So I guess you’ve all heard the news about Microsoft withdrawing their bid to acquire Yahoo! Thanks @oggin for the tweet linking to the press release. Aside from the withdrawal of course, the part that piqued my interest was what Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, said in regards to Yahoo!’s intent to make their company less desirable to purchase should Microsoft take their offer to the shareholders (meaning undergo a “hostile” takeover). Essentially Yahoo! told Microsoft that if they do that then Yahoo! will join up with Google to deliver their ads for “key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today.” Well Jerry Yang just made my cool book for that. Anyway, here’s what was really interesting to me. If you haven’t read the whole story yet, be sure to at least check out the email Ballmer sent to Yang at the bottom of the page. There he notes why Yahoo! doing that, “would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:
– First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and
long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed
to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your
search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem
surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display
advertising business to fuel future growth.
— Given this, it would impair Yahoo’s ability to retain the talented
engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our
interest in a combination of our companies.
— In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems
that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among
other things, this would consolidate market share with the
already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce
competition and choice in the marketplace.
— This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key
search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the
process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to
whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business
perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle
to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.
— It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search
provider that is not already relying on Google’s search services.
Tell me if I’m just being naive (I’m no corporate miser) but don’t you think Ballmer sounds like a defeated child? I mean in between all the corporate jargon and suit speak, I’m hearing, “Ok Jerry we can’t afford to pay another $5 billion so we’re not going to buy you but please don’t ever partner with Google because we would be royally screwed if you do.” Oh, Ballmer you’re nothing but a big baby and a coward. You didn’t get your way and now you’re whining like a sore loser. Oh and did you really say that Yahoo! partnering with Google makes Yahoo! less desirable for an acquisition because you don’t want to “consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace?” Wow. I’ve heard it all.
May 4th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
May 5th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Wait, Microsoft said they DON’T want to reduce competition and choice in the marketplace?
That doesn’t sound like Microsoft at all, last I checked the “competition and choice” in the OS industry is dismal at best.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Amen.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:01 am
Does anyone know of a good article spinning script. Looking to take my articles and PLR articles and spin them.
Steven Walsh
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Well, you have a TON of options. If you’re new to that stuff, look into the “Markov chain algorithm.” I think boogybonbon.com posted a PHP class that uses the Markov chain. Just do a search for something like “markov script” and I’m sure you’ll find something. Otherwise, check out things like MyGen, YACG, RSSGM and try to figure out how they’re spinning the text. I just checked boogybonbon.com (creator of MyGen) and it appears to be down. Look here…fourth post provides the, “PHP Markov Chain Class” I mentioned above (same one used with MyGen I assume): http://tinyurl.com/68xhxp
Also, if you join blackhat seo forums (i.e. seoblackhat.com/forum, wickedfire.com, syndk8.net/forum), you can sometimes find exactly what you’re looking for.