Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo – washingtonpost.com
Microsoft Corp. has offered to buy struggling Internet search provider Yahoo for $44.6 billion, a merger that would combine two of the technology world’s most well-known names into a potentially potent competitor for Google in the lucrative Web search and advertising market.
I’m not sure I see the point here. Sure, Microsoft (or anyone else, really) would love Yahoo’s traffic. But unless they’ve got some great idea for the next step, that’s a pretty steep price for a bunch of pageviews that could go away at any moment.
Neither Microsoft nor Yahoo have shown they can compete with Google, and since it’s so easy to switch from one to the other, simply combining users isn’t going to do it, either. Do they think that, by joining forces, two companies that don’t know how to compete in the space are going to suddenly find themselves swamped with good ideas? Good luck with that.
Maybe Microsoft should go back to building operating systems. If Vista is the best they could do, they don’t seem to be putting enough resources into that department.