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May 02, 08 - 03:16 pm Comment from: Jubei

He's going to eat Yahoo up and all their children too. He likes MEAT!

May 02, 08 - 03:18 pm Comment from: Spark

Ballmer is a yahoo!

May 02, 08 - 03:18 pm Comment from: Spark

Hey! Cool! The picture of Ballmer just changed. Does it change on every page reload?

May 02, 08 - 03:19 pm Comment from: Petey

In my experience with mergers there is no such thing as a 'merger'.

All mergers become buyouts after a couple of years.

And yes you know which company will be bought out and absorbed into the Redmond monolith.

I feel sorry for Yahoo, their business is profitable and a highly valued brand, they do not need this deal with Microsoft.

If anything, its Microsoft that needs this deal to survive - not Yahoo.

May 02, 08 - 03:19 pm Comment from: Spark

Yeah! It does!
There is no limit to his goofiness.

Best thing that could happen to Apple. How the hell is Microsoft going to beat Google with 2 search engines that nobody uses?

MS is busy shopping for Yahoo... and if the merger really happen, they'll be even more busy. At the same time Vista's causing them a looooooots of problems, and it's not anytime soon they'll release Windows 7. Also Dell is going down baby, doooown as fast as a downhill skyiing gold medalist!!!

Apple has currently the opportunity to throw a kick to all these fellows!!! The time is now, not tomorrow. The should really launch an affordable complete desktop solution for $799 in order to eat all these people's pie now. The hit would mean a worldwide market share three times bigger in 3 years.

Just an idea...

Damn! I don't want my Flickr account owned by Microsoft.

This is GREAT news (for Apple). It will keep MS distracted that much longer trying to sort out their mess (and this time I am NOT talking about Windows).

Peace.

@ boulderfrog

Best laugh I had all day; cheers, mate!
:D

May 02, 08 - 03:44 pm Comment from: JAYGEE

Wonder if Jerry Yang will stay after the merger. When Ballmer finally is fired (as we know he will be eventually), Yang could take over as CEO? I doubt it, but you never know.

May 02, 08 - 03:45 pm Comment from: Demon

Microsoft is looking to give the Big Ballmer fist to Yahoo's Jerry Yang.

I here Rev3, Apple and Google have been actively interviewing lots of Yahoolagains over the past few weeks

May 02, 08 - 03:51 pm Comment from: Ampar

That picture of Ballmer makes me think he's just begging for a football helmet and a cowbell.

Ballmer is not gonna get fired as long as Gill Bates supports him.

May 02, 08 - 03:57 pm Comment from: dd

As much as I don't want to see a Microsoft-owned Yahoo, I do want to see MS waste a lot of money.

May 02, 08 - 03:58 pm Comment from: macoverdose_dot_com

no no we need ballmer running MS... Lets him run the M$ ship right into the iceberg

May 02, 08 - 04:00 pm Comment from: ericdano

If this goes through, it will mark the beginning of the end for Microsoft.......

What Ballmer needs is a straightjacket and a nice white room with padded walls that also has builtin screens only showing pictures and videos of Macs and MacOS tormenting his mind 'til he selfignites...

May 02, 08 - 04:05 pm Comment from: HMCIV

The scientists at CERN were recently accused of devising high speed particle experiments which may result in the creation of a mini black hole.

What the frak to they think this merger will do!!!!!

May 02, 08 - 04:09 pm Comment from: Rainer

Bring it on.
There goes MSFTs cash-reserves.
AAPL still has theirs, and still growing every quarter, like a piggybank.

In five years, Jobs will have to come to rescue MSFT.

"Also Dell is going down baby, doooown as fast as a downhill skyiing gold medalist!!!"

That's fine. There's plenty more where they came from...

1. Ballmer is not a visionary, he has no way to lead their ship, none.

2. Thus, buying up companies is his only game, its all Redmond has because of their crippling overbloat of employees, now in the tune of 66,000+... Very little innovation, massive bureaucracy, no speed to market.

3. Ballmer will continue to screw things up, but so long as he has Windows and Office to lean upon, Redmond has no immediate reason to change direction.

The smart shareholder would demand Ballmer be fired tomorrow, because once MS hits the tipping point of no profits, it'll snowball fast, and won't be easily corrected.

Apple is highly likely to continue eating away at Redmond's feast for the next 2-3 years, but at some point after that time, Apple's sales will become a true and unavoidable thorn for MS, something they won't know how to deal with...

May Ballmer stay as MS fearless ego-laden leader forever.

This smells like the Time-Warner and AOL conflagration.

May 02, 08 - 04:49 pm Comment from: ron

"Also Dell is going down baby, doooown as fast as a downhill skyiing gold medalist!!!"


SB As a woman sprinter..

May 02, 08 - 05:00 pm Comment from: Predrag

Steve Jobs used to say: It isn't necessary in order for Apple to win that Microsoft must lose. I believe we are approaching a point where it is safe to say "It is not necessary in order for Microsoft to lose that Apple must win". Microsoft is doing a great job losing on its own. Apple has no reason to try and kill it. For the purpose of the value of my Apple stock, I don't want Apple wading into the razor-thin margin, cheapo, sub- $1000 computers. Or licensing their Mac OS X to other computer makers. I want them to continue their focus on uncompromising design and innovation.

Today, AAPL closed at around $181, with a market capitalisation of about $160 B. This is just above Cisco systems, just below IBM and JP Morgan Chase. At this point, Microsoft is less than double the value of Apple. If the value of Apple's stock continues to grow at the same pace as it had for the past three or four years, in exactly one year, Apple will be the largest technology company in the world and one of the top ten companies by market capitalisation, among Exxon-Mobile, China Mobile, GE, Royal Dutch Shell, etc.

Let Microsoft try to eat Yahoo. I am going to take up front row seats for that show. It will be an enormous fun to watch.

May 02, 08 - 05:31 pm Comment from: Connor MacBook

Will this mean no more free push e-mail for iPhone?

Could someone with more knowledge spin the numbers please. Can MicroSoft afford $33/share or will they have to mortgage the company? That could be bad for future profits which don't look too strong anyway.

May 02, 08 - 05:38 pm Comment from: HolyMackerel

I find it hard to believe that MS cannot build what Yahoo has for less than $40B. This merger, if it goes ahead, will further confuse MS as to what the company is really about. Plus it'll increase their massive head count and reduce their appetite for more sensible merges for years to come.

It' a marriage of two losers. This should be fun to watch

Yahoo needs to demand an all-cash deal, none of this stock offer BS.

Then take the money and RUN.

I'd be the first to congratulate Ballmer on his $45 billion URL. :D

May 02, 08 - 07:02 pm Comment from: Macintosh

I can't wait for this to happen. Yahoo! is already confusing enough. Just wait until Microsuck has anything to do with it...

They'll probably end up having 10 versions of the website which will automatically redirect you to the one best suited for your version of Vista. But of course the system check will take forever, and will always redirect you to the wrong one.

Then they'll turn the music store into some Zune mongering disaster, while not acknowledging the iPod they copied is already in a major transition to a new platform (Touch).

Blah, blah, blah.

May 02, 08 - 07:06 pm Comment from: JAYGEE

I don't understand why some people want the destruction of Microsoft? I may not like their software, search engines, and it's business practices & monopoly, but I don't want it to be the end of Microsoft.

They need to drastically sort themselves out, and fast.

How the hell is Microsoft going to beat Google with 2 search engines that nobody uses?

The same way they're beating Apple with several "editions" of a crap OS that nobody wants.

This deal will be a windfall for Google and Apple.

Balmer is fairly ugly for a public figure of a large company. I wonder what his kids ended up looking like? ..... something amusing to think about.

Microsoft has destroyed dozens of innovative smaller companies that could have changed the computing landscape. Besides 'Bob' what has Microsoft innovated? A world with a MUCH smaller Microsoft could lead to a second Golden-Age of computing.

May 02, 08 - 10:20 pm Comment from: The Other Steve

It's photos like this one that keeps me coming back to MDN.

Life's too short to not have a little fun!

May 02, 08 - 10:43 pm Comment from: alansky

Balmer's Folly and Yahoo's doom. Microsoft will do for Yahoo what AOL did for Netscape... and sink itself deeper into the mire in the process.

May 02, 08 - 11:33 pm Comment from: oh no my shorts

@JAYGEE

"I don't understand why some people want the destruction of Microsoft?"

Just desserts, JG. Many, many people want to see the complete destruction of Microsoft. Microsoft has acquired, taken over or otherwise destroyed so many good companies, in most cases just to kill a competing product that they couldn't otherwise compete with. Destruction of Microsoft is the only fitting end.

List of companies acquired by Microsoft

Ballmer is awesome, he is doing a fantastic job of running M$ into the ground. I want him to hang on for as long as possible.

This is going to be fun, we will get to watch 2 of our most loathed companies DIE!.

HAHA!!!

not making this up

MDN magic word: together

Chicks: would you put out to Ballmer?

Guys: if you were a woman, would you put out to Ballmer?

May 03, 08 - 03:09 am Comment from: Jubei

Breaking news, seems that MS has upped the ante. $31 a share. So far the mainstream news media is reporting this. Heck MS can raise it to 40 bucks a pop. With a Monopoly, its unlimited revenue every quarter... they can make up the lost easy.

With a Monopoly, its unlimited revenue every quarter... they can make up the lost easy

If resources are unlimited, why doesn't MS forget Yahoo, and focus on making their own MSN work? That $44-some billion would go a long way in-house...

MS might have monopoly money, but they have zero management. They are living off yesterday's remains.

MS can't make MSN better hnce the purchase of Yahoo. MS left to its own devices really isn't very successful outside of Windows and Office. But as I've said for years, it's their business plan, not their softtware that's really successful. They muscled their way to the top. No finesse, no real innovation. They scnookered the world into adopting them as the de facto standard for computing. At least for a while...

And this is why buying Yahoo is an example of their colossal hubris. They are muscling into search (read: advertising) in a huge way. They believe that it's their size as a bit player in search that is keeping them from reaping more reward. They fail to see that it's the WAY they do things that is no longer favorable to the rest of the world.

Let them buy Yahoo. The emperor has no clothes.

Yahoo should quietly switch to Google's search and map engines, then let the MS deal go through.

Better yet, Yahoo should quietly contract with all of Google's engines. With something absurd like a 99-year agreement and some huge penalty (in tens of billions $) for backing out early. Then make sure the MS deal goes through.

All Google has to do is turn their minimalistic search page into a true portal and Yahoo along with Softy are toast. I bet they are working on this as we speak (and for a lot less then 40B)

May 03, 08 - 11:25 am Comment from: Petey

re: If resources are unlimited, why doesn't MS forget Yahoo, and focus on making their own MSN work? That $44-some billion would go a long way in-house...

MS might have monopoly money, but they have zero management. They are living off yesterday's remains.

-----

Remember we are talking Microsoft here...

They have'nt got an original idea among them.

They are the rich kid on the block with all the greatest toys ever made but with no friends to enjoy them with.

They may have all those billions but they havent the insight, intellegence, creativity or innovational culture to use that money for any good.

Microsoft is basically the biggest venture capital firm in the world - they dont create anything that is successful and only buy up companies to steal their ideas to make money.

If Microsoft was any good at what they do then their share price would be higher than Apple's and they would have invented the iPhone.

Fact is they didnt and never will be a market leader - Microsoft are the biggest also-ran in business history, and that folks is where they will always stay... as an also-ran with shit loads of cash.

Its almost impossible to come up with a logical reason for M$ to buy Yahoo.
40 billion would allow our cat to build a decent search engine, but not M$.

Google works because it is unobtrusive, has Maps (unbeatably brilliant) and is now the verb meaning 'to search the Internet'.

Yahoo is a jumbled mess. A few days ago, my Yahoo page switched to yahoo.ca and I had to switch it back (Yahoo Canada is a seriously bad joke).
Intrusive and stupid.
Hey, just like M$!

These two clown companies are meant for each other, and only failure awaits their insane merger/buyout/takeover.

Apple has nothing to do with this, except that it keeps stupid Ballmer occupied while OSX slowly eats his lunch.

May 03, 08 - 12:28 pm Comment from: Rainer

Yahho is one of the big corporate backers of FreeBSD (though the FreeBSD foundation has worked to decrease this dependency).
They employ some core-developers, have helped in the past with liaisons to hardware-manufacturers and do provide the hosting for a a large part of the freebsd.org infrastructure (AFAIK).
So, as OSX's userland commandline tools are based on FreeBSD to a large part, this is the only place where this merger affects AAPL.
But I don't think a lot will change. And I'm sure, people at Freebsd.org have a "Plan B"