Microsoft Proposes to Yahoo!

[3113]

Yet another romantic proposal...um, not.

So whadda think? Good for Yahoo? Bad for Yahoo? Smart move by Microsoft? Dumb move? And what does this mean for us web-browsing internet junkies...if it means anything at all?

NEW YORK -- Whether a Microsoft Corp.-Yahoo Inc. combination would put a real obstacle in Google Inc.'s path or just a pothole would depend on whether the merged company got the kind of dynamic leadership that neither side has exhibited in recent years, analysts said Friday. The two companies have complementary strengths that ought to make them a tougher competitor as a team, such people said. But that's only if they can work as a team and take advantage of Microsoft's technology and raw financial power and Yahoo's attractive content.

"To make this really sing, you've got to have a person at the helm who's a truly visionary leader," said Gartner Group analyst Allen Weiner. "I don't see that person at either company right now." One item on the leadership agenda might be getting Microsoft to swallow some pride and admit that some of its offerings are less compelling than those of its intended partner, Weiner and other experts said.

If the two companies' search and news-aggregation functions were integrated under one name, the result might be a boost for Yahoo's brand -- with its more popular array of sports, weather, business and entertainment sites -- at the expense of those bearing Microsoft's MSN and "Live" monikers. In any event, the advertising community will be rooting for the deal to close because it fears the increasing dominance of Google in the online paid search category, where it has about two-thirds of the market.

"A lot of people want an alternative to Google," Standard & Poor analyst Scott Kessler said. Simply adding Microsoft's and Yahoo's shares together doesn't make them more formidable in the paid search arena. That will take the kind of joint research-and-development innovation that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer said he expected from the proposed merger. But combining the two companies should help block Google's inroads into online display advertising, where it trails Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit.

And what of AOL? Time Warner's new chief executive, Jeffrey Bewkes, came into that job just last month under pressure to streamline the company and focus on its core news and entertainment brands. That means divesting its remaining stake in Time Warner Cable, most analysts say, and it also may mean finally cutting AOL loose eight years after one of the media industry's biggest merger flops.

A union of Microsoft and Yahoo would seem to imply that two of the most promising potential buyers of AOL are out of the market. Yet Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Jason Helfstein says a three-way combination could work. Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL are the three leaders in e-mail, a part of the industry in which customers tend to stay put as long as it doesn't cost them much. So far, legions of loyal customers haven't added up to much profit because nobody has figured out how to monetize e-mail. Adding a lot of pop-up ads seems effective only at driving away customers. If e-mail's Big Three became the Giant One, a possible route to profits would be more effectively tracking the movements of people who begin their Web surfing at their e-mail site, and using that data to target them for less obtrusive marketing pitches, Helfstein said. Such behavioral targeting is a developing arena for ad growth. The question for AOL would be whether, even with that rationale, it could get an attractive enough price to satisfy Time Warner.

Some contrarians saw Friday's announcement as an odd kind of plus for Google. Yes, it would have to face a bigger rival, but between now and the time the deal got done, Microsoft and Yahoo would be more preoccupied with putting the two companies together here and abroad than with their arch-competitor. While they had their eyes off the ball, the argument went, Google could grab still more market share.

Analyst Laura Martin of Soleil Securities in Los Angeles wasn't buying that theory. "There is nothing about a combined Microsoft-Yahoo that is good for Google," she said flatly. Its market share is already so dominant in the paid search realm that small gains resulting from its competitors' inattention are next to meaningless. That doesn't mean the merger couldn't do some good for smaller Web-search rivals. Gartner's Weiner said now might be a good time for search also-rans AOL and Ask.com to pitch their services as both the anti-Google and the provider that isn't too distracted to get the job done.

 

[rgraham666]

We're fucked.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I have two thoughts on this.

First, this is great for Yahoo, which is top-heavy with do-nothing managers who rest on their laurals and draw big paychecks. Yahoo has gone downhill rapidly for more than three years. A new owner will clean up their mess and make it a profitable, growing operation again.

Secondly, I truely hate to see Microsoft buy Yahoo. I hate Microsoft. I hate Bill (the piece of shit) Gates. And I truely wish Microsoft and eveyone associated with it would burn in hell.

Unfortunately...

 

[Liar]

No difference. Microsoft has always been full of yahoos.

 

[TxRad]

My take for what it's worth

Microshaft buying Yahoo will bring about a lot of people dropping Yahoo like people dropped Netscape when AOL bought them.

Yahoo has enough ads to sink even the fastest ISP and Microshaft will want more. People don't like Yahoo but it's the most famous of the big three chat programs. MSN has problems, Yahoo has problems and is out of hand in a lot of ways.

So bottom line, I don't think Google has any problems and I think the merger will further fuck up the other two.

 

[DesertPirate]

Micro$oft has to do something to make up for the Vista (Me2) abortion. The word is out that the Vista replacement might be out in a year. That is a very expensive screwup.

 

[Intrepid_Arjuna]

Nothing surprising. Microsoft is losing Big time against google in the "war of the webs"...and the Vista mess isn't helping...

fortunately It isn't gonna change much for us..

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I'm no expert, but I don't see Yahoo surviving in the current environment (a world in which "google" has become a verb) without some massive reorientation of its business model. Given that, who cares if MS buys them? If they reinvigorate the company somehow, fine. If not, it's probably not long for this world anyway, so what's the diff?

(As someone with MS stock in my 401k I'm not real thrilled, though. BTW, Gates had an op-ed in the WSJ last week about the future of technology that was positively stodgy. I think I'm looking for a selling opportunity in MS.)

 

[trysail]

I definitely want a financially healthy Yahoo (I use their email, Finance, and the Yahoo Calendar is wonderful). Yahoo hasn't done everything perfectly- but what vendor (technology or otherwise) does? Yahoo Finance is, for the most part, an excellent service.

If you didn't/don't like Microsoft's domination, why would you be any more disposed to dominance by Google?

Like "Uncle" Warren, I'm happy to use technology (Excel is a damn fine program), but I never, never, never invest in it.

I don't think anybody (including Ballmer the foghorn windbag) can predict how a hypothetical merger of Microsoft and Yahoo might or might not work out. On the one hand, I am all in favor of a combination if it creates the wherewithal to do battle with the Google juggernaut. On the other, it is eminently possible that a combined MS-Yahoo might meddle with the Yahoo services that I like and use. Obviously, that could happen were an independent Yahoo to continue to struggle.

None of us are oblivious to the fact that tech mergers/acquisitions (not to mention far too many plain brown wrapper mergers/acquisitions promoted by the likes of "Bid 'Em Up" Bruce Wasserstein and his Wall Street brethren) are fraught with risk- subject, more than most, to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

If you didn't/don't like Microsoft's domination, why would you be any more disposed to dominance by Google?

Because they're not "evil." Except when they're selling out free speech and open inquiry principles to the fascist Chinese government.

(Living and prospering in the real world is complicated, isn't it? You santimonious blowhards. [I mean Google.] )

 

[elfin_odalisque]

This is all silly. MS created the platform on which we all work and Google refined it with freebie stuff. All the 'me-toos' like Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket - even Lit - have taken it further.

Firefox, Linus and all those goodly people I love are not going to make it. Weight, resource and innovation is all on the side of the Sumo wrestlers.

Don't even go there, the net is already controlled by marketing shysters.

 

[popcorn2721]

This is all silly. MS created the platform on which we all work and Google refined it with freebie stuff. All the 'me-toos' like Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket - even Lit - have taken it further.

Firefox, Linus and all those goodly people I love are not going to make it. Weight, resource and innovation is all on the side of the Sumo wrestlers.

Don't even go there, the net is already controlled by marketing shysters.

True that, Ive said it before...I believe the day is soon coming when I will unplug, and tune out all the techno imperialist garbage that is being built (at least the day is coming for me, the other sheep can do what they want).

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

True that, Ive said it before...I believe the day is soon coming when I will unplug, and tune out all the techno imperialist garbage that is being built (at least the day is coming for me, the other sheep can do what they want).

So what's stopping you?

My life is a helluva lot better because of what you call "techno imperialist garbage." I'm sure I speak for tens of millions - hundreds even - whose well being has been improved and horizons expanded because of "techno imperialist garbage," created largely as a result of self-interest and a capitalist system that does not prohibit creative and dynamic individuals from pursuing it.

 

[DesertPirate]

This is all silly. MS created the platform on which we all work and Google refined it with freebie stuff. All the 'me-toos' like Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket - even Lit - have taken it further.

Firefox, Linus and all those goodly people I love are not going to make it. Weight, resource and innovation is all on the side of the Sumo wrestlers.

Don't even go there, the net is already controlled by marketing shysters.

Sorry but I've been on Linux for years and have NEVER used IE at home
I used Firefox and open office in the Winblows days.
The only thing Winblows does better than Linux is games

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

This is all silly. MS created the platform on which we all work and Google refined it with freebie stuff. All the 'me-toos' like Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket - even Lit - have taken it further.

What?! MS did NOT create the Web. That was the work of Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, Marc Andressen at NCSA in Illinois, and others. The Web is platform-independent. What's so brilliant about it is that it allows for complex network applications (like all of the Google 'freebies', Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, and Lit) to work completely and in an consistent way whether I'm on a Windows machine, Linux, Apple, a Palm device, or a Web-enabled wristwatch.

That's what scares MS, and has since 1995: that the Web as a platform makes MS's platform irrelevant. With each successive generation of Web technology, the more irrelevant Windows and Office gets. When I can go to Google and have email, scheduling, chat, document editing, mapping, video sharing, etc, in an OS-, browser-, and office-software-agnostic way, MS just had their cash-cow killed.

The predictions from all and sundry in the industry are still valid: someday you'll log onto the Internet from anywhere, and all of your information and applications will live on the network, not on your local computer. It's taking a little bit longer to come to pass, but it is slowly happening. Google is proof of that, and MS is frantically trying to get in the game before they become obsolete: hence the "rough wooing" of Yahoo.

 

[trysail]

...The predictions from all and sundry in the industry are still valid: someday you'll log onto the Internet from anywhere, and all of your information and applications will live on the network, not on your local computer. It's taking a little bit longer to come to pass, but it is slowly happening. Google is proof of that, and MS is frantically trying to get in the game before they become obsolete: hence the "rough wooing" of Yahoo.

The day will never come (unless it's forced down my throat) when I put my spreadsheets (Excel) anywhere where anybody can get their hands on 'em. Speaking for myself (obviously!), all the blabbing, the images, the "texting," and "information" is largely disinformation and noise- for me, computing is and will always be the ability to process and securely store large quantities of numbers.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

A few comments about MS and Bill Gates.

I go way back to the 70s with microcomputers. Bill Gates consistent M.O. is to design the box first, then the advertising pitch, then drum up sales for whatever brainstorm he has. Actual work on the software starts after he has enough pre-sales to decide if the project is worth the investment.

Then, when his wonks cant make the software fly, he looks around for an acquisition that has kinda-sorta what he needs. He buys them and spends the next 5 years working out the bugs.

Gates is like Studebaker in the 50s. Studebaker wanted a luxury car to compete with Cadillac. Cadillac in the 50s kicked everyone's ass in terms of styling and quality. So Studebaker bought Packard; a wonderful luxury car but as Plain-Jane as CLOUDY. Then they stuck the Packard name on a Studebaker, added some chrome trim, and promptly went out of business. People werent fooled.

But my problem with Gates is he's a tight-assed Puritan exhorting the Holy Scripture of Political Correctness. His own MSN boards went to hell because of the PC nannies. Yahoo is just another den of sin for him to purify.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

The day will never come (unless it's forced down my throat) when I put my spreadsheets (Excel) anywhere where anybody can get their hands on 'em. Speaking for myself (obviously!), all the blabbing, the images, the "texting," and "information" is largely disinformation and noise- for me, computing is and will always be the ability to process and securely store large quantities of numbers.

You are still free to keep information locally, of course, but there will be a myriad of free alternatives to Excel that you can use for your spreadsheets (there already are). Excel started as a cheap knock-off of Lotus 1-2-3, and only gained market share through its direct access to Windows APIs. As Windows becomes less and less relevant and necessary, Excel will, too.

 

[trysail]

Hell, I go all the way back to remote teletype terminals into which one fed punched paper tapes, then Hollerith cards, Basic, Cobol, Fortran, Machine Language, 1103s, and 360s. I started off using VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3 (I was, apparently, the last user of v2.2 in the United States). I got dragged (kicking and screaming) into Excel which took me two goddamned years to learn (thoroughly) though, in the end, it was well worth the effort. Excel is a very, very good program.

I don't give a flying fuck about platforms or APIs. I want the ability to crunch prodigous quantities of numbers and securely store data cheaply and efficiently. I am, and will always be, the last adopter ("Neither be the first by whom the new is tried not the last by whom the old is set aside"). I hate fuckin' visionaries and I hate goddamn marketers. I've always been in the minority and I'm (unfortunately) used to the tyranny of the majority.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

TRYSAIL

HeeHee you should try working for the state. Florida bought some crap from Ross Perot in 1993 or 94 for a gozillion dollars, and it was crap. Then in 1995 Florida bought a 300 MILLION software package that still wasnt working 10 years later. They finally dumped it right after I retired.

 

[trysail]

TRYSAIL
HeeHee you should try working for the state.... Florida...Ross Perot in 1993 or 94 for a gozillion dollars, and it was crap... Then... Florida bought a 300 MILLION software package that still wasnt working...

I'd seriously contemplate suicide as a reasonable alternative to working in a bureaucracy.

 

[popcorn2721]

So what's stopping you?

My life is a helluva lot better because of what you call "techno imperialist garbage." I'm sure I speak for tens of millions - hundreds even - whose well being has been improved and horizons expanded because of "techno imperialist garbage," created largely as a result of self-interest and a capitalist system that does not prohibit creative and dynamic individuals from pursuing it.

Nothing is stopping me, but I have watched how things have changed closely for a long time. I am saying that I have no issues with unplugging, and I think the day is coming that I will do just that.
Dont be insulted, the decision is entirely your own.

 

[trysail]

Now, of a sudden, Google is whining. Whaddya know! Crocodile tears.

 

[Lisa Denton]

Microfuck says they will trim the fat in yahoo, if its really fat then maybe that would help. They say they may keep many yahoo stuffs similar but wouldn't commit either way about name changes. Yahoo lovers will prolly stay loyal even if they hate microfuck, if possible.

The thing is microfuck will not listen to the consumer, they give the consumer whatever microfuck wants to give them, not what the consumer wants. Vista was a prime example, they shoved it down the consumer's throats. It is only now that corporate consumers have joined the private citizen's in dumping Vista to go back to XP that microfuck says WTF?

If yahoo is unable to trim and continue then even though I hate the monopoly perhaps microfuck will keep many yahoo programs afloat, but they will do it thier way, not the way the consumer wants. When discussing Vista before its launch, and after many had beta tested it including myself, a microfuck rep told me that the public is unable to decide what they need, and microfuck (god) can decide better.

Mergers are often the life-saving end all to a business's life, I just wish there was another competitor out there. It looks like yahoo is on a downhill slide that will not be stopped without this merger, sad, but true.

Microfuck monopoly continues .........................

 

[TxRad]

Microfuck monopoly continues .....................


Thank whoever (Paste diety here ________) for Linux