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Yahoo Deal Is Big, but Is It the Next Big Thing?
Journal written by mattsgotredhair (945945) and posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Feb 03, 2008 08:23 AM
from the keeping-up-with-the-googses dept.
from the keeping-up-with-the-googses dept.
mattsgotredhair brings us a NYTimes article discussing how Microsoft's bid for Yahoo contrasts against one of the core philosophies of Silicon Valley: looking forward. From the Times:
"Microsoft may see Yahoo as its last best chance to catch up. But for all its size and ambition, the bid has not been greeted with enthusiasm. That may be because Silicon Valley favors bottom-up innovation instead of growth by acquisition. The region's investment money and brain power are tuned to start-ups that can anticipate the next big thing rather than chase the last one. 'This is the very nature of the Valley,' said Jim Breyer of the venture capital firm Accel Partners. 'After very strong growth, businesses by definition start to slow as competition increases and young creative start-ups begin to attack the incumbents.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Yahoo Bid shows Microsoft on the Ropes 402 comments
Ponca City, We Love You writes "One day after the announcement of Microsoft's plan to buy Yahoo, there is an interesting piece from the NY Times analyzing the reasons behind Microsoft's bid and proposing that the bid is a tacit, and difficult, admission that Microsoft did not get its online business right and that online losses continue to mount while Google makes billions in profit. Microsoft "finds itself in a battle where improving its search algorithms and online ad software is not going to be enough," writes the Times. With the Yahoo bid Microsoft is trying to buy a big enough share of the market to be a credible alternative to Google with online advertisers. "This shows just how worried Microsoft is by Google," says David B. Yoffie. "Microsoft has faced competitive threats before, but none with the size, strength, profitability and momentum of Google.""
[+]
Technology: Yahoo May Re-Consider Google Alliance, Rebuff Microsoft 273 comments
anastasd writes "Reuters is reporting that Yahoo might consider a business alliance with Google as a way to top a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft. 'Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft's bid, that source said. At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said. A second source close to Yahoo said it had received a procession of preliminary contacts by media, technology, telephone and financial companies. But the source said they were unaware whether any alternative bid was in the offing.'"
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wrong city (Score:5, Funny)
No, that's San Francisco.
What about Google? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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Like Yahoo and Microsoft for example.
I really do not get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I really do not get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I really do not get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
So either they'll have to do like they did with Hotmail, and let it run on FreeBSD until they've basically re-written in from scratch to use their technology. Of course, that will be very costly, and likely nowhere near as good as the original (like we've seen with Hotmail). They'll be in the same position they are now, except having spent far more money.
The HP/Compaq merger was far more about combining product lines, management teams, R&D, support teams, etc. That is, it was more about an organizational merger, rather than a technological acquisition.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's worse than that (Score:3, Insightful)
back to little things like PHP (Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP is an infrastructure engineer), FreeBSD, Apache, and Perl.
I have trouble seeing these individuals wasting time doing a like-to-like conversion from open to proprietary
tools and platforms just because there's money waved in front of them. At that point, what Microsoft has purchased
is yesterdays tools sans the minds that made them w
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So don't think that ANY Mic
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Re:I really do not get it... (Score:5, Informative)
The move was simply them "buying" marketshare in an attempt to trump Google.
Ummm, you are aware that Microsoft has not actually bought Yahoo, right? MS has made Yahoo an offer. Yahoo has not yet responded to that offer.
Parent
Re:I really do not get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a hostile take over where the purchaser could care less what either the board and the management thinks or responds.
Parent
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Re:I really do not get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I really do not get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
("The HP Way," Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard, page 142)
Parent
Re:I really do not get it... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Fix your damn operating system first (Score:2)
Ceding any further market share to Apple (or god forbid, Ubuntu) could seriously threaten their most lucrative monopoly.
Is this slashdot (Score:2)
Also, do you really think that throwing more programmers at a software project will make it be finished faster?
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This is what MS did before and it worked back then (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is what MS did before and it worked back t (Score:5, Insightful)
I really doubt that MS will disappear due to this or other missteps, but that does not mean the probabilities are nil to none.
Parent
But they already have Search (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This is what MS did before and it worked back t (Score:4, Insightful)
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for some definition of "work" (Score:4, Informative)
Is Microsoft making money off Hotmail? Is Hotmail inducing anybody to buy Windows or Office? If not, it was a waste of money. And I don't think it is: Microsoft lost $77m on MSN in 2006.
Saying that the most wealthy, successful software company in the world is doomed to failure for going against silicon valley reasoning is futile when that's what they've always done and made more than anyone else while doing.
Microsoft is making money with their near monopoly: Office and Windows. Anything else is negligible or a money loser.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20041022/MicrosoftResults.gif [nwsource.com]
http://www.newrowley.com/images/blog/2006/msft_profits606.jpg [newrowley.com]
It's a joke really. Nothing the company is doing is working. Even Xbox only has high revenue because it's subsidized so heavily and the company is bleeding money on it.
Parent
Is Silicon Valley right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, Silicon Valley VC folks love startups, because they get a piece of the action. Heck, they were happy as pigs in shit around 1998, despite the fact that about 1% of those startups had any hope of seeing a profit. But it doesn't mean that MS+Yahoo is destined to lose, simply because they're not the chic pick anymore.
None of that has any bearing on whether MS+Yahoo can beat Google or any of the hordes of little companies coming from Silicon Valley.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly, this is a money-making strategy for the VC. It's not necessarily good for the 9 failed businesses, some of whom might have been profitable if they had taken a more conserva
Re:Is Silicon Valley right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Other reasons for not being warm to the reception (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Other reasons for not being warm to the recepti (Score:3, Informative)
They currently have ~$1 billion a month in cash coming in, so even if it is a complete failure, they will have paid for it in a year or three.
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Anyway, here is a page listing all the dividends Microsoft has paid to shareholders:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=MSFT&a=02&b=13&c=1986&d=01&e=3&f=2008&g=v [yahoo.com]
There are about 9 billion shares outstanding, and there has been the entire time they have been paying dividends, so we can calculate that they have given ~$40 billion dollars to s
More criticism... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&sid=am1odVZXMwjk [bloomberg.com]
Can you say bye bye Balmer (Score:4, Funny)
Heck of a job, Balmy!
Parent
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Heck of a job, Balmy!
Time to switch email accounts again (Score:2)
It was really convenient with fetchyahoo.pl
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You have 13017 unread messages: Inbox(7395), Bulk(5622)
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That way people see your adress, but you grab it from anywhere you desire, without the roblems of setting up your own filters.
If 10USD a year (or less) is not worth it, it is not worth moaning over.
You then have about a year to move over the websites you find. The ones you do not catchm you will not have used anyway and you can set up a new account.
Wha? Isnt being acquired the dream ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Vut that is true for the small startups. For a company that used to be a big boy itself, may be it is not a very "respectable" thing. But respect is probably over rated anyway.
Favors bottom-up innovation? What about Cisco? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lewis Black's take on this ... (Score:5, Funny)
We need to build a big fuckin' thing. I don't care what it is, so long as it's big
Balmer (Score:2)
This is about realestate, not rewarding innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
Yahoo is a country with lots of geography. That's what Microsoft is buying.
It's not a new widget. It's not Web 2.0. It's not some sort of way-kewl social site with a new innovative bent.
It's the real estate. One more time: Microsoft is buying web real estate, not bottom feeding, not buying rotten tech.
MS loses to Google because of their choices (Score:5, Interesting)
MS's management will continue to make bad choices. If they had enough money to buy Google itself, and if anti-trust concerns weren't a factor, it wouldn't matter. They would break Google and push it into the ground. They problem isn't their strategic position. The problem is in between their ears.
Look at Hotmail and Gmail. Hotmail was a very early web email service. MS bought them. Then they just let it sit there. MS people saw Oddpost coming down the road, and they should have gotten all pumped up with what was possible. That's apparently what happened at Google -- someone saw that fancy Oddpost ajax email client, and said, let's do this better than Oddpost is doing it.
MS doesn't try to do much until someone pokes them with a stick, and a lot of times they don't do much even then. Right now the world is screaming at them about all of the things wrong with Vista, and their response is -- no, you are all STUPID, and we are right, and you just don't get how awesome Vista is.
They're not fixing anything.
They're the victims of their own monopoly. They're fat and stupid and lazy, and they think the world owes them success. They're insanely profitable, but it's because they're in the catbird seat, and not because they're earning it. They don't have to earn it, and because they don't feel the heat, they can't earn it.
So you know, sit back in your lavish headquarters, and reminisce about how great it was to go out and threaten to cut off people's air supplies, and how wonderful the world was when you could bully people effectively.
I feel bad for yahoo. I remember when it was just some page on a guy's workstation at stanford. They did a lot of great things. They don't deserve this ignominious fate.
And there are stories floating around that yahoo people are saying -- there's no way in hell that we'll work for MS. So, MS, know that everyone dislikes you. And know that it's a direct consequence of your deliberately cultivated culture of bullying and thuggery.
Everyone at yahoo knows that when you buy that company, you're going to break it, and that going to work on a day to day basis is going to suck. And believe it or not, that has a lot to do with why you will not beat google.
Someday google will suck too. Their culture will rot, and dumb people will climb on top of the smart people. But that day is a long way off.
So you know, go off and think about how to make sure my monitor will prevent me from playing unauthorized videos, or how to make my computer's audio system check up on the license status of my music. Because I'm your customer, and believe me, that's what I'm really pining away for. That's what I want more than anything. You know me so well it's scary sometimes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. And the result is that Hotmail has considerably more users than Gmail.
Surely MS isn't the Ravenous Blugblatter Beast (Score:4, Insightful)
Add to that, one more company that isn't successful at competing with Google.
What you end up with is one much larger company that isn't able to compete with Google.
I find it truly inconceivable that someone thinks this is a good idea for either company. If Yahoo were truly on the bleeding edge I could actually buy this proposal but Yahoo has been in catch up mode itself. The only thing I believe that this does for MS is provide a much larger market share for Google to take from them.
Re:What makes a search engine worth so much ? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Could it be .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately for MS, the real threat to Google will most likely be from another startup kind of like what this article is getting at. What I find intersting is that if the patent system actually worked, one of the early search engines such as web crawler or alta vista would still control the market and companies such as Google and MS would have had to bow out secondary to valid patents. - and this would allow these companies in theory to grow their technology - plus they could use the patent clout to recruit the appropriate talent (in theory).
In the end the thing that will hurt the US economy the most is globalization and the realization that intelligence and the ability to "create" isn't as valuable as it may seem. It can be converted to a commodity along with almost everything else.
If soft engineers in this country want protection, they will most likely need a union and a licensing exam like lawyers and doctors
Parent
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From what I can tell, some of their FOSS developers may already be getting offers from Google, since the new Yahoo will likely be at the best unrewarding for those developers.
Which brings me to a question...what happens to Zimbra? Which is now a Yahoo product and a major competitor to Exchange...