In the news this week is that Microsoft is offering to buy Yahoo for $44.6 Billion. If this deal goes through, two things will happen. 1. It totally won’t matter. 2. Microsoft will have just bought their own defeat to Google in the “online wars” (for the sake of the argument, please just pretend there is an online war). Here’s the bare-bones story…
Yahoo limps along and stays afloat because they have folks over there making pretty good decisions on
what to do. They have their bases covered: search; mail; chat; news; calendar; groups; etc…. Yahoo’s problem is they totally suck at execution. Everything they’ve built or revamped in the last few years has
sucked big time. They are fragile and teetering on their own demise.
Now along comes Microsoft with their secret-bunkers full of cash, looking to buy themselves some online big-boy pants. Luckily (and by luckily, I mean unfortunately), they suck at both decisions
and execution,
and they have proven they understand the internets about as well as George Bush understands… well… seemingly anything. Slightly long story, slightly longer… when Microsoft starts making and executing decisions for Yahoo, Yahoo will die.
Of course everyone gets it… this deal makes a TON of sense for Microsoft, especially if they were competent. Which they are not. So while we’ll have a ton of marginally interesting stories, detailing the changes (and ensuing failures) Microsoft will be making to Yahoo. And allowing folks the opportunity to pick apart each decision ad nauseum. We will all yawn and click for the sports page.
Final score, Google: Win; Microsoft: Not-Win.
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