Are you kidding me??!!

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Alright, I'm probably close to the last person on the planet who should be commenting on corporate mergers, but...
OK, I'm going to take that back; I'll have a MBA degree in a couple of months, so I'm probably better qualified than 99% of the planet...but still.. you could do much better.

Anyway, the Murdoch-threated WSJ reports today that Redmond is considering bidding on Yahoo. I don't understand it and from what I know it seems extremely unlikely to me that it'll happen, but that's what I thought about Google buying DoubleClick, and we know how that turned out.

As far as I can tell, there isn't a logical reason from Microsoft and Yahoo to merge, except some vague generalizations about how this will better place them to compete with the Big G in the area of Internet advertising. These are not good reasons to merge, and even if you managed to convince yourself they were, I'm not sure how a merger better helps you to compete. The spin-off joint venture idea is more interesting there..

I've never worked for a large company, but given what I've learnt and heard from friends, a merger of this sort will stifle innovation within this firm, and leave the entire industry including both companies (especially Yahoo, for whom I've developed a soft spot after interview season and the >play competition at Berkeley) worse off.

I mean, what's next? Google merges with Apple and you have complete vertical integration? Hey...maybe that explains the new Google personalized homepage logo that seems to irk some people so much. :)


Update: What do you know? Apparently, John Battelle predicted this back in January.

Comments

shmoo said…
Over the summer at Microsoft we talked about Google buying Apple actually. The idea behind it was to use the popularity of iTunes/iPod and combine it with Google's community-building.

A few months later, a different group within MS launched the social-focused Zune. Weird.
10:23 PM
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