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Rumors Flying On $20 Billion Microsoft Offer For Yahoo
gadgetopia is one of many who wrote to tell us about the many rumors flying around that Microsoft may be aiming another deal at Yahoo, this time for $20 billion. The story was apparently originally broken by the UK-based site Times Online, and contained lots of details about the supposed deal. Since then, Ross Levinsohn, reported to be part of the new management team, has denied there is any truth to these rumors, leading to questions about where all of this supposed information came from. Yahoo has declined to comment officially.
In this climate I don't see Microsoft buying -anything- for a $20B outlay unless it were the next Google. And Yahoo isn't.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
44 billion to 20 billion.
Are they trying to actually buy the company or do they just happen to have cameras in place at the Yahoo Shareholders Meetings. Maybe Ballmer just wants to have some footage of some other hypertensive sweaty jumping exec to replace his favorite internet memes.
Ice Cream has no bones.
They better get their sale concluded before next year.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I recall reading an article a while back that Microsoft wasn't able to pursue unless Jerry Yang was ousted.
Well, from now to then:
* Ichann was elected to the board
* Yang received severe criticism from the FUD machine
* The project management of Yahoo services just went plain crazy (like deleting all of your user information in an 'upgrade')
* <<insert more stupid crap here>>
* Yang "stepped down"
* And now report are that the 44.6 billion dollar deal is a mere 20 billion.
Say what you will, but this isn't mere chance. Yahoo was one of the companies that helped to make the internet what it is today, and I am very suspicious about most nearly everything on the list above.
Think what you will, but the only sane one in this deal was Jerry Yang from the start. Microsoft is ruthless - and this shows just how ruthless they are.
Yahoo represents the "old web" that Google is beating the pants off of. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft/MSN's own resources are as good or better. What Microsoft is trying to do is get a leg up on Google, and purchasing Yahoo just won't do that.
Microsoft is better off buying something smaller, perhaps InterActiveCorp (IAC), owners of Ask.com and Excite, Evite, and Match.com, but even then it's only accomplishing the same thing. Whatever base they draw from, be it Yahoo, IAC, or MSN itself, they're going to have to do some radical building of new technology to go anywhere.
They are going to have to invest in actual development firm(s), and buy some up-and-coming companies like 37signals to get some real innovation. However, Google has already been doing this, so MS is getting sloppy seconds, and when you add that to the fact that Microsoft is horrible at the this concept (it's more typical that MS buys a company, takes its most salable product and integrates it into the MS product, then shelves the rest of the company and fires the staff).
ASP.NET is going to need some serious help gaining AJAX support if it wants to be a contender (or is this Silverlight's aspiration? *shudder* ... Silverlight should contend with Flash. None of the big web2.0 apps use Flash). This absolutely must be key to their web services plan if they want to stay a "leader" in the PL field. Remember when Hotmail went offline because they couldn't successfully port it from BSD to Windows? They still managed to do it eventually (or does it just run though a proxy?) ... porting languages is MUCH harder.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Honestly, why is MS trying to get Yahoo? Yahoo is everything you would find in a dying company, a loss of public interest and a loss of revenue. Sure, MS could say that they owned a large portion of the search market, but what does that get them? Just about everyone is heading to Google and no doubt MS would manage to mess up Yahoo enough to make their few loyal searchers go elsewhere.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Whoever mods parent Funny gets their privileges revoked.
It is Microsoft's board goodbye to Ballmer. He could not exist outside of Microsoft so giving him half of their cash to watch him go down in a self-involved ball of flames is reasonable. The bleeding will stop far short of that. His ego will not let him do something else. After all, he never dated. He married an employee. He is a weak thinker and undisciplined, at best. I keep remembering the desparate "I need a boot loader" email I got from his sorry ass via UUCP. I contributed one out of common grace. And in that he fucked me. At that point I came to realize the poor quality of many people in our business and Ballmer in particular. My butt still hurts. It is time for you to go, Ballmer. You are not interesting, you were never interesting, you are a clown that makes development at Microsoft incredibly difficult if for no other reason than you are an incompetent developer.
Yahoo is one of the few companies that's positioned anywhere near a place where they could grab a share of what Google's doing.
They have some of the web's most trafficked destinations -- I think they're still #1 in traffic even with the rise of the social networking sites. Part of it's mindshare and brand recognition, part of it is the sheer variety the apps in their portal portfolio (flickr, delicious, groups...).
Microsoft right now is in a position where they are losing control of the web as a platform. Even with some huge advantages leftover from their desktop dominance, they don't seem to be able to do all that great at creating compelling destinations, and what's more, there's an increasing number of destinations that don't require any of their technology at all.
Frankly, if I were betting on which company were more likely to be relevant in 10-15 years, I'd bet on Yahoo.... assuming it survives investors who've forgotten there's such a thing as a decade, and suits and others who can't get their heads around Yahoo's assets, much less put together the engineering culture and talent the company does need to make its bid for resurgence.
Be sure that Microsoft understands this. Getting their hands on these web properties could do wonders for their efforts to shoehorn their proprietary tech back into popular usage. They may not be able to execute, but it's quite probably worth even more than a $20 billion shot.
I don't like the idea so much, because I think their product "management" of IE from 2001-2006 shows that rather than deserving any kind of trust, they're all too happy to leave their products in a state that should constitute criminal theft for sheer number of hours of productivity it stole from web developers, if they can get away with it, which, even in the current environment where their grip is looser than it used to be, they more or less can. But it's a very real possibility if MS acquires Yahoo.
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