This is my 800th article for sunstar since I started writing for it 14 years ago. People always ask me where I get so many things to write about. Actually, its simple – the more you read, and the more you think about what you read, the more ideas you will have to share. I still make it part of my routine to read and scan through thousands of articles and as many books I can get every month.
The technology news is full of reports about the fact that Microsoft has decided not to pursue its bid to buy Yahoo. After three months of negotiation, Microsoft apparently decided that the price they were asking for was too high – Microsoft offered more than 70% premium over the public stock price of Yahoo, but apparently Yahoo felt that their price was nearer almost double what it was before Microsoft started to court it.
However, days after Microsoft walked away, Yahoo’s price is down by 20%, but still much higher than before Microsoft came courting. Rumors abound that Microsoft will still come back maybe after a few weeks or months , and another rumor has it that yahoo’s chairman has been asked to try to lure Microsoft back to the negoiating table. Apparently other than Microsoft, there is no other company that is big enough to buy yahoo, and independently, there does not seem to be a concrete plan on how they are going to fight off competitors. The only viable plan on the table is to give Google a partnership on providing ads on their search service – but then, I think it was really Google who undermined Yahoo in the first place, so that is like going from the jaw of one tiger ( if that is how they characterize Microsoft) to another.
Yahoo has dominance in the Philippines as well. Almost 90% of the friends I know that is not using company mail uses yahoo Mail, and almost everybody is also into Yahoo Messenger. Flickr, a site for picture sharing, is also a Yahoo offering,
Anyhow, I’m sure we will know in the next few months which of the naysayers and crystal ball gazers are right – whether it was right for both companies not to merge.
Talking on Microsoft, I had a talk with another techie about how Microsoft can fend off open source. Well, as I said in business, the business is all about being able to get the best price you can get. If you are Benz, and people are paying good money to buy your products, you cannot lower your price or give it away without making your shareholders, employees or even your customers angry.
For sure, Microsoft has been a very successful company. Everyday, they have profits that probably 99.5% of companies worldwide never even get to earn over their whole lifetimes. Why give it away?
Besides, Microsoft is under anti-trust regulation, and they cannot just start giving things away because the government prohibits them too. Remember they got fined for bundling Internet explorer, or windows media player for free? Being a monopoly, they will destroy companies if they start giving software for free, and therefore most of the time, they can’t.
Also Open source, or giving stuff away for free is a very difficult proposition if you consider that the first priority of company is to make the company viable and profitable. If you recall, eBay bought skype, and despite its popularity, they admit that they have not been able to make money on it, and have to write off a huge loss. Youtube continues to get popularity, but until now, google admits that they still have not found a way to really turn it into a profitable division. Recently, Sun has made a big deal about open source, but has admitted that while it earned them brownie points, they still have not been able to turn this quarter into profits.