It really must suck to be Microsoft these days. Their attempt to buy Yahoo for more money that they actually have was a desperate move to begin with. And now they even got rejected. Who know that Yahoo! of all companies had choices. In this whole M$ bid media frenzy everybody seem to have forgotten about the layoff story that Yahoo had coming out. Yahoo is ailing. But they seem to have decided that they rather disolve like AOL or Netscape than to be part of would have been the worst merger in the history of Internet companies. Hitting on the ugly girl, since you think you have a chance is bad enough. Getting rejected leaves you with a little less than nothing. Not that I would know anything about that.
Month: February 2008
After 04 I thought I would not care about the elections again. But that would actually mean letting Bush win for the third time. Regardless how odd and wrong it was to let that happen twice, it should not repeat again. It probably is always worth trying to make the world a better place. So I officially endorse Obama here. Mrs. Clinton is just this years Kerry. And we all know how well Hermann Munster worked. America can vote for the better president. It has done so in the past. Not particularly this century. But -honestly- the choices were not to great either. Bush, Kerry and Gore. 2 or less sylables in a name are simply not enough.
Microsoft tries to buy Yahoo. For 46 billion dollars. 4 short years ago they would have had that kind of money in cash. And then some. Cursorly googling around it seems that M$ cash reserve has melted down to 29 billion. So they would need to raise money to buy Yahoo. They would get eyeballs and visitors. But then what? The technology running Yahoo is completely free of any Microsoft stuff. Yahoo has been actively supporting things like javascript libraries and other open source related items. Will Microsoft run now Unix servers? They have to, or they will kill Yahoo in the attempt to transfer it to their technology base. Yahoo had years to grow. It’s a start up with 15,000 people. Give or take a thousand that needs to get layed of. Or not.
Microsoft used to be the biggest software company in the world. By numbers as well as in the minds of the people. IBM used to be the biggest computer company. Microsoft can consider itself very lucky if it will do as well as IBM does right in a couple of years. Once Gates had left nothing really worked any longer. People will say that. Maybe Bill wants to pull off a Steve, and come back one day?
Google lost two competitors today: Yahoo and Microsoft will be absent from any innovation for a long time while they try to figure to integrate what they have. Maybe in 2009 they emerge with an ok conglomerate of what they were in 2007. Allot of time to get new things going for Google.