Microsoft! Offers! To! Buy! Yahoo!
Feb. 2nd, 2008 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lordshipmayhemYesterday the markets and the tech websites were all in a tizzy over Microsoft's mixed stock-and-cash offer for Yahoo!, totaling $44.6 billion dollars.
Some are saying it's Microsoft trying to stop Google, or at least to get powerful enough to compete with Google.
Others are pointing out that this will leave the search market 70% in Google's hands, and almost 30% in Yahoo/Microsoft's hands, which the regulators may take a jaundiced eye to. Especially, the European regulators aren't exactly enamoured by Microsoft's behavior, and may baulk big-time.
Still others are looking at the deal as yet another example of how Microsoft really hasn't developed anything new - even MS-DOS was a ripoff of DR-DOS, they had to buy out DR-DOS to get out of that lawsuit - except for those beloved successes, Clippy and Bob.
And The Register is having a great deal of fun with it:
- Register is referring to the merged entity as YaMicrohoosoft!
- Headline announcing deal: "Microsoft! bids! $44.6bn! for! Yahoo! F*ck! me!"
- Another headline: "Ballmer! explains! hostile! Yahoo! bid!"
- Another headline: "Microsoft! needs! Yahoo! developers! developers! developers!" (Reference to Steve Ballmer rant where he leaps around the stage like a monkey chanting "Developers, developers, developers, developers!" - same incident where he earned his nickname, "Monkey-boy".)
A big issue in Canada: Microsoft will suddenly have both of Canada's major ISP's as partners: Bell Sympatico, which is already a partner, and Yahoo's current partner, Rogers.
A big issue in the States: who is going to review this deal, the Department of Justice (which has Microsoft under a court ordered watch as a result of their monopolistic behavior) or the Federal Trade Commission. Expect inside-the-Beltway, behind closed doors fighting to be fierce on that one. Bureaucratic turf wars can be fun. Either Microsoft/Yahoo manages to convince/confuse them, or they both try to look better than the other at protecting the public and make Microsoft's life even more of a living hell than Open Document, Open Source and the Wii combined.
And a big issue with the regulators: Microsoft and Y! have so many areas where they overlap: web-based e-mail, photo websites, online searches, and so on. I'm hearing, "Expect the anti-trust regulators in Europe to fight this one!"
I have my concerns:
- the Canadian ISP concerns mentioned above
- Y! owns this currently-open-source software that is quite popular, a very popular collaboration/e-mail developer application called Zimbra. I expect Microsoft to try to either kill it or screw it up, as they've successfully done with other competition that they've bought in the past.
Microsoft appears to be living in interesting times...
Some are saying it's Microsoft trying to stop Google, or at least to get powerful enough to compete with Google.
Others are pointing out that this will leave the search market 70% in Google's hands, and almost 30% in Yahoo/Microsoft's hands, which the regulators may take a jaundiced eye to. Especially, the European regulators aren't exactly enamoured by Microsoft's behavior, and may baulk big-time.
Still others are looking at the deal as yet another example of how Microsoft really hasn't developed anything new - even MS-DOS was a ripoff of DR-DOS, they had to buy out DR-DOS to get out of that lawsuit - except for those beloved successes, Clippy and Bob.
And The Register is having a great deal of fun with it:
- Register is referring to the merged entity as YaMicrohoosoft!
- Headline announcing deal: "Microsoft! bids! $44.6bn! for! Yahoo! F*ck! me!"
- Another headline: "Ballmer! explains! hostile! Yahoo! bid!"
- Another headline: "Microsoft! needs! Yahoo! developers! developers! developers!" (Reference to Steve Ballmer rant where he leaps around the stage like a monkey chanting "Developers, developers, developers, developers!" - same incident where he earned his nickname, "Monkey-boy".)
A big issue in Canada: Microsoft will suddenly have both of Canada's major ISP's as partners: Bell Sympatico, which is already a partner, and Yahoo's current partner, Rogers.
A big issue in the States: who is going to review this deal, the Department of Justice (which has Microsoft under a court ordered watch as a result of their monopolistic behavior) or the Federal Trade Commission. Expect inside-the-Beltway, behind closed doors fighting to be fierce on that one. Bureaucratic turf wars can be fun. Either Microsoft/Yahoo manages to convince/confuse them, or they both try to look better than the other at protecting the public and make Microsoft's life even more of a living hell than Open Document, Open Source and the Wii combined.
And a big issue with the regulators: Microsoft and Y! have so many areas where they overlap: web-based e-mail, photo websites, online searches, and so on. I'm hearing, "Expect the anti-trust regulators in Europe to fight this one!"
I have my concerns:
- the Canadian ISP concerns mentioned above
- Y! owns this currently-open-source software that is quite popular, a very popular collaboration/e-mail developer application called Zimbra. I expect Microsoft to try to either kill it or screw it up, as they've successfully done with other competition that they've bought in the past.
Microsoft appears to be living in interesting times...
