Microsoft Looks To Refuel Talks With Yahoo 188
froggero1 writes "The New York Post is reporting that Microsoft wants to rekindle the takeover talks with Yahoo. According to the article, Yahoo! has repeatability turned away their offers, but Microsoft hopes that a lucrative 50 billion dollar offer will bring them back to the table. This move would increase Microsoft's web search market share to roughly 38%."
Of couse (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so sure they're buying (Score:2)
In what appear to be early-stage discussions, executives at Microsoft and Yahoo are taking a fresh look at a merger of the two companies or some kind of match-up that would pair their companies' respective strengths, say people familiar with the situation.
Maybe things really are changing in the Ozzie era - msft mightn't want to swallow & assimilate - maybe they do want a partnership ?
Fact is anyway for starters the Yahoo brand is a strong valuable asset, I don't see it been squashed. Also Yahoo is probably the second most successful internet company out there, msft is pretty poor to date given its opportunities, they'd be dumb to just take over & dictate.
Re:Of couse (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahsoft.
I fail to see how this creates anything but more headaches and "me-too" problems for Microsoft - but it does confirm for me (if not Netcraft!) that Microsoft has a serious problem when it comes to creating new ideas and following through on them.
I used to joke about Microsoft buying all of it's new ideas - but this is a rather bigger problem. Once they buy Yahoo, do they transition it into a new form of MSN, thereby killing everything that was cool about Yahoo? Or do they un-MSN the current Microsoft web properties?
The problem Microsoft has is that when it comes to finding information and using the web to share information, Google has the most useful tools for the largest number of people. Buying a languishing Yahoo won't magically make Microsoft popular.
Biggest doesn't win here - subjectively best does.
What do you think? (Score:4, Insightful)
Once they buy Yahoo, do they transition it into a new form of MSN, thereby killing everything that was cool about Yahoo? Or do they un-MSN the current Microsoft web properties?
Hotmail!
Amazon Search!
Zune!
They keep taking and ruining winners, delivering to the public exactly what no one wants. Hotmail was cool, then M$ bought it and spent a fortune converting it to M$ software, loading it with adds and making it suck. Google mail kicked their ass. Amazon used to have a good search, then along came M$. There's nothing wrong with the electronics factories that make iPod and all the rest of the wold's music players, but Zune is a squirting loser. Is a picture emerging here?
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For the better part of three decades they have also been sucessful at doing the opposite. Aren't you one of those people who accuse them of buying everything they sell and not "innovating" at all?
Hotmail was cool [...] loading it with adds and making it suck.
I'm sorry, but Hotmail was not cool. And yes, they made it suck, but then all the free webmails of the day sucked. I remember Altavista mail well. It was GMai
Re:What do you think? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, that's true, they're not. Especially Vista. The XBox is outsold by Nintendo now, and they have zero presence in Japan.
100% true. The reason they're here today is that IBM gave them a braindead contract in the 80s that put their software on every commodity PC sold. Nobody chose Windows, it was put on all their machines by luck.
Office 2003 was a flop, the last Visual Studio had so many bugs that there was an outcry, and Office 2007 had to have its revenues inflated by the accountants to make it look like it was selling.
Did I leave anything out?
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Thats not the only reason. If you don't log in for 30 days (and logging into MSN Messenger doesn't count), then they delete all of your emails. As opposed to the philosophy of Google and Yahoo, which is "keep your emails forever".
Microsoft prefers "you don't need old emails after 30 days". It's especially a pain for anyone who has a job that takes them away from home for more than 30
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Nobody trust M$ any more, so a hotmail account is perfect for loosing email you don't want or for sending the
Re:What do you think? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's so funny how Microsoft's success must be measured as an absolute when you are so trying so desperately to re-arrange reality to make them look bad. How many Microsoft products have failed, twitter? I mean, really failed? What, "Bob" and Zune? Out of thousands of them? Out of uncounted billions of dollars in revenue over the past 30 years, "Bob" and "Clippy" are your best examples of why "M$" is about to die and go away?
Seriously?
Microsoft doesn't need to dethrone Google with MSN and outsell the PS2. They don't. I'm sure they'd feel better if they did, but they quite simply don't. Their success doesn't need to be absolute. Other companies usually need to, but MS doesn't.
Consider Google. They're a two-trick pony. Their painfully inflated stock will plummet with first inkling of a problem with the online ad market (not that I would want that to happen, I love Google. But that's not the point). The same event barely makes Microsoft blink. One hiccup in iPod sales and it's pain time for Apple. Microsoft can afford to get it wrong four times with the Zune.
Microsoft doesn't have to dominate markets completely to be successful in them. It's funny that people like you have to point out "M$" does not have absolute domination of a market to prove they have "failed". Would you rather all of those markets were in the same state as the PC desktop today? Holy shit, I'm a Microsoft fanboy but I sure as hell wouldn't want that to happen. Microsoft needs all the competition it can get.
What are you trying to tell me? (Score:2)
It's so funny how Microsoft's success must be measured as an absolute when you are so trying so desperately to re-arrange reality to make them look bad.
Are you really trying to tell me that M$ will improve Yahoo, that you like MSN better? Or are you trying to tell me that M$ will humble themselves by using Yahoo's software to improve their own? Do you really think they improved Hotmail or Amazon's search? If you like Yahoo's groups, pictures, search and all that, will you be sad if M$ converts it all
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No, but you are pretty sure they'll "ruin" Yahoo to begin with. It's that psychic streak of yours, isn't it? And no, I don't think MSN (Live.com really) is better, at
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Bob.
Vista
SQL server
microsoft at work.
xbox
zune
sidewalk
travelocity
msn
live search
money
CRM
sharepoint
virtualpc
Oh man the list goes on and on. Virtually every MS product except windows and office have failed to reach goals MS has set for the products. Virtually all of them have been money drains that are only in existence because MS makes monopoly profits on windows and office.
Spin any of these products off and they die within a year. MS can only get market share by giving these away, forcing people t
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Even Bob and especially "At Work" served as the basis for later products and enhancements to products.
Travelocity? And XBox??
Bwahahahaha!
*sniff* Thanks for that, I was having a bad day but now there's soda on my keyboard and I feel better.
Seriously, how is Microsoft Money a "failure"? I'm actually curious. Just clarify that one for me, if nothing else. Or Virtual PC?
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Too easy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Too easy? (Score:5, Funny)
why bother? (Score:2)
Indeed... (Score:5, Funny)
Not just grammar (Score:4, Informative)
From the FA:
The new approach follows an offer Microsoft made to acquire Yahoo! a few months ago, sources said. But Yahoo! spurned the advances of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Wall Street sources put a roughly $50 billion price tag on Yahoo!.
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In other news (Score:3, Funny)
So which is it, 27 or 38 percent? (Score:4, Insightful)
As it stands now, a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! would up the combined companies' share of the all-important search advertising market to 27 percent against Google's 65 percent.
I figure that it would be around 30% either way and falling.
Increase share? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You assume that people will stick with Yahoo! after M$ takes it over.
I remember back in the day, when Hotmail got purchased by Microsoft, I logged in to my account and asked them how to cancel account as they are taken over by MS. They replied the account is deleted if I don't login for 3 months or so.
Now right when I heard this story, I tried to remember which option was "cancel yahoo account" and how many critical e-mail (e.g. software update) I am subscribed via my @yahoo.com address
Some of us use Yahoo because it tries to be platform independent, rather reliable and esp
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Bang goes MSFT's cash reserve (Score:2, Insightful)
A handful of deals like this, and the money will be gone. Then it's back to actually doing good business, something Microsoft seems awfully bad at these last years.
If Microsoft do buy Yahoo, it screams "duopoly", but in the long term they will ruin Yahoo's business, and leave the market entirely to Google.
Re:Bang goes MSFT's cash reserve (Score:4, Insightful)
I use google, they are my homepage, I pretty much do ALL of my searches on google, but do I want them to destroy Yahoo and be the only major player in the market? NOPE!
"Don't be evil" goes out the window quickly when you have all the power.
If there is no one to compete against, then there is no reason for innovation. They spend that energy they would have spent on search would move elsewhere to try to become Google$
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Actually I would have though Google would be much more vulnerable to this sort of scenario. They dont have the reserves or historical revenue MS has so if a few deals go south, the big share price takes a hit and suddenly the bank manager has more reservations, requirements and fees when they want to fund their next acquisition. Fortunately their revenue is increasing quite rapidly so they should be able to build up reserves over the next couple of
Too much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft needs to let Yahoo alone and realize that it's not possible to do everything.
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Well duh, look at what website you are visiting. Thats like saying everything you heard about the United States on Al-Jazeera is bad so obviously they deserve to be blown up. Why dont you use it and try to develop your own opinions objectively rather than believing everything you read on an enourmously biased website? There are certainly good and bad elements to Vista, but if you are going to flame them it should at least be based on something better than reading
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The GP said "everything I've heard about Vista", not "Everything I've heard on Slashdot about Vista"
I can say that everything I have heard about Vista, from a wide variety of sources including Windows users, is bad.
You have never read Al-Jazeera, have you? From what I have seen on their Eng
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Because he doesn't really have $300+ lying around to buy a new OS he apparently isn't too interested in using? Because installing a brand new OS just because you can serves no real purpose? Because he might read sites other than Slashdot? Because personal, objective opinions are both virtually impossible to have and very frequently of no use? I could keep going wi
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Well here are a few good things about it:
-- Media Center is INCREDIBLE and unlike Myth, it works out of the box
-- Recording audio is SIMPLE, whereas in Linux, it can be a PITA with some audio chipsets
-- Hardware support for bleeding-edge hardware (and new-but-not-quite-bleeding-edge-any-more) is fairly good, unlike Linux
-- the new GUI sure is pretty (but on the other hand, Beryl on Linux is FANTASTIC. KDE +
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As a longtime and now ex LiteStep [wikipedia.org] user, you can replace the Explorer shell very easy. If I recall correctly, it takes about 2 very simple registry key changes (just tell windows what shell to load in the HKLM hive and fire up explorer in separate process). Been a long time since I used LiteStep, so I could have missed a few things.
To get a popular alternative desktop running on Windows, it needs to stop mimicking Explo
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KDE is NOTHING like Windows. If anything, Gnome is closer to Windows' usability paradigm than KDE is. KDE is far more flexible, and allows for more productivity. When I have to work in Windows I feel crippled because of the lack of tabbed browsing, having to use filezilla or winscp to download files THEN do what I need to do an upload them. It i
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It is if you're General Electric or Proctor and Gamble. Almost everything you buy or use is stamped with GE or PG on it.
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It is if you're General Electric or Proctor and Gamble.
GE is trying to sell its plastics unit, IIRC, and the company has a history of selling off underperforming units rather than preserving the kitchen sink. Yes, it is possible for a company to do everything, but clearly it is not profitable to do so.
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You'll notice the 3-articles-per-hour
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If Yahoo! is 38% of the market (Score:2, Interesting)
then 100% = $132B
So why does Google [yahoo.com] have a market cap of $146 billion? That's more than 100% of the market value. Some numbers must be wrong here... likely Microsoft's offer is too shallow. Or is Google over valued?
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Re:If Yahoo! is 38% of the market (Score:5, Informative)
This is an incorrect assumption in several ways. First Yahoo has 28% of Web searching, not 38%. The 38% number was for Yahoo and MS's combined share. The other way it is incorrect is the assumption that all Yahoo or Google or MS does is search, which is of course not true. The value of $50B was for the company, not for their Web search service.
of course google is overvalued... (Score:3, Informative)
However, value is not generally directly proportional to market share. There's lots of value associated with growth potential and being number 1 in a market...
Then again, there's always a limit to how many tulips [wikipedia.org] people want...
WTH? Nasdaq says 107B (Score:2)
Do they have more fat billions on Nasdaq [nasdaq.com]? Am I missing something?
That would be great... (Score:4, Insightful)
... cause then Microsloth would be one step closer to wiping out web standards and all the good work Yahoo! has put into the web development community.
Buy your way to the top!
No greater an illusion.
Like buying your search ranking or myspace friends.
If at first you don't succeed (Score:3, Funny)
Well- Yahoo would have to talk (Score:4, Insightful)
On one side I don't see this being more than a chat to work out a deal- to buy Yahoo would cost MS all of their cash reserves, and then there is the little problem of moving their technology base from *unix to Windows would be a multiyear screw up, er, project (how long did it take MS to move Hotmail over to Windows?).
On the other side- MS does need to move against Google in some meaningful manner- Google's judo flip and really put MS off balance in a way that will play out for years to come- and I doubt MS shareholders are happy with the flat stock price for the last 7 years.
I suggest a large bowl of popcorn while we wait this one out, with extra butter.
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Think of the business argument like this- Why should I buy Windows to run my business if Microsoft doesn't run Windows to run their's?
A long time ago, MS ran their accounting department on AS/400s as the story goes, and other F500 companies where pointing this fact to the MS sales people. MS then, again as the story goes, tried to move everything over to a Windows based system, and failed. Failed horribly, and to the point where MS had to make a tough choice- run AS/40
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this should not be allowed (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they want to use a portion of their accumulated monopoly profits to acquire a company that has huge on-line communities and brand names. Anyone who's paid attention over the last 15-20 years knows what will come next: "best" access will soon be restricted to those who use Microsoft's operating system, browser, media players, and development tools. Eventually those using other browsers and operating systems may be shut out altogether. The average person buys Windows preinstalled on their Dell or Gateway won't care, but they don't see how innovation is being shut down the same way innovation in the PC desktop software market fell dramatically after Microsoft established its hegemony with Windows 95.
Microsoft has all the money and resources in the world. Let's see them build their own online communities, really innovate instead of talking about innovation.
Heh (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft were running the show, I'm worried that would change. Plus, I think there would be other problems. For Microsoft, what would be the easiest and quickest way for them to completely demoralize the employees who work in their Internet divisions? Buy Yahoo. For Yahoo, what would be the easiest and quickest way to confuse and worry their employees? Sell to Microsoft (although many might not be that confused while they're swimming in their huge piles of money.)
Finally, I'm concerned about Yahoo's services, were Microsoft to purchase them. It sounds like Microsoft has a large number of middle managers and policy makers who like nothing more than to assert their authority with arbitrary decisions. Yahoo seems to value a fair amount of development and language agnosticism (with sites written in PHP, custom languages, etc...) What happens to these sites when Microsoft comes in? "I'm sorry - we're rebuilding that in
I don't know - my responses aren't typically those of the knee-jerk Slashdot mentality, but this makes me even me wince.
indeed this says a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
This is no less then an admission that their own search and online advertising strategy has failed completelly. They may disagree, but coin like that being offered for yahoo speaks volumes.
MSN was, at first inception, meant to be *the* portal to the internet. That failed so fast most people don't even know it. The new Microsoft search site? Know anyone that uses it? cos I don't, and I know a lot of computer users, ranging from expert to pebmak's. Not one Microsoft web strategy has succeeded. Ok, ok, people use Hotmail, and people use msn messenger. Alas that's not much of a money maker for Microsoft, not without the original ill conceived all encompassing Microsoft Network.
So, they now know that without buying out another major search company they can't compete in search or net advertising. The problem there is that they have no assurance that the purchase will help them at all?
First, they can't drop the Yahoo! name, or people simply won't use the product. Secondly, adding it to their monolithic corporation will most likely result in innovation at yahoo (is there any? I'm out of touch) will also slow to a crawl.
Microsoft have been good at (well, successful at) operating systems and office software. Their mistake is believing that the same strategy can be extended to maintain a dominant position in other fields that didn't even exist when they first became dominant.
Most likely outcome of a purchase? Five years down the line it is spun off as a separate business again, related to Microsoft by shares only.
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YAHOO: 250 million
MSFT: 228 million
AOL MAIL: 50 million
GOOGLE: 51 million
US WEBMAIL MARKET
YAHOO: 79 million
MSFT: 45 million
AOL MAIL: 40 million
GOOGLE: 10 million
source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/09/single-ajax-i nterface-for-yahoo-mail-im-coming/
I'm not certain that ALL of MSFT's web strategies have been failures. I also am not certain that the strategies to success by any of the companies in this list differ greatly: they all are too large to be genuinely innovative - as innova
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If it meant actively used email adresses it would be a smaller number
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Re:indeed this says a lot (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd love to know why MS still tries. Either in fields where becoming dominant is a mighty large challenge (like with MSN), but also in areas where they are never going to be able to extract profit (like Internet Explorer). I can understand giving things a shot, but there must come a point where it's best to cut your losses. Other than some irrational fear that if they don't control everything then the core will wither away, I can't see any reason for them to continue down several of the paths that they are taking.
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erm I think you've got that wrong. MSN was meant to replace the Internet, at least that is what the Microsoft Sales Idiots tried to convince me around 1994. The exact term they used was "MSN will bury the Internet in 6 months". The idea at Microsoft was that centralized and controlled networks were the future, think France's Minitel mating with AOL. You've got to remember that this was around the time Bill Gates tried the vision thin
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computer illiterates, basically.
unix/windows (Score:5, Insightful)
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In all fairness, IIS has improved significantly since then, and so has Windows, in terms of both security and general brain-damage.
Lucky folks at RightMedia (Score:2)
That's a scary thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Previous Yahoo merger talks (Score:5, Funny)
Why, after AT&T dumped Yahoo? (Score:2)
AT&T dumped their co-branding arrangement with Yahoo, "AT&T Yahoo DSL". It wasn't adding any useful value to their DSL service. Why at this late date does Microsoft want Yahoo?
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They did?
If we're really lucky ... (Score:2)
MS should buy Google instead (Score:2)
Sorta buying marketshare for Passport, Hotmail (Score:2)
MSFT failed a few years ago to get Passport to blow up into a 'universal' portal for the internet and e-commerce. Buying into Yahoo and its huge e-mail subscriber base (for free e-mail) would give the number of potentail Passport users a boost. Ditto to Hotmail users. They could easily up the ante with targeted e-mail advertisements.
But Yahoo e-mail is also a bit different. R
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And I don't think most of Yahoo's sites have been trending downwards, the exception being their search engine, of course.
Re:holy crap (Score:4, Informative)
Re:holy crap (Score:4, Informative)
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Balmer hears a hoo (Score:4, Funny)
You're reading it with the wrong accent
"fifty Beeeeeeellion dollars"
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Which will ruin it and waste the first 50 billion. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wonder how much additional it'll cost to convert Yahoo's BSD servers to Windows. Remember how long (and how many failed attempts) there were to convert HotMail from Solaris?
If they do that, their share will drop from 38% to whatever they have now. Just look at what they have done to Amazon's search - my wife says it's unusable and quit going there. If they convert Yahoo over to their stuff like they did Yahoo, there will be no difference between Yahoo and their own search and their share will fall back to what it is today and then further. You would think that Google eating Hotmail's lunch would have taught them a lesson. The data they get would also soon lose it's value if they can't figure out how to use it.
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If this purchase goes ahead, it would be a shame for FreeBSD, since Yahoo employs half a dozen people to work on FreeBSD full time, who might well no longer exist after a Microsoft buy-out.
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It's not a lot for Yahoo, but it's a lot for Microsoft. Yes, even Microsoft.
Despite their huge revenue and profits, Microsoft currently "only" has $25 billion [yahoo.com] in the bank. So they couldn't do a straight purchase of Yahoo, they'd have to do a stock swap and maybe some borrowing, which would be a merger rather than a takeover. (In fact, that's how I'm seeing it described in other news reports.) It wouldn't be MS swallowing up Yahoo and dictating who stays and who
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It wouldn't be a bad deal to ride (as a bank) on Microsoft's back.
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