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Microsoft Going After Yahoo! Again
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Monday July 07, @10:50AM
from the get-back-up-again dept.
from the get-back-up-again dept.
Corrupt writes "Microsoft on Monday released a letter that supports investor activist Carl Icahn's efforts to unseat Yahoo's board, as well as confirming its interest to explore a bid to buy the entire company, or just its search assets, with a new board."
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News: Yahoo Rejects Another Bid From Microsoft, Icahn 117 comments
Last night Yahoo rejected another offer for its search business from Microsoft and investor Carl Icahn. The proposal also included conditions that would have required the replacement of Yahoo's top management and board of directors. This is not the first time Icahn has pushed for such a measure. Quoting:
"Yahoo said in rejecting the offer it told Microsoft it was willing to sell the entire company for at least $33 a share and its board believed such a deal could be negotiated and executed before its annual shareholders meeting on August 1. Yahoo said it also informed the software giant it remained willing to negotiate an 'improved search-only transaction.' Microsoft, however, rejected both offers, Yahoo stated."
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If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:5, Funny)
...adapt to their defenses and continue assimilation.
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:5, Funny)
...adapt to their defenses and continue assimilation.
Having big boobs and a catsuit [wikipedia.org] helps too ;)
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:5, Funny)
Come to think of it, I don't think the word "soft" applies anywhere near Ryan. :D
You obviously missed the two most important points here!
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:4, Funny)
Come to think of it, I don't think the word "soft" applies anywhere near Ryan. :D
You obviously missed the two most important points here!
Come to think of it, the word "micro" doesn't apply anywhere near Ryan!
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, it's great for the shareholders. Unfortunately, it's a disaster for the internet and its users. Flickr with Silverlight? No thanks. Yahoo Mail -> Live conversion? No thanks. Replacing YUI with .NET AJAX? No thanks.
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the silliest thing ever to say. You could just as easily say, "in a privately held company, the only thing that matters are the owners." You might say one is better than the other, but it's a pointless argument that totally depends on the situation. The mafia can be the owner of a private company, they can't be the owner of a public company, and I would much rather have shareholders coming after me than the mafia.
In any company, a lot of things matter: shareholders or owners, employees, customers, business partners....the fact is if you are depending on ANY company to "look out" for your best interest, you are highly naive. That's pretty much how life is, everyone is looking out for their own interest.
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:4, Insightful)
But a US corporation has to put their shareholders interests above all else mandated by law. Lots of things matter but customers, employees, partners, etc all play second and third sheet music with the shareholder.
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Re:If at first you don't succeed.... (Score:4, Insightful)
But we haven't gotten to the "extend" portion of it yet,have we? I have no doubt it would be trivial for MSFT to tie some new must have features to some voodoo APIs buried in Windows that would take the Linux guys ages to try to figure out. It's like OOXML and the "render like Office 97",they have so many funky APIs buried in the bowels they could just keep tying new features to different ones and drive the Linux guys nuts. Remember it isn't about not making it work at all,although I'm sure MSFT wouldn't mind that,it is about making sure that any non Windows version runs BADLY. Then they can point to the "immaturity" of Linux and use silverlight as a selling point for Windows.
And finally don't forget the elephant in the room that is DirectX. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard for them to tie some acceleration functions that will slow the machine to a crawl unless it is running DirectX,which will then offload some of the rendering to the GPU. Like i said I'm no fanboi of ANY platform,preferring to use what works for a given job,but like I said they haven't been subtle. MSJava,sites that will either render right on IE or on other browsers but not both,etc. I'm sure if you looked you could find at least a dozen more going back to DOS. it is just how MSFT works,period. And if I had made the amount of cash they have by doing those tricks I doubt I'd change either.
But if the Open Source guys want to compete with Adobe,cook up some low resource using flash killer. But betting on one 800 pound gorilla to save you from the other just isn't a smart move. After all,either way you end up with a VERY nasty 800 pound gorilla that you have to find a way to play nice with. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
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Yahoo needs a restraining order (Score:5, Funny)
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Almost Seems Desperate - Doesnt It? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is showing how scared it is of losing the online search battle. Maybe because it realizes that it is also losing ground rapidly in software.
The nice thing about Rome is that we still have lots of pretty statues...too bad the same can't be said about old code.
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I'm glad I don't own MSFT (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought about buying stock in Microsoft, but this behavior appears to be out of spite rather than a sound business decision.
Microsoft buying Yahoo would only have made sense if they never had MSN in the first place. It is buying a competitor to compete with its own products and if they intend to only shut it down or merge it with MSN, its only going to bleed massive amounts of money from MSFT in the process.
The smartest decision would be to let Yahoo die on its own and focus on more "fresh" markets or ones that is truly their bread and butter like Xbox, Office, and Windows. There is no need for it to dominate a market that is firmly entrenched in Google by aquring Yahoo. If nothing else it only helps Google and people who are short selling MSFT.
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PowerSet (Score:5, Funny)
To be a fly on the wall in these meetings:
Ballmer: Let's buy Yahoo.
Board Member: They won't sell.
Ballmer: Did you ask them, or tell them?
Board Member: A little of both.
Ballmer: Did you say we'll be their best friend?
Board Member: Yeah, but Yang just watched Pirates of Silicon Valley and isn't fooled.
Ballmer: Is that the movie with Johnny Depp, or the good one with Jenna Jameson?
Board Member:...
Ballmer: What's this "PowerSet" thing?
Board Member: That's a start-up Websearch company. They're doing a lot of what we want to do with Live search.
Ballmer: Great! Buy it!
Board Member: Okay, so I guess that takes care of the Yahoo--
Ballmer: Buy them, too!
Board Member: What? Why? Powerset will--
Ballmer: They're working with Google! It's anti-competitive! We have to buy them! And it will make Live search even stronger after we incorperate SourPet--
Board Member: PowerSet--
Ballmer: Whatever! Just buy Yahoo so we can say we're not anti-competitive.
Board Member: You want to purchase two separate Internet search systems, incorperate them into our failed system, to avoid anti-competitive practices?
Ballmer: Finally! It's like talking to a brick wall sometimes, y'know?
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give me the ball puppy (Score:4, Funny)
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Fortune's take: Not Compting w/ Google on Tech (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Fortune's take: Not Compting w/ Google on Tech (Score:4, Insightful)
As I said, Gmail and Google Maps took Ajax and web-based-apps to a new level, crushing the competition with better technology. I didn't say Google invented the internet, or even invented Ajax.
Google innovated in these areas by applying creative uses of new technology, and that's why it's Google Maps not Mapquest, and Gmail not Yahoo Mail or Hotmail that everyone uses these days. Google deserves every ounce of credit for these.
And yes, every innovation comes back to some individual or purchased company or whatever who actually sat there and wrote the code. A company (Google in this case) promoted and marketed and guided these excellent ideas and helped turn them into successes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that process.
I've seen plenty of companies take good people and good ideas, and instead of recognizing and promoting them, they demoralize the individuals and pervert the best of ideas into an abomination. This is often done in the name of "marketing" (check out ICQ's massive failure in AOL's hands), or copying the existing market instead of doing something original (last company I worked for wouldn't even consider doing anything other than directly copying features from the market leader).
A company that recognizes and promotes innovative ideas deserves all the credit they can get.
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Yahoo already peaked (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo peaked when it released Yahoo Mail. They haven't really done anything new or innovative or even relevant since.
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wtf is an "investor activist"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also Icahn and his ilk have no interest in real "investment", he simply wants to boost the stock price long enough to dump it. They don't understand or care that the two companies are a horrible match technology wise, management wise, and corporate culture wise and that a merger between the two would leave Yahoo an empty shell a year later.
Apparently when you are a sufficiently large publicly traded corporation it is expected that you adopt short-sighted suicidal tendencies.
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Trying to tank, not trying to buy (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point, considering the approach, I strongly suspect that Microsoft is less interested in purchasing Yahoo! as they are in just removing Yahoo! from the field.
This sort of corporate business makes me weep for our entire culture. =/
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Re:Ah, so this is it... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be burning a hole in his pocket. Shareholders get antsy when companies hold on to a huge cash reserve without any plans for what they're going to do with it. That cash should be used to grow the company or should be returned to the shareholders in the form of a dividend. Having it sit in the bank isn't helping the shareholders at all.
Microsoft used to say they needed their big cash reserves to fight off giant lawsuits, especially the anti-trust suits. Now that the government has rolled over and given up, though, MS is going to have to come up with something to do with all that cash. Buying up other companies is a popular way to do that.
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Re:I found it surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
A company with Microsoft's resources should be able to come up with a better business plan than a buy-in. I think they're impatient, for some reason not yet disclosed.
It's all about Google.
If I were an MS strategist, Google's search business wouldn't scare me. If you lost sleep every time somebody made money doing something technological you'd go mad.
I'd be a little more concerned with Google's foray into online office suites, but I'd be fairly confident that wasn't a serious problem in the short to mid term.
The thing I'd be freaked about is Google's casual way of generating APIs for its popular services. That hits Microsoft where it lives.
This is a relatively low cost, low risk game for Google. Nobody expects them to provide soup-to-nuts service for all your IT needs; they're just throwing API shit against the wall. If it sticks, good for Google, bad for MS; if t doesn't, MS feels no pain, but neither does Google. It's just another interesting idea from Google.
This is like assymetrical warfare: MS is the conventional force, and Google is the guerilla force. Google chooses when and where to stike, and if it fails it doesn't cost them much. Tactical failures can even be strategic victories if they provoke a costly response. From MS's standpoint, it is necessary to limit Google's ability to strike when and where it will, and get away without much loss no matter the outcome. One thing you can do is start to poach on Google's engineering talent; taking people out of a team is disruptive. Another thing you can do is try to hurt them in places where they live, so you want them so focused at keeping their ad revenue flowing that they can't do anything else.
Google's strategic weakness is that it doesn't provide full solutions. It is an interesting technology company, not a product company. That's good for MS because once Google (or anybody else) provides a complete replacement for Office, Exchange and Sharepoint, bad things are going to happen to MS.
Gaining control of Yahoo makes sense for several reasons. First, it keeps them from cooperating with Google, which is the opposite of what MS wants. MS wants Google to have to work harder to get ad revenue, not less. Second, Yahoo is a product company, like MS; it could be the first to offer the complete, MS free product stack. Equally bad, Yahoo could goad Google into upgrading its products so they look more like a viable replacement for MS to enterprise customers.
The picture MS would prefer is Google struggling to maintain ad revenues, and facing a steep uphill battle in product adoption and API mindshare when it looks at MS dominated product areas.
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Re:No risk? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you really saying there's no risk to Google's innovation?
I'm not sure how you get there from what I said. The driving strategic factor behind acquiring Yahoo is constraining Google.
MS looks at Google, and sees its younger self. MS was built around the desktop OS cash cow. Having a cash cow means having room to fail. MS often failed, but used its money to keep strategic projects alive until they could kill the competition. Google might not have the swaggering, mercilessly brutal image that MS in the bad old days did, but make no mistake, they're an aggressive competitor. Worse yet from MS's standpoint, Google has its own cash cow, and MS knows exactly how a cash cow can be used to enter new markets.
Why oh why is Google mucking around with office suites? Because with a cash cow, it's play money to them. As long as the money rolls in, nobody is going to complain. If online office suites turns into a big business well, jolly good, but they can afford to chalk it up as brainstorming. On the darker side, Office suites are a very serious business to Microsoft; it's one of Microsoft's cash cows and one of the pillars of its strategic power. It must be maddening to have a dominant player in the search market mess around in their core business.
Over the years, many MS competitors lost their ability to innovate because they were obsessed with MS, and now Google is doing the same to them. Is it intentional? You decide.
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