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."

Comments

Re:Jealousy

[stokessd]

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

Re:Perfect Strangers ?

[kriston]

Wow. Yahoo definitely does not have stale search offerings or second-rate search technology.

Just because you're not the flavor-of-the-month search engine doesn't mean your technology is stale or second rate.

The only thing I can agree with is the unmotivated workforce--but they are in no way a mediocre bunch.

YHOO survived the dot-com bust because they are a well-diversified and complete web service company.
GOOG is striving to become that, but GOOG is flavor-of-the month because GOOG is the glamorous company that avoided the dot-com bust because they started later.

Come on, try to be objective when comparing YHOO and GOOG.

Good press does not necessarily mean better company.

Bad press does not necessarily mean worse company.

It's a shame so many of you feel this way without any sort of objective research.

.

Re:Perfect Strangers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you're not the flavor-of-the-month search engine doesn't mean your technology is stale or second rate.

Except that Google's become synonymous with search and has pretty much owned search for the last half decade -- and Yahoo has made no appreciable gains. I would say by definition Yahoo is at least second-rate. I don't think you can call a market leader for years running, with a brand ubiquity like they've got, a "flavor of the month".

When was the last time you heard someone tell someone to "just Yahoo that" or "I AltaVista'd so-and-so"?

I work with several ex-Yahoos, they're all wonderful and bright people... but Yahoo needs to adopt the Avis mentality and try harder. They're behind in search, Musicmatch->Y! Music didn't pan out, and they've got a whole raft of other unneeded sites/services. (omg.yahoo.com anyone ? )

Living in denial about your competitive ecosystem is the surest ticket to irrelevance and extinction.

Re:Perfect Strangers ?

[Captain Splendid]

but GOOG is flavor-of-the month

Yeah, they're so flavour of the month, I've only been using them since before the turn of the century.</sarcasm>

Note to all the clueless idiots out there: Google got popular quick because they had a search page that would load in under a minute back when most of us were still on dial-up. Having search rankings that worked as well as anybody else's was just icing on the cake. The hardcore techies might have gone nuts over their algorithms, but the rest of us were just happy to get our search results quickly and not wait for ages for a bunch of cruft and advertising to load first.

Re:Pretending they have a chance.

[Toreo asesino]

Yup. Over indeed it is, as their crashing stock and sales shows......

Wait a minute....

Re:MS-YHOO would never work.

[MightyMartian]

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.

It's called a "brand name". Microsoft, since its first foray on to the Internet with MSN in 1995-96 has never been able to produce a popular online presence. Guys like Lycos, Altavista and Yahoo were already filling the search market, and Microsoft was unable to puncture their dominance. Google, of course, pretty much kicked the shit out of Yahoo, which now holds a very distant second place, and yet, Microsoft still isn't on the map. I think Microsoft (correctly) has come to the conclusion that it matters not at all what they do, people don't care about msn.com or live.com. They go into Tools-->Options when they get their brand new Windows computer and change it to google.com. Even having a search box that defaults to Microsoft's search has failed, as basically threats that the EU is going to go medieval on their ass have pretty much forced them to open it up more easily to competitors (read: Google).

With more and more apps set to be delivered via the Web, this is about getting a platform that they have a hope in hell of someone actually using. I still think it will fail. Yahoo is, as I said, a very distant second place. Google is indeed the new Microsoft, and as with Microsoft's competitors in the past, Microsoft is finding itself being very effectively locked out of a very important market.

I'm not at all comfortable with yet-another-computer-monopoly, and I don't buy at all into Google's "do no evil" mantra, since, so far, they've done plenty. But there's a great deal of irony. It couldn't have happened to a nicer company.