microsoft's bid on yahoo is a perfect illustration of why microsoft is doomed to failure.
how many startups could they fund with $45 billion? 100? 200? 1000? why exactly do they want to be at the helm of a slowly dying web portal left over from the first dot com boom?
i remember someone talking of microsoft and relating their situation to a victim in a horror film. we can all see the monster lurking behind them, slowly creeping in for the kill. when the sea change of personal computing really does come, whenever that may be, microsoft will not be there, they will be knee deep in shit, trying to claw themselves out of the hole that they've spent the last five years tirelessly digging.
>> how many startups could they fund with $45 billion?
100? 200? 1000? why exactly do they want to be at the helm
of a slowly dying web portal left over from the first dot com boom?
if they invested that $45 billion in 45 one billion dollar projects, if at least one of them had an annual net of more than $700 million/year, they are doing better than buying Yahoo.
yahoo also has deals to provide email for many ISPs in the US.
I think Microsoft could benefit from the increased market share in many areas.
Better to let former MS employees bet their own cash on startups, which MS then gets to pick and choose and buy the ones they find most interesting.
And don't write off Yahoo's presence in the Third World, like China, Philipppines, India, etc. As those economies grow Yahoo's user base there will be more valuable.