Just in: Microsoft preps hostile takeover of Yahoo



  • Ok.. not really a WTF, but I just had to post it in the sidebar. Frankly, I don't want Microsoft running Flickr (the only Yahoo service I really use). I don't use any online Microsoft stuff.

    Microsoft preps for hostile takeover of Yahoo!



  •  Doh, just when I thought using Yahoo APIs will not be a bad idea, now I'm worried. Guess Google all de way!



  • This takeover offer isn't hostile... at least not yet. 

    I'm a bit skeptical of this move.  How exactly is slapping together two bad companies with duct tape going to produce better web services than one good company? They must really be afraid of being left in the dust if they are ready to do something this risky.


  • They would be paying $41 B for the name and domain.

     I can't think of any Yahoo services that would easily interop with existing microsoft technologies, and at the same time, I just don't see MS actively working in Java and PHP :)

     



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    They would be paying $41 B for the name and domain.

     I can't think of any Yahoo services that would easily interop with existing microsoft technologies, and at the same time, I just don't see MS actively working in Java and PHP :)

     

    I don't understand why anyone would be surprised. Microsoft and Yahoo are competitors. Microsoft is strong, Yahoo is weak. It should be no surprise that Microsoft would like to slit the throat of Yahoo, by buying them out.

    Business is business. We will see what happens...



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    They would be paying $41 B for the name and domain.

     I can't think of any Yahoo services that would easily interop with existing microsoft technologies, and at the same time, I just don't see MS actively working in Java and PHP :)

     

    Speaking of domains yet, has anybody grabbed yahoosoft.com or microhoo.com?



  • @rbowes said:

    @Jonathan Holland said:

    They would be paying $41 B for the name and domain.

     I can't think of any Yahoo services that would easily interop with existing microsoft technologies, and at the same time, I just don't see MS actively working in Java and PHP :)

     

    Speaking of domains yet, has anybody grabbed yahoosoft.com or microhoo.com?

     

    Yes.

    And yes.

    But shouldn't yahoosoft be yahsoft?

    Oh well.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    Ok.. not really a WTF

     

    I beg to differ. IMO it's definitely a WTF. In the long run, MS would gain little for those 44600000000 USD.

    In terms of technologiy, Yahoo is rather lame. The market share is eroding and the lack of vision is obvious. The brand "Yahoo" is well-known, but so is "Microsoft".


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ammoQ said:

    MS would gain little for those 44600000000 USD.

    Didn't you mean 4460000000000 USD?

    Oh - it's imperial billions, not metric, or english or....

    GiBiBillions anyone? 

     



  • @PJH said:

    @ammoQ said:

    MS would gain little for those 44600000000 USD.

    Didn't you mean 4460000000000 USD?

    Oh - it's imperial billions, not metric, or english or....

    GiBiBillions anyone? 

     

     Its only a few billion shy of Bill Gates net worth. It is odd to think that there is a single man who is worth more than some companies.

     



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @Jonathan Holland said:

    They would be paying $41 B for the name and domain.

     I can't think of any Yahoo services that would easily interop with existing microsoft technologies, and at the same time, I just don't see MS actively working in Java and PHP :)

     

    I don't understand why anyone would be surprised. Microsoft and Yahoo are competitors. Microsoft is strong, Yahoo is weak. It should be no surprise that Microsoft would like to slit the throat of Yahoo, by buying them out.

    Business is business. We will see what happens...

     

    Actaully, I just wish Google's APIs included restufll web services... oh thats one thing yahoo has on them. Other than that, for all I care it can be called Microhoo or Yahrosoft.



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    @PJH said:

    @ammoQ said:

    MS would gain little for those 44600000000 USD.

    Didn't you mean 4460000000000 USD?

    Oh - it's imperial billions, not metric, or english or....

    GiBiBillions anyone? 

     

     Its only a few billion shy of Bill Gates net worth. It is odd to think that there is a single man who is worth more than some companies.



    After 100 million dollars you are at the stage of building your own Dynasty, caz I don't know how any sane person can spend over 100 million in their lives and not be satisfied.


  • @dlikhten said:

    Actaully, I just wish Google's APIs included restufll web services... oh thats one thing yahoo has on them. Other than that, for all I care it can be called Microhoo or Yahrosoft.
     

    WTF is "restufll web services"???



  • @ammoQ said:

    @AbbydonKrafts said:

    Ok.. not really a WTF

     

    I beg to differ. IMO it's definitely a WTF. In the long run, MS would gain little for those 44600000000 USD.

    In terms of technologiy, Yahoo is rather lame. The market share is eroding and the lack of vision is obvious. The brand "Yahoo" is well-known, but so is "Microsoft".

    I don't know. Yahoo have pretty good search technology, maybe in some respects rivalling Google. From MS's POV, Google are the real threat. Acquiring Yahoo's technologies could help them compete with Google more effectively.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @dlikhten said:

    Actaully, I just wish Google's APIs included restufll web services... oh thats one thing yahoo has on them. Other than that, for all I care it can be called Microhoo or Yahrosoft.
     

    WTF is "restufll web services"???

     

     I'm assuming he meant RESTFULL.

     All real developers use SOPA [pun intended]



  •  So I go to YAHOO.COM to see if they have a news post about this on the front page.

    I click it and learn that MS is buying Yahoo for a whopping $45 million! 

    Way to make yourself look valuable, Yahoo!! 

    yahoo MS

    yahoo ms



  •  It's a wire article from AP.  Guy doesn't realize that $45 million is chump change I guess.



  • I don't know, I think Yahoo! (the proper spelling) has some useful services. Combine their mail with Hotmail and that's a [i]massive[/i] number of users. I've heard some people like their answer service and I'm looking forward to their Adsense competitor.



  • Screw your exclamation mark.  Punctuation as part of a name is never proper.

     

    Yahoo's answer service is complete rubbish, something like 3/4s of the answers are inaccurate even though a simple websearch could've found the answer in most cases.  Its community has the lowest average IQ this side of Youtube comments.



  • Heck, why not have a Yahoo Answers WTF fiesta!

     

    Searching for 'hitler' is always a good way to get outrageous nonsense.  Let us count the WTFs in just the first thread I randomly picked:

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AiQxTwzp74nnKriqfUf9Mw0jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20070516160053AAhMinv

    * "He killed billions and billions people that he doesn't like"

    *  "in the end he was been executed"

    * "He created a communist state out of Germany."

    * "This event is called the Holocaust. It happened in the mid to late 1930 and into the mid-1940s and caused WWII."

    * "The Jews don't want you talking about him [...] Hilter put many millions back to work.
    This info from a German that went thru it

    He was even named by Life magazine as the Man of the year"



  • @dlikhten said:

     Its only a few billion shy of Bill Gates net worth. It is odd to think that there is a single man who is worth more than some companies.



    After 100 million dollars you are at the stage of building your own Dynasty, caz I don't know how any sane person can spend over 100 million in their lives and not be satisfied.

    You're assigning a too-literal interpretation to this measurement of the value of a person.

    The way people work this one is: you take the current price at which people are trading shares in the company; call this X. Let Y be the number of shares owned by the person you are measuring. Claim that the net worth of the person is X * Y.

    The problem with this is that it's complete bollocks. It's based on the assumption that the person could sell all of their shares at the current market rate, which is clearly not true if you actually think about it. 

    The reason why people use this stupid measurement is because it lets them claim Gates or some other media baby is the "wealthiest" person. If you use a saner measure than the book value of share assets, such as the total amount of financial power that a person can exert (though liquid or semi-liquid assets) then you'll find that it's the banking families who have it.

    All of which is predicated on the notion that the value of a person is measured by their posessions.



  • @m0ffx said:

    Yahoo have pretty good search technology, maybe in some respects rivalling Google. From MS's POV, Google are the real threat. Acquiring Yahoo's technologies could help them compete with Google more effectively.

     

    But MS already has a decent search technology. The results from Live Search are in most cases just as good as Google's. IMO MS doesn't lack technology, it lacks mindshare and (more important) credibility. "Google is sexy, Google is hip. Search with Google and rest assured that the results are the best results that smart technology can deliver." MS, with it's rather mediocre track record (think Vista), isn't sexy at all anymore. But Yahoo isn't sexy, either. They are the last living fossil of Web 1.0. Hell, they even don't know whether they are just a search engine or a portal site. Check out yahoo.com vs. yahoo.at. The later is nothing more than a Google rip-off. Pathetic.



  • Why are you trying to find out why MS does this, when it's so obvious: Steve Ballmer is a madman.

    I'm pretty sure that somewhere on his desk you'll find a plan to give every Microsoft employee a gun and storm the Googleplex.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @seaturnip said:

    Screw your exclamation mark.  Punctuation as part of a name is never proper.

    Yes! It! Is! </the_register>


  • @seaturnip said:

    Screw your exclamation mark.  Punctuation as part of a name is never proper.

    Somebody already had a trademark on the word "yahoo". They !ed it to evade that and get their own. 



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    They would be paying $41 B for the name and domain.

    ...and about $6.5B in annual revenue (2006 figure).



  • @asuffield said:

    @dlikhten said:

     Its only a few billion shy of Bill Gates net worth. It is odd to think that there is a single man who is worth more than some companies.



    After 100 million dollars you are at the stage of building your own Dynasty, caz I don't know how any sane person can spend over 100 million in their lives and not be satisfied.

    You're assigning a too-literal interpretation to this measurement of the value of a person.

    The way people work this one is: you take the current price at which people are trading shares in the company; call this X. Let Y be the number of shares owned by the person you are measuring. Claim that the net worth of the person is X * Y.

    The problem with this is that it's complete bollocks. It's based on the assumption that the person could sell all of their shares at the current market rate, which is clearly not true if you actually think about it. 

    The reason why people use this stupid measurement is because it lets them claim Gates or some other media baby is the "wealthiest" person. If you use a saner measure than the book value of share assets, such as the total amount of financial power that a person can exert (though liquid or semi-liquid assets) then you'll find that it's the banking families who have it.

    All of which is predicated on the notion that the value of a person is measured by their posessions.

     

    You ARE correct in that respsect. However you mistaken the who actually owns the money. The person does not have all their money in a bank. The person has money invested in other companies by having stocks/bonds/etc...

    If you own stock then you own a part of a company, so its really YOUR company as well. It gives money to the company to grow but you get as much power as anyone else in the company (per stock) [Theoretically].

    Now having said that, Bill Gates may be one of the wealthiest people in the world and yes he does NOT have all his money on hand, but once you own lots of worthwhile stock investments, you can live off the dividents they give (if the company is good), that way while you own more money, that money is making you money.

    What I love most is how rich celebrities are given free stuff by everyone just so that the celeb "endorces it" by having it. So the rich get free crap, and the poor have to work for every little PoS they own.



  • @dlikhten said:

    @asuffield said:

    @dlikhten said:

     Its only a few billion shy of Bill Gates net worth. It is odd to think that there is a single man who is worth more than some companies.



    After 100 million dollars you are at the stage of building your own Dynasty, caz I don't know how any sane person can spend over 100 million in their lives and not be satisfied.

    You're assigning a too-literal interpretation to this measurement of the value of a person.

    The way people work this one is: you take the current price at which people are trading shares in the company; call this X. Let Y be the number of shares owned by the person you are measuring. Claim that the net worth of the person is X * Y.

    The problem with this is that it's complete bollocks. It's based on the assumption that the person could sell all of their shares at the current market rate, which is clearly not true if you actually think about it. 

    The reason why people use this stupid measurement is because it lets them claim Gates or some other media baby is the "wealthiest" person. If you use a saner measure than the book value of share assets, such as the total amount of financial power that a person can exert (though liquid or semi-liquid assets) then you'll find that it's the banking families who have it.

    All of which is predicated on the notion that the value of a person is measured by their posessions.

     

    You ARE correct in that respsect. However you mistaken the who actually owns the money. The person does not have all their money in a bank. The person has money invested in other companies by having stocks/bonds/etc...

    If you own stock then you own a part of a company, so its really YOUR company as well. It gives money to the company to grow but you get as much power as anyone else in the company (per stock) [Theoretically].

    Now having said that, Bill Gates may be one of the wealthiest people in the world and yes he does NOT have all his money on hand, but once you own lots of worthwhile stock investments, you can live off the dividents they give (if the company is good), that way while you own more money, that money is making you money.

    What I love most is how rich celebrities are given free stuff by everyone just so that the celeb "endorces it" by having it. So the rich get free crap, and the poor have to work for every little PoS they own.

     

    Well. I feel better now that someone explained economics to us based on an elementary school understanding of the subject!

     @dlikhten said:

    However you mistaken the who actually owns the money.

    You mistaken the who!!! You bastard!



  • @seaturnip said:

    Searching for 'hitler'

     Hey, [url=http://xkcd.com/261/]Godwin's Law[/url]!



  • @dlikhten said:

    you can live off the dividents they give

    Microsoft is notorious for not paying them, which makes some people (notably economics researchers) wonder why exactly the shares are worth anything. They only started a couple of years ago, and haven't really paid out that much money.

    @dlikhten said:

    The person has money invested in other companies by having stocks/bonds/etc

    And for some people that might even be true. But Gates didn't put any money in and can't really get much out, so calling it an "investment" is, at best, creative.


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