Microsoft Corporation has announced that it has made a proposal to acquire Yahoo! for approximately USD 44.6 billion. link

Holy s***! I thought this was an April Fool's joke at first.

Well that's a silly assumption to make in February.

Though I agree, I wouldn't have expected to ever hear this news.

I think they are a perfect match.

Microsoft's search sucks, so does Yahoo's. Like Yahoo, Microsoft bloats most of its products with things that are of no benefit to the user. They both get a hardon for flashy in your face advertising.

phoawr.. google must be worth eleventy gazillion dollars then...

But yahoo is s***.

a bugger they didn't buy google when it showed promise.. for them


it's be interesting to see Google come out with an OS actually.

MS need some decent competition and Apple just isn't doing it

a bugger they didn't buy google when it showed promise.. for them

I'm sure they at least thought about it - I remember being in the US in 99 when VMWare had just been formed and was just starting off. I remember someone telling me MS (I think it was MS; it might've been like Sun or someone maybe?) had offered them like $400million for the company and they turned it down - because they thought it was going to be much more.

It's possible that MS made an offer but Google rejected it cuz they figured they'd make more going their own way. Probably true so far; I saw their share price the other day and it sounds like they're still doing OK

it's like that old Amway phrase:

"potential and a dollar can buy a cup of coffee"

coffee is $1.oo =/


MS do the best they can given the game they have to play. I argued Term was an idiot to let CA sponsorship thru his fingers years ago. Who was to know what could become of it =/


Life goes on, and we learn from our experience.

last edited by koopz at 21:44:28 02/Feb/08

I argued Term was an idiot to let CA sponsorship thru his fingers years ago. Who was to know what would become of it =/

Question mark? Nothing slipped through anyone's fingers; CA decided they didn't like us any more based on some content on the forum, and we decided we didn't want to deal with people that didn't get the internet

CA couldn't understand planes and treadmills either?

I think the MS/Yahoo deal won't be too bad. I don't know alot about Yahoo business other than search engine, IM and ads but it just seems MS will be doing this to bolster the areas they are lacking.

What will be interesting is MS next move after buying Yahoo.. buying out Yahoo is surely just step 1 in some grand master plan that they are setting in motion.

So we'll soon be seeing "Microsoft!" ?

In all seriousness though, I heard this was because of the shortage of good devs - Microsoft are after the company as it's the best way to acquire a large number of high quality developers/architects etc, rather than being after Yahoo's IP.

Makes sense really, if it's true.

Microsoft are after the company as it's the best way to acquire a large number of high quality developers/architects etc, rather than being after Yahoo's IP

Yahoo are a massive massive source of the magical C word, "content". They'll get a lot of good IP but nothing they couldn't develop themselves, not for $44b anyway - I suspect this is mostly about getting access/ownership to the content and using it as a further revenue generating tool. Getting access to staff is always a good thing too, but I don't think it's that big a deal.

heh

er noone gives a f***? =/

last edited by rolo_tomasi at 23:46:51 02/Feb/08

last edited by rolo_tomasi at 00:02:44 03/Feb/08

er noone gives a f***? =/

point taken - and commentry removed

Microsoft are just buying a % of the search market so they can go to advertisers claiming to have Live + Yahoo % of the search market whatever bit that is of the 40% google doesn't have... The problem with the piddly bit of the search market that MS LiveSearch has is advertisers know a lot of it isn't real searches, it's just people forced their by the defaults in IE...

I wouldn't be suprised if they didn't change Yahoo.com one bit apart from the advert network.

The link below mentions some of the possible tech ramifications from this merger.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=438692&cid=22260244

last edited by ccl at 01:37:06 03/Feb/08

er noone gives a f***? =/

I care more about this than someones cat..

SHAZHAM

Microsoft + Yahoo = Google Competitor

natslovR is correct.. this is about the search market. Ownership of Yahoo will give Microsoft 37.5% of the search market.

Its also about web based apps. Yahoo have developed a number of web based apps and Microsoft will want to offer 'live' versions of the office suite. At the moment google has something like half a percent of the office ap market with their online google apps, but Microsoft obviously believes there is a future in online delivery (and they probably like the idea of charging subcriptions.. and web based delivery solving piracy problems).

More than anything Yahoo turned out a s*** profit last year so their stock is way down. Microsoft might be able to get a "bargain".

Who was to know what would become of it =/

who was to know indeed!

(dubbel you tee eff question mark question mark question mark)

More than anything Yahoo turned out a s*** profit last year so their stock is way down. Microsoft might be able to get a "bargain".

From what I've read it may even be the opposite. They are offering a lot more than its worth as kind of a "Don't even think about out bidding us"/"You can't refuse this" deal. (Can't find the link, I think it was CNN).

Yahoo! is one of the original massive dotcoms and it would be sad to see it be assimilated into the black hole of innovation that is MS. Then again, maybe nothing much would change?

natslovR is correct.. this is about the search market. Ownership of Yahoo will give Microsoft 37.5% of the search market.

I dunno, search is definitely part of it, but they've been slipping in search for ages now and they're still losing out, presumably to Google:

Google's share of the U.S. Internet search market increased from nearly 52 percent at the end of 2006 to more than 58 percent at the end of 2007, according to ComScore figures. Meanwhile, Yahoo's search share slipped from 28 percent to 23 percent, and Microsoft's fell slightly to under 10 percent during the same period.

Yahoo on the other hand are focusing heavily on new user-centric content services, launching a heap of new s*** - bookmarking, openid - and buying good stuff - flickr - and building on their already-widely used other content services (like stocks).

I actually have ignored Yahoo for search but recently signed up for a Yahoo account to check out their new OpenID service - I read a couple yahoo employee blogs and they seem to be spreading the vibe (in the nerd/dev/tech community anyway) that Yahoo is all about the open source, freedom, etc, stuff that I personally really dig on. I reckon their other services, software and content are just as attractive to MS as search.

Also I just checked out google's stock price (a google search took me to the yahoo page :) to see how it would compare if MS wanted to drop that cash into Google stock - Google's market cap atm is $161.39B so does that mean 44b would get MS around 27% of google?

So 42% of people aren't using google to search!? Wtf noobs!

The purchase might be to also shaft Apple who have been playing nicely with Yahoo lately.

So 42% of people aren't using google to search!? Wtf noobs!

I dunno, I think China and maybe Russia(?) have a couple of home-grown search engines that the vast majority of the people use. I remember reading some comments on slashdot a while back about how small Google was in those countries, so I wonder if these stats take those places into account

Google's market cap atm is $161.39B so does that mean 44b would get MS around 27% of google?

If shareholders would sell enough of their shares at that price. It would have to go to a board meeting too. MS could buy out Google quite easily if Google would let them :)

google's 2c

Blunt... I like it.

My favourite part is: "Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?"

It's a fair response with reasonable concerns.

I mean, they could quite easily make it dificult to view any of googles services (or dificult to install) if the chose too.

While their concerns are fair, it really sounds to me like they're worried... and rightly so.

Microsoft is a massive company, and despite what is said about them, they didn't make it there on luck alone.

If I were google, I would be taking this very seriously, and I'm sure they are.

MS could do that already though (re: Google's response). MS and Google are both public companies, any decision they make is purely done to drive up their share price. Sugarcoat it all you will but Google's friendly approach to software design/innovation would be partly done to make its users feel good about using their software, not because they are against proprietry software. If it was no longer viable they will be buying up other peoples good work (You Tube) like it is going out of fashion.

I do not know anyone that actively uses another search eninge than google. I have never seen someone with search results other tban google in their browser.

at work, when I type a bad url in to ie it goes to search.live.com with the results of that query.

that's not someone using a search engine and it shouldn't count as such, that's microsoft's dirty tricks.

that's why companies that have a basic understanding of this, when advertising on search engines wouldn't assign the same value to microsoft's search service market position as googles'.

natslovR, thats why you change your browser settings so that the default search is google.com

I'll admin that Live Search sucks... their algorithm is clearly not as good as that of MS.

Yahoo isn't TOO bad of a search engine. Not as good as MS, but close. Perhaps MS do want both the Yahoo name, and their inteligent people.

I can see it as a good purchase.

some people can't chane their default search due to machines being locked down, but my point is there is no need to have url for a nonexistant domain go to a search page for that term. it was just a way for MS to inflate hits. same with the url they force new installs to go to. what is wrong with blank?

it's activities like this that devalue their market share to businesses that are aware of them. if I am advertising on a search term I want it to be displayed to ppl that are actively looking for that term and are going to examine the results, not those that are busy correcting the url and heading on their way.

what is wrong with blank?

old people don't think they are on the internet unless they have a webpage come up in IE

old people don't think they are on the internet unless they have a webpage come up in IE

False, the internet is full of anecdotal evidence from relatively reliable sources about nerds replacing their grandparents Windows box with a Linux box and just telling them "when you want to go on the internets, press this button' and pointing them at the firefox button. Or even making a link on their desktop called Internet.

Linux and Mac OS X are penetrating the desktop market, slowly but surely, because people's reliance on Windows to do stuff is gradually fading. Office and Exchange are still the big holdouts there, but a lot of people can now live with a computer as long as it has a web browser and that's it!

if I could use gmail at work, for work, I would easily be 10-20% more efficient. managing email in outlook is like being forced to catch an hourly train, in peak hour, to travel 100m up the road.

I don't think gmail could do what we need it to in my office...

Googles press release sounds like a massive load of scare-mongering.

I don't think gmail could do what we need it to in my office...

Microsoft own the office - not so much because of Office-the-software-package, but because of Exchange (at least IMHO). I am surprised Mozilla isn't putting more emphasis into the Thunderbird/Sunbird products and getting a backend service thing into the works, because a solid open source Exchange alternative would be hewwwwwwwj.

There's a few out there already but from what I can tell most of them aren't ready for the big time yet - they're not at that just-install-and-everything-will-work point. One of the guys from the Citadel project is always on slashdot pimping his wares; it looks vaguely interesting but haven't tried it myself.

trog, check out Zimbra or Scalix .. very decent competition to Exchange.

I read somewhere Zimbra is owned/managed by Yahoo?

I believe you'll find that Thunderbird has even been dropped by the Mozilla Foundation.

They suggested Thunderbird would be moved but I don't know if anything was ever agreed upon? Thunderbird is still on the Mozilla site and still managed (afaik) by the Mozilla team.

Do you dislike Microsoft because they are closed source?

Are you talking to me? Where'd I ever say I disliked Microsoft?

I am talking to you, and its a perception that I've picked up from loads of threads you've posted in... I thought it was something that was fairly obvious...

You're a big google fan, don't like exchange / office / windows?

Am I incorrect?

I just really like open source software solutions; that doesn't necessarily mean I dislike Microsoft. I use Windows as my desktop OS on all my PCs and still think its superior to the other offerings at the moment. I think Exchange is superior by miles to other groupware offerings. I think MS get f***ed over by anti-trust suits all the time; I think they've earned their "monopoly" position and anyone that wants to whine about it should f*** off and build their own operating system.

I have the usual gripes with Microsoft software but that's the same as with any software; there's always bugs.

I have more gripes with their movements lately (eg, Vista/DRM/etc) but no more so than usual; they're still a company trying to make money and doing what they can.

Oh wow, so I am wrong.

Sorrry...

PS: Vista SP1 is rumoured to be released today... I've been using it for a while and its excellent.

PS: Vista RC1 is rumoured to be released today... I've been using it for a while and its excellent.

SP1, yeah?

What is getting a lot of coverage atm in Australia is what is going to happen to Yahoo7 and NineMSN due to the deal.

Both networks have been pimping their portals hard over the last year or two and now one of them is going to get dumped.

I am thinking Nine will be the loser. Ever since Kerry died Nine has been direction less and Seven has smashed it.

nine is currently third in the rankings.....

so I read last week

That David Gyngell dude has come in now and he thinks hes going to turn it all around...

With shows like Monster House, I don't know how?

vista sp1 has been rtm'd

http://windowsvisablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/04/announcing-the-rtm-of-windows-vista-sp1.aspx

download won't be available till mid-march.

urgh.

Oh wow, so I am wrong.

Sorrry...

I can see why you would think that cuz of my proselytizing for alternatives, but at the end of the day I'm a firm believing in using the right tool for the job. MS do a bunch of lame things but they still make some decent stuff!

Mongie you bastard you got my hopes up

Theres a reg hack that you can install that basically lets you install it (I've had it for a few months) mind you its RC-1, but its really quite good.

Let me find a link.

Clicky

I've got legit SP1 ;) What are the new features/additions to SP1?

Looks like newscorp are throwing their hat in the ring.

NEWS Corporation is in talks to combine MySpace and other internet properties with Yahoo to fend off Microsoft's $US42.1 billion ($47 billion) bid, according to several reports.