Comments on: Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo! – Rapid reaction

By: John McCormac

John McCormac — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:04:34 +0000

It is more about search and advertising than social networking. MSFT’s search product has sucked for years and they still have problems with it. Yahoo has a lot of search expertise and more importantly intellectual property on search.

Yahoo and Microsoft have their own web advertising platforms that compete with Google’s Adsense. There has been a lot of speculation amongst search engine heads about the effects of a Microsoft/Yahoo combined search engine and web advertising platform on Google. Yahoo previously acquired FAST ( a search engine company that provides corporate search). So this looks like Microsoft taking direct aim at Google by borging its competitors.

By: Crunchy Links - February 3rd 2008

Crunchy Links - February 3rd 2008 — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:33:13 +0000

[...] Via Damien: As heard first via various twitterings, C|Net’s News.com are now reporting that Microsoft have bid $44.6 billion for Yahoo!. Will be [...]

By: Colm

Colm — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:21:39 +0000

Very interesting comments indeed.

By: AJ

AJ — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:13:19 +0000

I have just registered the domains noyahoomerger.com and noyahoomsftmerger.com and intend to publish a protest site as soon as possible. Not normally my thing, but I do like Yahoo and feel very passionate about them being sold to MSFT.

if anyone wants to help, please let me know.

By: Damien

Damien — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:09:43 +0000

Yahoo! is dead. Microsoft just took a bite. The other sharks are smelling the blood and will start circling. They’ve weakened Yahoo! now and I don’t think the current Yahoo! can recover. Which is a huge shame. I like Yahoo! and their services and I think they’re better than Google or Microsoft when it comes to making products for humans not clicks.

By: Keith Gaughan

Keith Gaughan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:01:47 +0000

Of course, the bid could be an effort to kill Yahoo! by causing people to doubt its future event more…

Good old-fashioned FUD.

By: AJ

AJ — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:52:27 +0000

MSFT can go a f*** off if they think I will continue to use Yahoo services if the purchase goes ahead. Sorry but Yahoo do a very decent effort of providing tools for the communities (developer.yahoo.com) and I would hate to see that ruined by MSFT.

No withstanding the financial and legal issues around such a merger, there is also the nightmare of Yahoos technical services for MSFT. Most of these are Free BSD and Linux platforms (AFAIK but I may be wrong).

While the offer is tempting especially if I had shares in Yahoo! I would not vote for the sale. The world, then network does need a Yahoo! I also think that at 44 Billion they are selling themselves short.

We all know the nightmare that are MSFT services such as Hotmail, Live etc, and while they do have their good points, they are no where near what others like Yahoo have pioneered. We all know that while we use Windows it is not a great product. This is something we all stand to lose from. While you may not have used Yahoo! directly recently, more than likely some site you have visited has utilized a Yahoo service or tool.

By: Cian

Cian — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:01:47 +0000

I have to agree with Claire – keep your hands off flickr and don’t change it a bit!

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:56:09 +0000

Am I the only one in the world who thinks that Yahoo! are going to say no?

By: Keith Gaughan

Keith Gaughan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:44:35 +0000

Typical MS, really. If they can't build something right, they buy somebody who can and possibly kill them off. There's so many examples, it's not funny.