Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 bln. That’s a megadeal to try and kill Google, since the House that Bill Built has had little success in the online ad world.
Online advertising sales will double from 40 billion dollars in 2007 “to nearly 80 billion in 2010,” it forecast.I never use MSN/Hotmail or whatever they are calling it these days. I do have a Yahoo account as well as Gmail, and Yahoo’s webmail client is extremely pokey. This potential consolidation only highlights the possibility that “freemail” may not have much of a lifespan left. What do you think the impact of this may be if the deal goes through?Yahoo would offer Microsoft a search engine to compete with Google, a popular web portal for email, shopping and news, as well as one of the most recognized brands among online users.
…Yahoo has been hit by sluggish revenue growth despite launching a new online advertising platform a year ago and having hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
Under the Microsoft offer, Yahoo shareholders can elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft stock, with its total offer consisting of one-half cash and one-half stock.
And the biggest question of all - when do we expect to see Ken Hutcherson’s mug again, bleating about his master plan to bring Microsoft to its knees by asking evangelicals to buy up enough shares of MS (buy 3, give him 1) to have a majority vote and run the software giant in the bible-based tradition they believe in? A flashback to his threat:
I guess Yahoo should start trembling right about now…
Ken at the MS shareholder’s meeting: “I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me. I don’t care how big Microsoft is … “They are nothing but a feather in the wind of God. America basically got started with a tea party and Goliath, if I’m not mistaken, got taken down by David, who believed in the same cause I believe in. “I’m going to go after the new Goliath with one little rock called a share and I’m going to make them tremble before we get through.”
13 Responses to “The Microsoft empire may swallow Yahoo - what will Hutch do?”
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I just hope Microsoft leaves Flickr alone. Yahoo! was smart enough to refrain from overhauling that service after they acquired it. The acquisition allowed Flickr to do what they were already doing, only better (and with more capital).
I don’t really trust Microsoft to do the same.
That’s a megadeal to try and kill Google
So two flagging companies can merge and trump a successful one? I’m no MBA but that doesn’t seem right to me.
I’m sure some bean counter has come up with an excellent rationale for why the companies have synergy. At the end of the day, though, if they don’t offer products that people want, they’re still in trouble. Both of these brands are absolutely in the toilet after years of being shown up by Apple and Google.
Pam, I did my part to piss off Hutch. I bought an Xbox 360 at launch, and spent hundreds of dollars on games, accessories, Xbox Live renewals, and MS Points. If you get an X360, Pam, I’ll add you tro my friends list. ^_^
Yahoo is the AT&T DSL mail client. Imagine teaming AT&T, which wants to spy on all web activity, with MicroSatan, which wants to know all and be all.
Ack!
I work at Yahoo and we are really going piss off Hutch! We have domestic partner benefits, child adoption leave, and Yahoo!Pride regularly puts on events, puts up posters, etc. I can’t wait for him to protest us,
80% to 90% of all mergers fail - that is, the whole ends up less than the sum of its parts (Sprint Nextel, anyone?). I kind of hope this goes the same way.
Pam, I did my part to piss off Hutch. I bought an Xbox 360 at launch
I think one can quite easily assume Hutch is continuing to use Microsoft products as well.
You can never kill off Google. NEVER. It’s like the blob, it will continue to spread and absorb everything in it’s path and just when you think you’ve stopped it, it starts again!
I also am skeptical as to what good Microsoft expects to get from Yahoo! What will the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft to offer that is competitive with Google?
I’m a little sad to see Yahoo! having the troubles it is because in its heyday, it really offered a lot. I used its search engine all the time, it was the first web-based email client I used (I signed up for Yahoo! Mail since the very beginning and still use it today), and My Yahoo! has been my home page in all of my web browsers for years. Though I have to say, I’m giving iGoogle (and the Google products associated with it) a go to see if they truly are better than Yahoo!
I recently went out on a date with a woman who works (as a temp, but is trying to get a permanent position) for Microsoft, and she mentioned offhand that she and other members of her workgroup got an e-mail message from one of the higher-ups that talked about the weaknesses of Google and how Microsoft would respond. I was curious, and so I asked her to tell me what the e-mail said (if she was allowed to reveal it), but she said that too much of it was over her head and that she didn’t pay much attention to it. Drat.
Actually, wicked zoot, I hope it doesn’t happen at all. I know software developers at both companies, and the cultures (not to speak of the codebases) are entirely incompatible. Any hopes of integrating Yahoo and MSN would depend upon pulling it off quickly (else it just gives Google more time to pull even farther ahead). And that’s just not going to happen. It took years for MS to integrate HotMail, and that was just a tiny percentage of Yahoo in size and scope.
I’ve got to wonder if Ballmer & co. really just want to take Yahoo down, or spend a hell of a lot more than they paid to fail and wind up eating Google’s dust, after all.
I also am skeptical as to what good Microsoft expects to get from Yahoo! What will the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft to offer that is competitive with Google?
If I had to make a guess, it would be that not many people are currently using Windows Live. So they buy Yahoo, rename Yahoo Personal Home Page to “Windows Live”, and bam! N thousand people are using Windows Live!
Of course this is just a guess. It may well be the answer to “why is Microsoft doing this?” is “because they can.”
What is the “synergy” doing to expand markets, rather than simply attempting to eat someone else’s lunch, er, “market share”? This isn’t about “better”, or “more expansive”… it’s about taking a bite out of Google. Good Capitalism?
I watched what MSN did in their absorption of webtv… they hung it out to dry. It still features an IE 2.2 browser… and turned a pretty good, simple email system into crap, without expanding its actual advantages (that the hard drives in webtv machines are “buffered” in Mountain View, and can’t be violated by virus).
If Microsoft wanted to do something Novel, that would eventually pay back shareholders & build tons of good will, they should build a toll bridge across Lake Washington to the highway which accesses their campus… a “public/private” partnership with legs (if their “vision” weren’t simply driven by vindictive greed).
^..^
The takeover would be blatantly illegal under US anti-trust laws. Of course, the Bush regime seldom enforces those laws and is in Microsoft’s pockets.
The most irritating thing for me is that I like my Yahoo Mail accounts and don’t want to switch them. But, I also don’t want to wait for the outhouse that Bill Gates built to totally trash Yahoo Mail and have to switch in a panicked rush.
Things like this remind me of how slimy the Bush regime and Microsoft really are.