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- RamboJesus, on 10/11/2007, -4/+51Alright. The two search pages I never ever use will become one that I can hate even more.
- robdazomba, on 10/11/2007, -1/+41> Ever heard of a hostile takeover?
Microsoft likes to call that "partnering." - mrASSMAN, on 10/11/2007, -3/+39Your mom touches my yahoo.
- canewediggit, on 10/11/2007, -8/+38i think you mean google needs to buy apple;
goog mkt cap; 146.61B
aapl mkt cap; 96.86B - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+22I got a severe case of msn from hitting your sister's yahoo without protection.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+21I am confused. Is it 1998? I thought the morons running these companies learned a few things from the first tech bubble.
- EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -3/+21@Ivan, bigger and bigger companies is generally a bad thing for everyone but them. More competition is generally a good thing for everyone else.
- silverchrysalis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17corporate giants eating each other- maybe someday they'll all be swallowed into a wormhole and we can start over
- etnu, on 10/11/2007, -5/+19I will bet large sums of money that Microsoft will not acquire Yahoo.
The only people who thinks it "makes sense" are people who know nothing about the cultures of these companies.
The only good thing that might come from MS buying Yahoo would be MS destroying themselves.
I can see it now:
- Microsoft buys Yahoo.
- Microsoft decides that they bought Yahoo for the brand, not the tech.
- Microsoft begins converting everything yahoo over to microsoft technology
- Truly valuable developers start leaving, not wanting to give up FreeBSD (or Linux) or learn C#.
- Microsoft guts the search and advertising divisions, replacing everything with their web search
- Good management* who held on see all their work disappear. They start leaving.
- Microsoft decides all customers need to start using passport to sign in to yahoo
- Customers leave for google's services
- Microsoft shareholders start revolting after massive restructuring losses
- Microsoft lays off most of the remaining yahoo employees in an effort to save face
- 5 years later, yahoo.com is a redirect to msn.com
* ok, I know Yahoo doesn't actually have much "good management" left these days, but there are still some people kicking around...somewhere. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+13Does she google your yahoo as well as just touch it?
- HigherLogic, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9Short answer: Gmail.
- badken, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9Having spent several years as a employee (software engineer) at each of these companies, I can say with some confidence that a deal like this would destroy Yahoo utterly.
The two companies' cultures couldn't be more different.
This news reminds me of the old tech joke from when Apple worked with IBM on an operating system back in the early 90's.
"What do you get when you cross Apple and IBM?"
"IBM."
And that's exactly what happened back then, too. - vemerge, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10Ever heard of a hostile takeover?
- redrock34, on 10/11/2007, -4/+11Analysts Likely Want Their Yahoo Shares To Skyrocket From Microsoft Purchase, Redrock34 Says.
- etnu, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Microsoft couldn't afford Google. The closest they could come would be a merger. There is a higher probability of a zombie apocalypse happening.
- cybe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Yeah, if Microsoft buys Yahoo then I'll move my del.icio.us bookmarks and Flickr photos elsewhere...
- jm9206755, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Hasn't MS already tried to acquire Yahoo twice and been told to take a hike? I think they were in talks a couple of months ago that went nowhere....
- Jugalator, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Flickr -> Microsoft Windows Live! Gallery. :-s
- Shaman760, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Can't polish a turd...
- anagoge, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4So doesn't that technically mean Microsoft will also own Flickr? Could be an interesting platform to launch Photosynth with.
- unusualbob, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Google photos anyone?
- etnu, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Not likely in Yahoo's case -- there's a poison pill clause that prevents hostile takeovers from happening.
Any acquisition will be willing (well, at least on the part of the large shareholders and senior executives....employees may have different ideas). - spyk3d, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4ORLY?
- jimcarrey363, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3"Microsoft's plan to buy Web advertising firm aQuantive increases the likelihood that the software giant will also buy Yahoo"
YES! Even MORE reason to use Google instead of Yahoo now!! - etnu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Yahoo mostly uses FreeBSD, with the big exception being the companies that they've acquired over the last decade, most of which are linux based.
- geronimo, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5So here are the top online advertising players listed.
Valueclick - linux shop
Google - linux shop
Yahoo - linux shop. - thomasprebble, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Weren't Microsoft bitching only a few weeks ago about Google's acquisition of DoubleClick? Seems kind of hypercritical now.
- robdazomba, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3At long last, scientists will get to witness what happens when two mediocre galaxies collide.
- dgr814vr, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Google and its current purchasing spree has gone a bit out of control. And unfortunatly Google has also stopped innovating on a lot of its major services. A lot of the major ones that are providing competition were not created inhouse. Microsoft and Yahoo both could realise that Google may have hit a (albeit temporary) plateau providing them a small chance to play catchup. A Microsoft Yahoo merger may actually even the playing field.
Google is currently holding a lot of information of a lot of people and is adding more and more services under its belt. Free or not, they want to know too much and after using the new history service of theirs i was a little paranoid. For sure MSN and Yahoo also have this information but I would rather not be recognised by one id across just across everything i do on the Internet. Google is getting to be too much of an Information Vault. And despite a do no evil mantra of the company one crooked employee is all it really takes... - Fraff5, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2R.I.P. Del.icio.us =[
- unusualbob, on 10/11/2007, -3/+5well if microsuck touches a thing it will probably start dying
- nobullmouth, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2There goes the neighborhood. I kinda think Microsoft has already had some say in Yahoo, I have recently quit using it altogether, ever since they started having giant animated pop-up ads invade my screen every time I got to that page. What a joke. Maybe they should rename it to Boohoo?
- Hooj, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1If this does happen (big IF), I hope they do not mess with Flickr. I rather enjoy that service and would hate to see it go downhill.
- geronimo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Thanks, I was unsure about that. I know from firsthand experience that vclk and goog are linux shops.
- TheSepGuy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1The whole space is heating up. It' not just about Microsoft and AQNT. It's about Yahoo and Right Media; WPP and 24/7; Google and Doubleclick. It's even about Reuters and Thomson to a degree.
Information consolidation. Eyeballs.
Interesting enough, the trends seems to be towards banner/graphic ads versus text ads.
Having tested, low click through rates are about size, not content. And you'll notice that larger ad size is taking on a lot of importance for sites like the NYTimes or the GlobeandMail.com here in Canada.
I do think MSN will buy Yahoo. But who will buy VCLK?
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/this-internet-advertising-thing-might-really-catch-on.html - Spr0k3t, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2So I guess this means Yahoo will go from an extremely cluttered ad-ridden home page to a non-standard cluttered ad-ridden bloated home page? Something like this will happen though. If MS does not purchase a service like Yahoo, it will go after another service of equal services to build their own. MS has their target on what they need to do to take over the strength Google has in the web market. So far, the acquisition of the advertising organization they purchased is a start, but MS still has major problems in their own services they have to fix before they gain ground on what Google has to offer. The hardest component MS will need to fix: reputation.
- Kazrog, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Impossible. Not going to happen.
- Anteros, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I'm sure the owners at yahoo are going to love being described as a company that can "plug a hole"
- calenti, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I pretty much agree with your scenario, though I'd reorder it a bit.
First the developers/managers who can leave (both the mercenaries and the ones who love their school of tech fu enough to be so skilled they get picked up right away) leave. This leaves behind the clock-punchers and warm bodies and begins a brain drain which (coupled with market losses and brand dilution) eventually undermines Yahoo operations to the point where there's a need for retrenching, and smart MS guys are brought in to bring order to chaos.
Like any group of senior IT guys/gals faced with occupied territory, their first instinct will be to standardize the systems (msn passport or whatever they're calling it now) and that will accelerate the google share, and it will lead to the other steps you list.
Either way, your result is the same: five years hence yahoo.com redirects to msn.com. - InvisibleMan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@spyk3d
O'REILLY AUTOMOTIVE, INC. ? - duhblow7, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3Microsoft: "Yahoo, we are going to buy you!"
Yahoo: "Microsoft, you don't have enough money"
Hasn't this happened before? - aiten, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Then it's time to stop using Yahoo! Byebye!
- johnchr, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1MS and Yahoo are technologically incompatible! MS could not stand to have all that FreeBSD and PHP remain in Yahoo. They would destroy Yahoo in attempting to switch it over to Windows. Anyone remember Hotmail? It's still rumoured that the back-end of Hotmail is Solaris and sendmail because MS could never get Windows/Exchange to scale.
- unusualbob, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2the reason they want to buy it is to slowly push google down. Google relies mainly on advertising to make any money, if microsoft can stop that then they can gain in the search engine market and get Google to stop sponsoring open source. Google is basically an anti microsoft, with their free Google documents and so much more microsoft's profit margin will be lower, and we all know mr gates cant handle that.
- maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Microsoft is like giving a $100 bill to a six year old, never seen so much money so he wants to buy the world.
- canewediggit, on 10/11/2007, -5/+5no clue, but it's certainly interesting to watch and will have some pretty big ramifications. and it seems to make sense, after the aquantive deal msft needs somewhere to serve those ads since nobody searches w/ them.
- maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1What get's me is that yahoo has a much more diverse market than we think, if MS bought yahoo, not only would it inherit yahoo search and email, etc. But it would inherit yahoo's deal with SBC/AT&T/Ameritech (haha all one company now).
- PureHeretic, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I just read the title and spoke out "Oh ***** that"
google FTW! :D - nitrojunky24, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1this again! will this story ever die? sorry don't think it will happen it makes no sense.
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