Published by nick on 05 Feb 2008 at 03:35 am
Microsoft does not want to buy Yahoo!
What’s Steve Ballmer really up to?
I kept thinking to myself, Steve can’t seriously be considering this. He can’t possibly be ignoring all of the issues of a combined company:
- Culture shock — A lot of Yahoo!’s, self included, are Linux people. We will be embarrassed to have Microsoft on our resume, and some will likely leave
- Integration challenges — I won’t list them all out
- Anti trust — Given Microsoft’s history, Steve should know that the government will certainly take issue with Yahoo Mail and Hotmail, MSN Messner and Yahoo Instant Messenger, and others.
I’m calling your bluff Steve. We both know you don’t really want to buy Yahoo!. Why the offer then? Let’s speculate. Sometimes in business, you ask for much more than you really want. Then, when that doesn’t happen, you still win by conceding on something smaller. So he comes in with a threat to buy/takeover, and will settle for something less. What is the "something less" that he could be after? I haven’t figured that part out yet, but here are some ideas:
- A partnership to team up against Google. Not a takeover, but a tangible deal that aligns the two companies together as a team.
- A meaty advertising deal
- Better product interoperability. Have services such as Hotmail and Yahoo mail work better together
Let’s see what happens, but I don’t think that it’s about a takeover — even Microsoft knows that’s a bad idea.
Robert Powell on 05 Feb 2008 at 9:18 pm #
Well said. Very true and that is exactly the future I see for this event. While Google panders about this merger being pure evil Yahoo and Microsoft will play the position of not as evil because there is still two separate entities whereas if Google gets much bigger it will control well over 50%. I think it is only a matter of time before Google ends up in the same position as Microsoft where they will be forced to align instead of takeover as they usually do. I hope I can guess which company it will be before it happens. I completely missed out on this most recent activity. How about Amazon or eBay? Should I buy some of that stock?
ZimbraFan on 19 Feb 2008 at 2:34 pm #
True MS does not want Yahoo! - the company. But Unfortunately, MS wants the brand and the users . They can buy that and get rid of most of Yahoo’s technology, kill/spin-off everything but the news/sports portal and the mail, merge the messenger. Replace the search and ad network. Kill Zimbra. As a matter of fact, MS will have to fire all the open source contributors for violation of conflict of interest policy.