Protracted acquisition battles are always annoying, but the lengthy stalking of Yahoo by Microsoft, to me, had its own special layer of yick: those endless attempts at trying to smash the words Yahoo and Microsoft together. Way too cute for lil' miss Adverganza. On a more serious note, even if there were certain business reasons for Microsoft to own Yahoo, it seemed like a cultural misfit from the beginning, whereas the search advertising deal that Yahoo struck with Google yesterday—which killed any thoughts Microsoft might have had about still getting hitched to Yahoo—sounds right, no matter what the antitrust regulators, or Carl Icahn, or Steve Ballmer, might eventually have to say in the matter. Even after all of the numbers are crunched, it's hard to discount the importance of entities that are working so closely together having a similar world view. Google and Yahoo are different companies, no question, but both come from that quirky Silicon Valley mindset. Last time I was at Yahoo (admittedly, it's been awhile), the campus was filled with purple and yellow flowers. You could picture Google doing something similar, but that would happen at Microsoft over Ballmer's dead body. Let's hear it for YaGoogle! Doh! (Photo via Opencontent on Flickr.)
Friday, June 13, 2008
Woo-hoo! No more MicroHoo, YaSoft etc.
Protracted acquisition battles are always annoying, but the lengthy stalking of Yahoo by Microsoft, to me, had its own special layer of yick: those endless attempts at trying to smash the words Yahoo and Microsoft together. Way too cute for lil' miss Adverganza. On a more serious note, even if there were certain business reasons for Microsoft to own Yahoo, it seemed like a cultural misfit from the beginning, whereas the search advertising deal that Yahoo struck with Google yesterday—which killed any thoughts Microsoft might have had about still getting hitched to Yahoo—sounds right, no matter what the antitrust regulators, or Carl Icahn, or Steve Ballmer, might eventually have to say in the matter. Even after all of the numbers are crunched, it's hard to discount the importance of entities that are working so closely together having a similar world view. Google and Yahoo are different companies, no question, but both come from that quirky Silicon Valley mindset. Last time I was at Yahoo (admittedly, it's been awhile), the campus was filled with purple and yellow flowers. You could picture Google doing something similar, but that would happen at Microsoft over Ballmer's dead body. Let's hear it for YaGoogle! Doh! (Photo via Opencontent on Flickr.)
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Hi Catherine,
I enjoy your blogging but on this topic I have to say you have it completely wrong.
Jerry has just destroyed Yahoo! and everyone I have spoken to in marketing, stockbrokers, financial analysts and beyond agree.
Yahoo! has just handed over the only strategic value and intellectual property they actually have on their balance sheet and that is monetising their eyeballs. The value they had up their sleeves was the opportunity to innovate and monetise those eyeballs around their own systems, innovations and technology. And all Jerry has done now just to spite Microsoft is give away this IP and capital to Google which will slowly and surely undermind Yahoo! This is why you have already seen over the past few weeks some of the most senior management depart the company and many more will follow.
By what rationale do you come to te conclusion that Yahoo! wouldn't have thrived with the injection of billions of dollars from Microsoft?
Microsoft purchasing aQuantive which includes Avenue A Razorfish, ATLAS and Drive etc have thrived.
No one and no company is perfect but your naive comment that Yahoo! and Google together is good is really sad as all it will do is stifle innovation in search and now lower competition which is bad for all of us.
I personally don't understand the completely childish and irrational hatred of a company such as Microsoft which practically created Silicon Valley by establishing the ubiquity pf the computer and it has continued to deliver double digit revenue and profit growth for the past 7 years. Companies who make bad products which customers don't want don't continue to grow like they have.
Anyway, I guess the cult of Apple, Google and OpenSource have brainwashed so many people that these same people cannot see the forest for the trees and can no longer make an objective analysis and rational judgements.
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