OK, so the last time I checked, everyone loathed the big bad software giant in Redmond. After last week’s surprise unsolicited bid for Yahoo!, everyone is up in arms praising how sweet and amazing this deal will be. How much it will spur innovation. How it will help to stop the evil Google empire.
Um, when did Microsoft stop being the evil empire and Google take the crown?
I’ve got to hand it to the MS PR department. Last year they bought aQuantive and breezed through regulatory approval. But they threw a fit and complained on the hill when Google dared purchase DoubleClick.
Now with the Yahoo! bid people are singing the praises of how great this will be. How right it is. Microsoft is almost playing it off as if it will potentially be hurtful to them, but if they must do it to stop the evil machine of Google then they’ll do it for the public good, even if it means cannibalizing their own businesses.
Google of course is not sitting idly by. They’ve fired back with a response of their own. Sure it would mean a lot for search. But it would also give MS a near monopoly on the free email services and instant messaging.
Yet to hear people like David Kirkpatrick, sr. editor at CNN, say this will drive innovation (see: “Why Microsoft’s Yahoo bid makes sense”) just makes no sense to me. I can’t recall the last time that Microsoft was *truly* innovative. And innovation is driven by a market with a lot of competition. Microsoft isn’t competing–it’s trying to just stay in the game. And somehow I don’t see a lot of innovation coming out of a group with just two major players in it. That being said, at least Yahoo! took steps to keep up with Google in making their online email system slicker, unlike Hotmail/Live. And there’s even been rumblings of Google enabling other companies to come in and block Microsoft’s bid with a counter offer, just to keep Yahoo! a bit more “independent” if you will.
I slightly dread the power this combo would give MS over the Internet. Yahoo! has some of the most-trafficked sites on the net. I really don’t want a Vista-like experience to be brought to my browser. “Are you sure you want to Google that?” “You’ve clicked on the link to access your email. Would you like to give yourself permission to access your email?” Seriously?
And lastly, they’re going to spend $44.6 BILLION dollars on Yahoo! (not counting all of the legal fees, acquisition costs, marketing, integration, etc. etc.). And they’ve identified $1B in savings. WOW! A whole ONE billion?? With $44.6B you’d think you could throw some darts at a pile of startups and find two or three which could generate $1B for you. And investors can kiss that sweet giant dividend payout goodbye.
I think it really should be settled with an arm-wrestling contest between Bill Gates and Jerry Yang. If Bill wins, MS gets Yahoo! If Jerry wins, Yahoo! stays on it’s own, and gets to take a baseball bat to the Hotmail servers just for fun.
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