Om Malik and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that the much talked about Microsoft/Yahoo rumors won’t come to fruition and that the talks are off.
I’ll tell ya one thing, though. It sure made for interesting conversation with a Yahoo employee I met tonight. We were starting to draw up where value would be built and where it’d be destroyed. There were a lot of places it would be destroyed and if two guys drinking beer can figure that out in half an hour, I’m sure that caused smarter people than us to put on the brakes. For instance one of Yahoo’s biggest properties is its email service. But that’s one of Microsoft’s biggest properties too (aka Hotmail). Then you look at finance sites. Microsoft is doing pretty well there with Microsoft Money (I met an employee who works there too and he said both Microsoft and Yahoo are way ahead of Google in finance traffic). Then you look at mapping. Again, they are pretty strong competitors there. Search? Who’s search technology would be thrown away? Advertising technology? Both Microsoft and Yahoo are pretty close there. Flickr? Clear value creation in an acquisition cause Microsoft doesn’t have anything like it. Same with Del.icio.us, Upcoming.org, Yahoo Answers, MyBlogLog. Portal? Yahoo is clear winner in brand name, but that’s just cause Microsoft has done an awful job in rebranding everything as “Live.”
So, there would be lots of laid off employees in such a merger and that probably sat heavily with Yahoo’s board cause Microsofties would have been in the drivers seat (even where they shouldn’t be, really).
Where would value have been created? Well, if they could keep their relative market shares in all these places after mashing them together then they could really make a run at Google.
But, it all is talk now that the deal is off (I trust Om, he has killer contacts).
Scobleizer 
Merging isn’t good for both the companies atleast when they have products which ranks 2nd and 3rd in the markets;All they have do is realize their strengths individually(mail or desktop) and choose that as their pivot(platform) for the rest of their products 🙂
I am glad the merger didn’t take place
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Merging isn’t good for both the companies atleast when they have products which ranks 2nd and 3rd in the markets;All they have do is realize their strengths individually(mail or desktop) and choose that as their pivot(platform) for the rest of their products 🙂
I am glad the merger didn’t take place
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M$ think sergey and larry are stupid or what?
M$ wanted google to counter offer and buy yahoo.
One less competitor and M$ would be number two.
50billion less in google’s pocket. No real benefit for google.
M$ was never interested in yahoo.
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M$ think sergey and larry are stupid or what?
M$ wanted google to counter offer and buy yahoo.
One less competitor and M$ would be number two.
50billion less in google’s pocket. No real benefit for google.
M$ was never interested in yahoo.
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Does anybody consider the cost of simply talking about these deals?
There was MS and Claria too.
As far fetched as it may seem, it could be that some MS lawyers and executives may have done this knowing it would never happen to rack up deductible vacation time and to write off a lot of otherwise personal expenses.
There have been way too many “near miss” microsoft deals not to consider this.
You don’t spend the amount of money it costs to negotiate these types of deals in failure without a second motivation behind it.
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Does anybody consider the cost of simply talking about these deals?
There was MS and Claria too.
As far fetched as it may seem, it could be that some MS lawyers and executives may have done this knowing it would never happen to rack up deductible vacation time and to write off a lot of otherwise personal expenses.
There have been way too many “near miss” microsoft deals not to consider this.
You don’t spend the amount of money it costs to negotiate these types of deals in failure without a second motivation behind it.
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Execs at a company like microsoft who which to misappropriate, could be doing these near missed deals just to write off everything they would have done otherwise.
There are just too many misses for it to be legit at this point. MS is made of individuals, and they’re all looking out for #1, them.
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Execs at a company like microsoft who which to misappropriate, could be doing these near missed deals just to write off everything they would have done otherwise.
There are just too many misses for it to be legit at this point. MS is made of individuals, and they’re all looking out for #1, them.
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crap, #4 and #5 should be completely enclosed in parenthesis and be post fixed by a question mark ?. I forgot, sorry.
(Does anybody consider the cost of simply talking about these deals?
There was MS and Claria too … MS is made of individuals, and they’re all looking out for #1, them.)?
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crap, #4 and #5 should be completely enclosed in parenthesis and be post fixed by a question mark ?. I forgot, sorry.
(Does anybody consider the cost of simply talking about these deals?
There was MS and Claria too
…
MS is made of individuals, and they’re all looking out for #1, them.)?
Such as is above. I can not edit the comment.
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crap, #4 and #5 should be completely enclosed in parenthesis and be post fixed by a question mark ?. I forgot, sorry.
(Does anybody consider the cost of simply talking about these deals?
There was MS and Claria too
…
MS is made of individuals, and they’re all looking out for #1, them.)?
Such as is above. I can not edit the comment.
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crap, #4 and #5 should be completely enclosed in parenthesis and be post fixed by a question mark ?. I forgot, sorry.
(Does anybody consider the cost of simply talking about these deals?
There was MS and Claria too … MS is made of individuals, and they’re all looking out for #1, them.)?
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I use Yahoo Mail for my email and I would have stopped using it if it was acquired by Microsoft. Same with del.icio.us.
Yahoo I trust, Microsoft I don’t.
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I use Yahoo Mail for my email and I would have stopped using it if it was acquired by Microsoft. Same with del.icio.us.
Yahoo I trust, Microsoft I don’t.
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“Who’s search technology would be thrown away? ”
A rhetorical question given Microsoft’s inability to make much of an inroad in the search market, even with some very smart people involved.
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“Who’s search technology would be thrown away? ”
A rhetorical question given Microsoft’s inability to make much of an inroad in the search market, even with some very smart people involved.
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I use flickr a lot, and when I heard the possibility that it would be enfolded into the Microsoft entity, I shuddered, and starting thinking of alternatives.
Glad it wont’/hasn’t materialized.
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I use flickr a lot, and when I heard the possibility that it would be enfolded into the Microsoft entity, I shuddered, and starting thinking of alternatives.
Glad it wont’/hasn’t materialized.
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“Yahoo I trust, Microsoft I don’t.”
I’m not sure I could bring myself to trust any major corporation, let alone one which has knowingly given information to the chinese gov’t that resulted in the jailing of dissidents.
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“Yahoo I trust, Microsoft I don’t.”
I’m not sure I could bring myself to trust any major corporation, let alone one which has knowingly given information to the chinese gov’t that resulted in the jailing of dissidents.
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The very first thing I thought about when I read the (hypothetical/postulated) news about the buy-out, was that Microsoft would be throwing money away. I didn’t think the same would’ve also been true of Yahoo!
But that would have been equally true as well. (Terribile, isn’t it, that when a company gets bought out, it winds up throwing most of its value away. Maybe that’s 21.C innovation … 😉
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The very first thing I thought about when I read the (hypothetical/postulated) news about the buy-out, was that Microsoft would be throwing money away. I didn’t think the same would’ve also been true of Yahoo!
But that would have been equally true as well. (Terribile, isn’t it, that when a company gets bought out, it winds up throwing most of its value away. Maybe that’s 21.C innovation … 😉
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