Posted on 05/03/2008 5:07:37 PM PDT by HAL9000
BREAKING NEWS: A Microsoft spokesman says the software giant is walking away from its offer to buy out online portal Yahoo, according to the Associated Press.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
How much is an ad click worth? How much do you click on ads? OTOH, if you work for any decent sized company, can you use anything but the latest versions of office?
If 90% of all users are running your software bugs are sure to be found.
“How much is an ad click worth? How much do you click on ads?”
There’s an entire economy based on ad clicking, or ad visibility - people make money from ads you don’t have to click on. It’s HUGE money, and there are scammers and grifters all over it. If you dig in the legit and illigit aspects of the click economy, you will be *very* surprised how much money is there, and how much of it is scammed.
A blog with a semi-decent amount of traffic, say 25k original hits per day, can make a tidy sum of money from Google ads - at the very least, it will pay for it’s own bandwidth.
“OTOH, if you work for any decent sized company, can you use anything but the latest versions of office?”
Depends on the company’s policy, the competency of it’s IT department, and the skill level of users - Open Office is a fine alternative, and a lot of companies don’t upgrade to the latest and greatest version of Office, just because MS says buy it - in fact, the licensing is what holds many smaller companies back, they can’t afford the latest - the company I work for is refusing to update for a mix of reasons - price being #1.
I’ve seen offices with a mix of Open Office, MS Office, and iWork, and it was fine - generally the troublemaker is MS Office. but there are plenty of workarounds and fixes when they misbehave.
If I owned Yahoo stock I would have wanted the deal to go through. Google is too dominant for Yahoo to compete head to head
One word: Vista
Yahoo stock with drop 30%-35% on Monday. Let the shareholder lawsuits begin. Yang is toast.
Runs great for me, but admittedly I have a great computer.
???
It's THREAT
Microsoft still has two options - a hostile takeover by accululating shares in the open market and/or voting directors to the board that
think MS/Yahoo would be a good deal.
So what exactly has kept Microsoft from succeeding in the Internet space? After all, the investment required to establish a website is minimal and they have a recognized brand name. Oh yes, the brand name. Associated with monopolistic practices, low quality, no customer service. In this particular scheme, MS was trying to buy itself a respected brand name, like GM and Ford bought themselves respected brand names in Europe and promptly screwed them up! In other words, there was nothing stopping MS from competing with Yahoo and Google, except its grudgingly respected brand name. Yahoo will be all right, and maybe Jaguar too under India’s Tata Motors.
I totally agree. Seemingly everything Microsoft has touched in the last two years has turned to shit. I don't know how long it will take, but I believe Microsoft's eventual downfall is at hand. Other companies are running circles around them, and they can barely respond.
Microsoft was late getting on the Internet in the first place. Windows 95 did not ship with a TCP/IP stack. Then Microsoft wasted a few years trying to peddle MSN as an alternative to the Internet, until they figured out that nobody was going to drop the web for MSN.
And more importantly, Yahoo would have ruined Microsoft. MS was to have taken on debt for mthe first time in memory--and for what? It never made sense. It was a bad deal for MSFT shareholders from the start. Look for a nice rally monday.
Steve Balmer ruined Microsoft. They have produced nothing but junk for the last few years. They even tried to delay Blu-ray adoption by their meddling with HD-DVD. They are a company with zero innovation. If they can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em.
Have you gotten your hands on Microsoft Surface? Coolest device I have ever seen.
bump
Ballmer’s sweetened offer of 33/share was lunacy.
In the 24 months preceding Ballmer’s first offer, YHOO had lost almost 60% of its value - 44 down to 19.
In that same two years the SP500 gained more than 5%, MSFT gained almost 20%, and GOOG gained 30%.
Yes - MSFT has a serious long term problem with its current business model.
But YHOO is a seriously troubled company - right now - and it will continue to decline in the years ahead.
Oh please.
Vista has sold more copies than there are people that use OSX, and who on Earth is going to fault Ballmer because Yahoo didnt want to get bought out?
After Microsoft has been having record quarters recently, I doubt anyone going to be retiring.
Many of those "sales" were coupon giveaways, and a lot of the "sold" copies get uninstalled and replaced with XP. The sales that they are making are mostly for replacements, not new customers like Apple is taking from Microsoft.
Microsoft's best days are over. They reached their peak of power a few years ago, they've been in a long period of stagnation since then, as reflected in their stock chart.
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