has to be Google "
... :)
"In July 2003 Yahoo acquired Overture in a mostly stock deal valued at $1.63 billion"
"The peculiar thing about Microsoft Yahoo negotiations is Microsoft's insistence on owning/co-owning Yahoo's paid-search assets "
"Microsoft believes that by being clever about the deal terms Microsoft can practically get Yahoo's big fish patent licensee to fully reimburse Microsoft for whatever Microsoft pays for Yahoo's paid search assets"
"So, who is Yahoo's big fish patent licensee
--
So basically Microsoft gets Google to finance the Yahoo takeover and then gets Google to pay MS revenue out of its (GOOG) own paid search business.. PURR of EVIL
davecb5620@gmail.com
Actually, it makes perfect sense.
I've been wondering why the Microsoft shills on this site have been the ones protesting the Yahoo/Google deal the most. Now it makes sense.
My blog
it seemed like the right thing to do at the time and I thought I was in love
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
We have never needed a good summary as much as this time!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Once you remove the 'hidden material terms' part of the argument, the rest of it mostly falls apart. And I would be very surprised if Google had left themselves potentially open to a charge of fraud of this magnitude.
Up to that point, it was an interesting read.
Apple is a software company. The MacBook or iPhone you get with your copy of OSX is just part of the packaging.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If the Pope claps one hand on a tree, which falls over in the woods and lands on some bear scat, does anyone then refer to Google Bombs as Yahoo Bombs?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Damn. If you blow your wad that easily, you're gonna needs some sort of numbing cream.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
They could become "MicroHooHoo"!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
You are transparent... I see many things... I see plans within plans.
While I am aware that implementation doesn't have any real bearing on the task at hand, it does affect the culture. Yahoo makes use of open source technologies (as does Google.) Microsoft only uses Microsoft technologies. When they bought Hotmail (and subsequently turned it into a dump) they replaced the BSD boxes with Windows at a ratio of 1 to 5, (5x many windows boxen) in order to support the load.
Now Microsoft wants to buy search. Given that "search" is basically a text box that returns URLs, and Microsoft already has that capability, one has to look at what is the difference between MS and Yahoo? Why is Yahoo more valuable than Microsoft in paid search? Really, I don't know. But I can guess. Yahoo doesn't care if you're using Microsoft technologies. This has two sides - 1) you get equal support in FF and IE, 2) developers don't have to use Microsoft technologies. The "not invented here" does not apply. It's about getting a job done.
Buying Yahoo won't fix the problem if Yahoo is forced to change to the MS way. Obviously it's not worked for them.
I think MS is just buying time if they think they can do what they've always done. Clearly, the decision to buy yahoo search is the brain child of a business man with no appreciation of why things the way they are. If MS is going to buy Yahoo, then they have to admit defeat and not see it as acquiring static property to be added to a portfolio. They have to buy Yahoo then learn why they failed, or better learn why they failed first.
MS is rife with "not invented here" egoism: IE (Netscape), .Net (Java), SilverLight(Flash), Windows (BSD/Linux), and now Search. I can understand why a company should drink their own cool-aid, but when people start dropping, its time to change the formula.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
It only makes sense because Microsoft is floating upon an ocean of patent bubbles. The '361 patent is unenforceable in the real world. But it lets Microsoft get in on the Google paid search game, without possibly setting off a patent Armageddon war meltdown.
Microsoft's main revenue source (very expensive questionable quality software) is under serious threat. Google main revenue source is not under serious competitive threat. Google would get that '361 patent invalidated in a heart beat if it was a serious threat to their business. Microsoft, however, will not undertake the same tactic to get in on the paid search game, because business method patents are practically synonymous with software function patents.
Yahoo has nothing. It's no surprise corporate raiders would not take the bait. Any hidden asset value play of the '361 patent is an SCO disaster in waiting. But Yahoo is still in the game, has a chance down the line to be competitive against both Microsoft and Google.
Such navigation is what Bill Gates considered "good business skills". But MSFT can't afford to pay for the '361 patent chip, and Yahoo can't afford to sell it. And the '361 patent chip is completely worthless in the real world, but billions in stock valuations are being swung around because of it. Maybe Microsoft is just counting on the outcome that Google wouldn't press the patent nuclear war button also (as Microsoft would at least attempt to retaliate against all of Google's on-line services).
In the meantime, innovation and competition is stagnated, and consumers are worse off paying for lower quality products with higher prices -- ACROSS THE BOARD.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Contradictory statements. If it's well-known that they've been negotiating since 2006, then (by definition) most people would know that.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
mod parent informative
The motto is "Don't be evil" not "Do no evil". There is a distinct difference between the two.
If Google is number one and Yahoo! and MS are contenders for the number two spot, then MS buying Yahoo! is just a way for MS to jump ahead in the standings. MS-Yahoo! might even contend for number one if MS combined the stats. Multi-billion dollar industry there.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Even with billions of dollars in the bank, 90% of the browsing population using IE, which forces people to MSN, MSN still has less than 1/2 the market of Yahoo, and not even twice the market share of AOL. This tends to indicate that MS has no clue how to direct users to content, but that they don't even know how to learn how to do such a thing. Basically, because MS cannot force MS Windows users to search with MSN, beyond what already exists in IE, and MS cannot undercut the prices of the product, as it did with XBox, MS is not succeeding in the search market. Those are it's two primary tools for success, and neither is suitable here.
The only option is go after Yahoo. There are two benefits to this, only one seems to be covered in the link. By far the most important is that the combined Yahoo/MS market share will be 35% This should help market ads. The downside risk is how many people will stop using Yahoo because of MS ownership, and the changes that the clearly incompetent MS staff(remember MSN only has 10%, that is for a reason) make to the service. This gives MS legitimacy in the marketplace.
The second, as implied by the link is that MS may be able to make trouble for google. This will result in what MS does best, funneling money from productive interests to fuel it's unproductive coffers, but will not likely affect Googles market share.
Here is why. Google is still innovating customer service. There are free apps on the web to do all sorts of stuff. They know their core business, bringing eyeballs to ads, and do what it takes to keep those eyeballs happy. Google is free to do whatever it takes. MS is not free to do whatever it takes. For instance, why is MS charging a subscription fee for MS Office. Why aren't they putting a Web version on MSN. Tell me how many people would create an MSN account and use it as their portal if they got to use even a limited version of MS word for free in the deal.
Why indeed. There are only two possible reasons. First, MS does not have the technology to do what Google is already doing. Second, the MS Office franchise, stale as it is, is still too valuable for MS to use to drive what is clear to become the future profit center for any large software concern. Again, MS looks back, everyone else looks forward. This is not bad, MS makes a lot of money on it, but it why MS can and does overpay for new tech(re: facebook), and why Yahoo is a deal that has to be done, even it eventually fails and means the end of Yahoo, and 80% market share for google.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I'm an attorney tangentially involved in preparing SEC documents for a major corporation. Based on my experience with how seriously companies take their disclosure obligations, I would be shocked if Google were actively engaged in hiding a "material" settlement with Yahoo.
For what it's worth, materiality is a term of art -- and certainly any royalty paid by Google to Yahoo to settle a patent claim would almost certainly be material, likely and quantifiable -- which would likely trigger Google's obligation to disclose the potential liability in its 10-K and 10-Q.
Is it possible that Google is playing fast and loose with its securities obligations, or that it has come up with some novel legal theory about why it wouldn't be required to report such a deal? Well, sure. People and companies do stupid things all the time. But is it likely....?
Wow.... that's a really serious allegation to lodge without any "smoking gun". Interesting article, but I have to think there's an element of conspiracy theorism in it that does not sound credible to me.
Should have signed that "Jerry Yang".
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
"I like Yahoo, it has a huge user base and a slick content delivery system .. most user friendly portal"
MS doesn't want a huge piece of paid-search but only wants Yahoo for it's online portal? I don't think so. Didn't AOL (who?) try and fail that walled garden approach. Play Chess here without having to download bloatware.
davecb5620@gmail.com
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1090
He painted his room pink.
Because Microsoft has an entitlement mentality when it comes to technology. They want it because they want it.
There's a lot of speculation here, but it's all just conjecture. There's definitely not any new facts in this article, and it is only "analysis" in the sense that it contains a much larger volume of speculation than most of the 1,000,897 other articles on the same subject. Obviously a new definition of the word, "analysis" of which I was not previously aware ...
I think MS's designs on Yahoo have to do not with search but with open technologies like YUI and popular sites like Flickr. With an acquisition of Yahoo, MS could kill YUI and various other open-source technologies, in a way that it has done before. (In the late 1990s they acquired Bay Area start-up DimensionX, who then made the Liquid Reality Java VRML toolkit. Liquid Reality was buried and the DimensionX developers were moved to MS's ActiveX division.)
Meanwhile, Flickr (the number 1 photo-sharing website by far) would fit into MS's standard-controlling strategy. Millions of users visit Flickr to share their content and see others' content. If all one's friends and photo-sharing communities are there, that's incentive to not jump ship to a rival site. If Flickr's AJAX/DHTML web site was replaced by a Silverlight application ("enhanced" with some Vista Aeroglass-style effects, of course), all these people would have to install Silverlight. Additionally, Microsoft could drive adoption of their Windows Media still-image standard as a replacement for JPEG, by recoding all the hosted images to WM format and serving it out only as such. All of a sudden, Silverlight is massively more popular, and WM is a major format for photographic still images.
It would be nice if we could mod things simply on a -1 or +1 basis, and then use tags to decribe why.
I think a '+1 Peer-Supported Blather' mod would be very funny.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Microsoft wants Yahoo! to empower Silverlight?
Silver at 18 USD an ounce would have been a better buy.
The only difference I see is between google cultists and people with brains.
Google rivals the damned Apple religion now.
I especially like how he says Yahoo's claim that MS isn't really interested can't be disingenuous, cause it could lead to trouble -- then accuses Google of the same sort of misbehavior. And doesn't address the apparent discrepancy. So yeah, it's interesting food for thought, but I don't think as a whole the article holds up under its own weight.
Micro$oft is attemting to buy Yahoo for one reason. Ever since Google has dominated the internet search engine market share, Microsoft has been dying to find a way to aquire or develope more of that market. Before Google became such a vast presence, there were many search engines dividing up the market share. Back then Microsoft wanted a larger presence too but it was tolerable that msn.com was barely in the top 10. Microsoft needs to hedge thier bets against the giant that Google has become. There was a time when microsoft had a chance to dominate the search market. That time is over. They were stomped on by google even though they forced a billion people to start thier web experience on msn.com. Someday Yahoo will be owned by Microsoft and it will not change a thing.
Microsoft has to do this because their business model does not allow for any other action. Usually what MS does is wait until a technology is proven to be wanted/needed. Then comes to market after the leader has established the want/need for it. Then MS undercuts the leader by giving it away free or much cheaper, while proping itself up with other money makers. I still remeber when I first starting working with MS products and training for them in the mid 90's. Their answer for MS DNS, DHCP, etc was "It's not the best, but it;s free". Then once it starts to gain market share, They change their tune. The price is then passed on to all users (all copies of Windows server 2003 have the cost of DHCP server in it) even though it is not used by all. *Smart Business Move. Sometimes it's not always about making more money, but stopping others from makeing money.
How are you going to give away search results cheaper? Even if MS came out with the best new search engine, most people would still use Google because they already do. Bring in Yahoo and you have the 2nd ranked search user base. *Smart Business Move. They can then build on this to try to improve and become the leader.
--
My parents went to Slashdot and all I got was this lousy sig.
The article is just a bunch of BS that sounds more like a conspiracy theory than anything.
I'll tell you why Microsoft wants Yahoo in four words: internet search market share.
It is a no-brainer. Google makes a majority of its revenue from ads displayed on its internet search. Why? Because they have 70% of the internet search market share.
Think about this from the marketing perspective. I want to post an online ad to get people to come to my stupid e-store. I can cover 70% of the internet search market if I go with Google, maybe 16% if I go with Yahoo, and maybe 8% or 9% if I go with MSN. Even if I combined both Yahoo and MSN together they wouldn't even reach half of the audience Google touches. By default I would try Google first and if the results (increase in traffic and ultimately sales) were acceptable I wouldn't even bother with Yahoo or MSN. But if you said I could hit 25% with MS/Yahoo combined and only pay once to MS/Yahoo now I might consider advertising there as well.
So again, the MS/Yahoo acquisition is all about internet search market share.
Yahoo's messenger and MSN are two of the larger messengers and if MS locks them in together and then tries to tie those users into their other services then it might be a benefit along with MS actually having a search engine someone uses.
I know it's not exactly what you were talking about, but when it comes to a software company that people actually like, Blizzard comes to mind. I can't recall hearing a complaint about them; it's always some sort of praise (well-deserved, in my mind).
Microsoft passed on buying Overture (and its patent on paid search) due to antitrust concerns. So Yahoo! bought them. Now Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo! (and squeeze Google using the patent?). What happened to the antitrust issue?
Yahoo! Is playing both sides against each other in an attempt to collect $trategic inve$tment capital from Google and cause their stock price to climb. But Google could just sit back and say, "See you in court with a copy of the Sherman Antitrust Act." to Microsoft.
Have gnu, will travel.
Apple has a pretty strong cadre of smug, die-hard, wild-eyed supporters ready to drink poisoned Kool-aide at Father Steve's request. Does that count?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Then you can take heart: "burglarize" did not replace "burgle"; rather, the opposite happened, with "burgle" being a "back-formation". In other words, when the word "burglar" (from Latin "burgare") came into common use, people thought that the "-ar" ending was equivalent to the "-er" ending in "teacher" (someone who "teaches") etc., and so they created the word "burgle" to mean "burglarize". Generally used by the Brits to demonstrate how superior their English skills are to their American counterparts, without realizing the etymological embarrassment they're inflicting on themselves.
Sort of like how "aluminum" is also called "aluminium" by people unfamiliar with the etymology, etc.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
It's horny.
And the only real competition was purchased by Yahoo. i.e. zimbra
MS cant make their own software, they just buy it form other people who can. Why dont they just buy google?
Def: Yahoo = A rude, noisy, or violent person.
YahooSoft:
If you are not a rude, noisy, or violent computer user then you are not using our software!
or
If you had a monopoly you'd be a yahoo too!
How about Serfsoft? software for the masses.
It never been "micro" software.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I actually use pageflakes over the google version, because it is far superior. If Yahoo is superior as well, then maybe google has quite a way to go before winning in the personal homepage battle.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
See, that is more along the lines of what I've been thinking also. I think that the search is a significant part of the deal, but not all of it by a long shot-more like icing on the cake.
Yahoo! has an interesting patent portfolio that may be a bigger target than just the search.
I also have to wonder if MS had anything to do with Carl Icahn stepping into the picture to 'stir the mud puddle' and help push Yahoo! towards MS.
It will be interesting to see how the dust settles on this one.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I won't speak for the rest of it, but there's a huge problem, IMHO, with these assertions:
1. Adobe could have an antitrust complaint against the purchase. - I just can't see what that would be. Anyone?
2. Buying Yahoo! does very much for Silverlight. How exactly? Silverlight is a threat to Flash by simply existing, because MS *already* has the great inertia of the incumbent monopolist. What has Webmail got to do with pushing Silverlight??
you had me at #!
Ballmer and his team of managers will never equal Gates. He needs it be known that a new boss is in charge, and will make his mark by throwing his... MSFT's weight around and maintain their dominance from pure business/corporate tactics, much like the matured GM, Ford, and GE, etc. (and look where they are).
Not to be overlooked is the more hard to get consumer statistics data that Yahoo keeps that others would love to analyze and gain from, much like the recent Viacom demand from Google. It's not just the search technology and user base they crave, but an incredible amount of strategic business data and insider know-how they lack.
Besides, what else does MSFT have to divert people's scrutiny yet stay in the news until they have the next Windows beta?
Not quite true. Yes, dialup load times were a problem, but they _also_ were a problem when clicking a gazillion of bad search results to see if it's the page you want. My time in reading through a gazillion bad results to see which one is the one I want (usually on page 20+) is also an order of magnitude slower than the load time of the search page.
So, yes, good search results were a big huge factor. Yes, you're right that only hardcore techies cared about the exact algorithms used. But everyone else still cared about getting more relevant results. They might not have even known what "algorithm" means, but they did care about whether a relevant result is anywhere on the first page, as opposed to the 100'th page.
Besides, there already were search engines which weren't that much slower on dialup. Hotbot was mostly text too, and very usable on dialup, for example. Trust me, I _have_ used it on dialup.
Plus, frankly, given the _massive_ difference in the quality of the results you'd get back then from various search engines, I find the notion outright laughable that load times were all that mattered. Some were still indexing tagged keywords, FFS, and were still gamed by sites tagged with all words in the dictionary. _That_ bad. So what you're trying to tell me there is just about on par with saying that you don't care whether you eat shit or salmon, whichever is served first wins.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If the contract were to be revoked, under certain conditions, it could be material. I'm obviously speculating, but if the patent bust, then the contract might be revoked under conditions favorable to google. However, if some other condition causes the contract to be revoked, it might be material to google but wouldn't show up on liabilities. I would think it would be classified as unforseen patent litigation which is usually covered in the general business risk disclosures. Right?
And in fariness, google's lawyers were pretty fast and loose in the early days. For example their "google" name derivations of copyrighted work.
It's an interesting article, but too complex. I think that MSFT want's to bust YAHOO and are relatively indifferent to owning Yahoo's assets. They just want to concentrate the industry.
I guess the best survival tactic without having to face ethical issues for some staffs at Microsoft is to keep a low profile in the company, if not quitting.
Microsoft wants Yahoo because they are a bunch of yahoos themselves
(yahoos as in the Gulliver travels meaning)
The call of the blood
Funny, I get exactly the opposite impression. If any business method deserves patenting, it would be paid-search. Sure the concept seems obvious is hindsight. But how many search engines went bust in the 90s? Altavista, Lycos, Infoma, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, and that's just off the top of my head. Some of those companies are still around, but they never made much money off search itself. It took quite awhile for Overture to hit on the right paid-search business model. It didn't really take off until Google perfected it after 2000.
Sounds like a non-obvious idea with great market value: exactly the type of idea patents are designed to protect. You can quibble over whether such things should be patentable (and I think they should), but once you accept that they currently are patentable, paid search is a perfect example of a good patent. The only reason the jury disallowed any of '361 patent claims was on procedural grounds: Overture filed after the 1-year deadline. But for that, the patent is perfectly legitimate.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
If the points given in the article are true, then it brings up the question of why Yahoo would not create a "poison pill" to prevent a hostile takeover. For example, a license for the 361 patent could be drawn up with IBM such that if a Microsoft take over were to occur, the ownership of the 361 patent would transfer to IBM. IBM has a long history in the search industry and have quite a number of patents of their own in this regard so it would be a natural fit to IBM's patent portfolio.
Poison pills are regularly put in place by large (and small) corporations to prevent hostile takeovers even companies in the search sector (such as Verity) and this article only brings up the question as to why Yahoo does not have a similar one in place.
Because yahoo! is pu$$y and every male is after it...
Here's why: his name is Mike Moritz.
Do you really think they're going to pass up the opportunity to let the far more popular Google get sucked dry by a PERCENTAGE license of the '361 patent to Yahoo?
Yeah. Right. Never.
Google and Yahoo have had the same backers since day one. Google and all of the revenue and income you seen now is Yahoo tried again and done the right way. The reason Yahoo popped when the bubble popped is because they had not propped up the advertising model properly. Yahoo advertising was driven by the other thousands of crappy dot coms that the same Yahoo backers were funding. Every $1 spent on a stupid Garden.Com or Webvan that ended up going towards Yahoo ad growth translated into $10 of increased Yahoo share price.
This time around, the ad model that Yahoo had purchased was the only thing holding Google back from being extremely lucrative. So what did they do? Yahoo basically gave it away. Huh?! This article mentions a $30m license -- even $300m looks like a bargain given what Google has gained from it. Anyone with this patent and without an agenda would have made it on a percentage basis.
If I was a Yahoo shareholder during this period I'd start a shareholder lawsuit to sue the crap out of both companies, frankly.
The day Microsoft acquires Yahoo is the day I abandon my Yahoo email account.
I used to have a Hotmail account before Microsoft bought them, and watched the service turn to crap. I left Hotmail and got a Yahoo account.
I will definitely be encouraging friends and family to leave Yahoo and get say, a Gmail account, if Microsoft ever ends up owning a sizable chunk of Yahoo.
I know that one guy and a few of his friends leaving the free email service provided by Yahoo isnt going to worry them too much, but how many of you with Yahoo email accounts feel this way too?
Usually what MS does is wait until a technology is proven to be wanted/needed. Then comes to market after the leader has established the want/need for it. Then MS undercuts the leader by giving it away free or much cheaper, while proping itself up with other money makers. I still remeber when I first starting working with MS products and training for them in the mid 90's. Their answer for MS DNS, DHCP, etc was "It's not the best, but it;s free". Then once it starts to gain market share, They change their tune. The price is then passed on to all users (all copies of Windows server 2003 have the cost of DHCP server in it) even though it is not used by all. *Smart Business Move. Sometimes it's not always about making more money, but stopping others from makeing money.
Ugh! Yes. You're exactly right.
I wonder which search engine advertisers would give their money to, not just given the option of cheaper rates, but also with Yahoo's search engine integrated across all Microsoft OS's and hardware, and built directly into the interface of Internet Explorer, (which has 70% share of the browser market)? --Keeping in mind that it only takes a few colors and some clever design to manipulate the average shopper/television viewer. All the psychoanalysis has been paid for; If the population can be tricked into going to war, then I think they can be tricked into clicking the wrong button.
I love people very much, I really do; it's why I keep coming back here. But it doesn't change the fact that so many of our race have slipped into ignorant lives; just look at how many fat, semi-retarded, over-medicated ignoramuses there are walking around; people who have chosen not to think or discern for themselves, and so simply allow the corporate world to make their choices for them.
Frankly, it's damned spooky. I think MS could still actually threaten a company like Google. Companies, such as Microsoft, give off a distinct 'smell'; malicious, greedy intentions color everything one produces; it cannot be hidden. But it CAN be ignored and it can go unnoticed by those who are not sensitive enough or who simply don't care. --And the number of people who don't notice or don't care seems to be large enough to consistently change the world.
-FL
My interest also waned when I got to the allegation that $30 million was advertised as $300 million, unsubstantiated by any named source. Sure, I can Google it, but a good article saves me the trouble. What I did find interesting was the claim that Microsoft's offers have been made on days that Yahoo's share price is lowest. I also don't recall a source for that and haven't checked up on it myself, but it certainly could draw a lot of people's attention to the lowest prices of Yahoo's stock, giving the impression that those prices are typical. I would hope that actual investors wouldn't be fooled by that, but having witnessed a dot-com bubble with a real estate bubble encore, I don't really believe the average investor does any more research than the average casino gambler. So I could give 1/2 Insightful point to the article for that.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
> Why would I play chess at flyordie.com when I can play thousands of good players on yahoo.com, almost faster than I can log-in?
Playsite.com had the best cross browser, Java applet chess game, they seem to have dropped it recently.
"Yahoo! Chess requires Flash Player 7 or later and JavaScript enabled in your browser"
http://games.yahoo.com/play/ch&ss=1
davecb5620@gmail.com