Matt’s Cuppa

By now I think that everyone in the twitterverse has an opinion on the Microsoft’s proposed takeover bid for Yahoo. And, as Roger Cheng points out on CNN Money, Wall Street certainly has formed their opinion:

Wall Street certainly isn’t betting on a higher offer, as Yahoo shares have
traded only as high as $29.83 Friday, short of Microsoft’s offer of $31 a share.
Options activity for contracts that expire over the next three months also
suggest a $31 ceiling.

I made mention in an Utter yesterday that my observation is that Microsoft has been floundering around for years trying to figure out what their point in life is, and Yahoo has been little better at defining their direction. The Money article goes on to say:

“The two really only have each other,” said Clayton Moran, an analyst at
Stanford Group Co. “We think there’s a limited number of suitors for Yahoo given
its sheer size. At the same time, there’s limited options for Microsoft to
achieve its stated Internet goals.”

I think Moran sums things up very nicely. So, if the acquisition goes through, you’ll have one really big company that doesn’t know where it’s tail is, and now it’ll have to figure out what to do with all its new products and services. The question is, how does a company that can’t decide where it’s going decide what to keep and what to through away?

There is one item that I’m surprised I haven’t hear mentioned yet. Last year, Microsoft filed a patent for what amounts to an ad delivery system that would be built into its operating system. Basically, this would mean the ability to serve up ads based on the content of a Word document you were typing or an Excel spreadsheet you were creating. You can read my original disbelief here. And the Ars Technica post here. It’s no doubt that Microsoft is trying to capitalize on Yahoo’s ad-generated revenue streams. Could Microsoft actually be pursuing this via Yahoo’s ad-serving technology? Will there soon actually be a version of Windows with such malware built right into the operating system? And, if so, could this be the final insult that convinces the average user to look seriously at a Linux operating system?

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