Microsoft is 2000 times less effective than Google; Yahoo Board seems to be insane
blogs.law.harvard.edu
blogs.law.harvard.edu
It seems more likely that they knew they were bad designers so they just went with the simplest possible design.
Yahoo doesn't get enough credit. They are doing some pretty awesome and forward-looking stuff. The reason they're falling behind, I think, is because the "yahoo" brand is so large and complex that it's hard to find anything by going to their site. It probably doesn't help that AOL.com ripped off the design almost to the pixel (I'm extremely surprised there has not been a lawsuit there).
Yes, I think that is exactly it. But even that level of performance is quite rare. In design, merely simple is version 1 of good.
Also, there doesn't seem to be a Yahoo documents.
If Microsoft want to beat Google, they need to start pushing out on-line document editing, Excel, etc., under the MS brand but through Yahoo infrastructure and internet know-how.
Microsoft is making the mistake of trying to beat giants in one market when they are already a giant in their own. I'm not sure how Microsoft wants to play, but I am certain this isn't going to turn out like a David vs. Goliath.
It seems like any new interesting project is always 'Skunkworks'ed, thinking of XBox, Zune, MS Research - "The Project formerly known as 'Half the World's Smartest Researchers (Being Paid not to work ((At Google)))"', LOL.
I really mean 'why', just why are they bothering with Yahoo? I mean, they will just run it into the ground. The "Next Great Idea" (tm), the next Facebook, the next You Tube, the next Slashdot is probably swiftly exiting Yahoo as we speak.
One time over lunch I asked a technical manager about the role of theory in our work. His response: "Remember that time we had a guy with a phD in our group? We wasted so much time on theory and did nothing practical". Everyone laughed, and promptly changed the topic.
Another time I had an interview with their search engine team. I ended up in a fairly heated argument with the interviewer about where innovation comes from. Her contention was that Research should do all the innovating, and throw the innovations over the wall to product teams, and product teams obediently implement. Which I said was... less than ideal. "No hire" =)
Seems to me in Google, product people and theory people are tight, or even the same people. MS's schism approach will never touch that.
Anyone else old enough to remember Novell combining with WordPerfect way back when to take on Microsoft? You'd think Ballmer, having been through that on the winning side would know better.
Google docs is a gamble that may or may not pay off, but it's not making them any (significant) money.
Yahoo does feel very unfocused. That's probably a bad sign.
Huh? Sounds like someone needs to cut back on the sauce.
We can infer from this offer that Microsoft expects its own programmers to be only 1/2000th as effective, dollar for dollar, as Google’s.
We can infer that, if we're near the bottom of a Chivas bottle.
The chance of a Yahoo shareholder ever getting more than $31/share, adjusted for inflation and risk, seems remote
Hey, I know a place where you can put money down on such predictions. Good luck!
Microsoft is to Yahoo as Time Warner is to (correct answer) AOL.
Except...the purchase was in the opposite direction.
despite the fact that the $31/share bid was higher than Yahoo has typically traded since mid-2006
Here's the thing...if Ballmer logged into his Ameritrade account and started buying YHOO at 10000 shares per second every second until it was all bought up, the share prices would probably hit about 50000 dollars. When Microsoft makes an offer, it's understood that that is equivilent to skyrocketing demand.
1 million * $1 share != $1 million
"Google unseated Yahoo at a cost of about $20 million in financing"
That completely ignores major things such as, oh I don't know, the Google Pagerank patent. It isn't like Google just won on simple UI; if their search hadn't worked way better than anything else, they never would have taken off.