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Microsoft Just Can't Quit Yahoo
itwbennett writes "Back in October, rumors surfaced (and then quickly subsided) that Microsoft was considering another bid to purchase Yahoo. Now the rumors are back, and this time Microsoft is said to be in talks with other prospective buyers about some kind of partnership to acquire the troubled Internet company."
Perhaps I can buy Yahoo. On second thought, that's probably too steep.
Yahoo does have some value to Microsoft. Its news, weather, and finance services are widely used. Users of those services overlap with Microsoft's customer base, and are good advertising targets for the things Microsoft sells.
Apple is the company that should buy them, and use iOS & Lion to do w/ them what WP7 does w/ Bing and Android does w/ Google. That's the only buyer that makes sense. Otherwise, which Yahoo! services are so valuable to make it worth adding another redundant search engine to the ones they already have? Hotjobs? Yahoo! Groups? Which ones?
Microsoft would just be buying Yahoo's users.
Which is a shame, because yahoo voice chat was the best trolling on the internet. There was a bug where, if you got ignored, you could simply leave the room and come back. Those who ignored you couldn't see your posts, but they could hear your audio.
My drunken friends and I spent many a night trolling the Christian chat rooms with pornographic recordings. Here's how we'd do it:
First, every Christian chat room had its own resident loudmouth who would spout bible verses all night without relinquishing the mic. We would get him off by starting a feedback loop, placing our microphone directly in front of our speakers, causing the feedback to be fed through the windbag's speakers into his mic. The feedback would be so horrible that the guy would get off the mic.
Next, with our mic at our speakers, we would play pornographic audio snippets from porn movies. The whole room would be exposed to those awful recordings and stir up into a frenzy of anger and disgust("I have kids in here listening to this with me!") and we would sit back and laugh, porn blaring, as they ignored us one by one. Then, thanks to the aforementioned bug, we'd leave the room and go back in.
The best part was when some asshole tried to grab the mic and wouldn't relinquish it, but he wouldn't turn his speakers down so even if the whole room had ignored us, our porno-audio was still going through his speakers, into his mic, and being fed back into the room. Since he was so desperate to keep control of the mic, he lost either way, and the room was forced to hear pornographic audio.
Finally, they would get smart and turn their speakers off. Then the person on the mic would start singing while the rest of the chat room fumed and ranted around him. It's like when a kid hears something he doesn't want to, cups his hands over his ears, and goes, "la-la-la-la-LAAAAAA."
It was classic.
If you look at their quarterly reports Yahoo is quite profitable actually, and they are still the third most used website on the internet. In terms of user minutes they trail only slightly behind Facebook (#1) and Google (#2).
Additionally, their patents have separate value that can be quite powerful if used offensively, as all the smartphone manufacturers are doing now.
Yahoo! should merge with Ask, AOL, and Lycos. They could call themselves That 90's Web Company.
A co-worker of mine is leaving to join Yahoo on Monday. He was told yesterday that within three months he will be a Microsoft Employee. He is not best pleased as he is an Open Source devotee. He is talking with a lawyer today to see if he can walk out of the contract.
I talked to an Analyst yesterday and he says that MS are getting Yahoo on the cheal. Like $1B cheap. The rest of the money is coming from Microsoft's usual investment partners, Silverlake Capital and a Canadian company(forgot the name at the moment).
I think the model for this is the MS/Nokia deal. From my pals at Nokia, it seems that MS rules in everything but name. Many of the very scandinavian working practices are slated for being consigned to the history books.
Every time Microsoft tries to buy Yahoo and then changes it's mind, Yahoo's stock value plunges. Do this enough times and eventually they can pick up Yahoo for pocket change.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel