Here at Valleywag, we feel that readers deserve to be in on the gossip between reporters at the local watering hole. Why can't the same principle apply to our IM conversations? Here's one I had with AdWeek's Brian Morrissey. Topics include engagement mapping, the food crises and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and why search is overrated.
Yahoo pushed its annual shareholder meeting back from July 3 to "around the end of July." Since originally scheduling the meeting, shortly after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer walked away from merger negotiations, corporate raiders Carl Icahn and a merry band of followers have taken control over 30 percent or more of the company and put forward a new slate of directors for Yahoo's board in hopes of pushing the merger through.
When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer met with Yahoo cofounders CEO Jerry Yang and David Filo on May 3, Yang and Filo refused to come down from their $37 per share price, according to Kara Swisher's new account of the meeting. Yang left thinking everything went well, and that he and ballmer were just starting to dicker over price — which would explain why he and Filo reportedly exchanged high-fives afterwards. The next day, Ballmer told the world Microsoft was withdrawing its offer.
Yahoo executives want to let Google serve ads next to its search results. But that would mean Google would be selling ads on 80 percent of all search queries online. Microsoft won't let that happen without stirring up antitrust fears in Washington. Secret Google sources tell the New York Times they plan to get around these concerns by schooling regulators on the concept of "co-opetition," which they say what Toyota does when it sells hybrid engines to GM, or when Whirlpool makes appliances for Sears.
Why is Microsoft so desperate to acquire Yahoo's search business? According to ComScore, Google's video-sharing site YouTube and Google's other subsidiaries alone attracted more search queries than all of Microsoft's properties combined in April. Comparing total searches for each company is similarly lopsided; Google controls 61 percent of the search market to Microsoft's 9.1 percent, which is a decline from 9.4 percent in March. Problem is, buying Yahoo might not help. Yahoo lost search market share last month, too, dropping from 21.3 percent to 20.4 in just one month.
Taking questions after a speech before the New America Foundation, Google cofounder Larry Page told the crowd the reason Microsoft and Yahoo shouldn't merge is that it would give Microsoft too much control over email and instant messaging. "90 percent of the communications all in one company, I think that's a really big risk." We totally agree! So when will Google open its search results pages to third-party advertisements?
In the age of desktop software, Microsoft had the luxury of taking years to copy competitors. In the age of Web software, it's next to impossible to catch up. As customers use websites, they generate data which helps the site's creator improve it continuously. It's a topsy-turvy world reminiscent of David Brin's The Practice Effect, which Microsofties would do well to read. Spending nearly three years to implement even a bad idea like bribing users to use its search engine shows how badly ossified Redmond's software-development culture has become.
Director James Cameron speaking at Microsoft's advance08 advertising conference today in Seattle, pitching his new flick Avatar and making a menacing gesture. Can you suggest a better caption? Do so in the comments, and the winning one will become the new headline on this post. Friday's winner, in a close one: Tim Faulkner, for "Master Lodwick has trained his young padawan well in the ways of the fameball.." (Photo by AP/Stephen Brashear)
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, now the backer of online entertainment studio Vuguru through his company Tornante, stopped by Microsoft's Advance08 this morning to deliver his diagnosis of what ails the entertainment business. Calling YouTube "old news," he says that storytelling online will inevitably progress from "the salacious and the stupid" (good luck with that). But he also pointed out that by enabling content producers, companies like Yahoo, Microsoft or News Corp. could create a competitor to the current distribution rackets:
Time Warner Cable will pay shareholders a $10.9 billion dividend as part of its spinoff from Time Warner, which will get $9.25 billion as its portion. With that cash in the bank, will Time Warner-Yahoo negotiations heat up? Last we heard, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes were negotiating a deal that would merge AOL and Yahoo and give Time Warner 20 percent control over the new company. According to Bewkes, the new cash could result in "disciplined acquisitions." Bewkes also acknowledged that AOL-Yahoo "discussions are going on." But here's the thing: as much as Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang might prefer merging with AOL rather than selling out as a whole or in splinters to Microsoft, it's not really up to him anymore, is it?
The fact that they're at the table — regardless of what they were telling themselves got them to the table — it's much more likely that they say "enough with the four foot high stack of paper outlining the details of the deal. Just merge."
Microsoft may not have Google's search market share, but it's got plenty of cash. So it's going after the searchers who pay Google's bills — those who use the site to find products to buy. Today, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and SVP Satya Nadella will announce a plan to pay users when they search Microsoft Live Search to find and purchase products such as Bulova watches and Oakley sunglasses. Other vendors participating include Barnes & Noble booksellers, Circuit City and Home Depot. The technology behind the cashback scheme comes from a company called Jellyfish which Microsoft acquired in September 2007. Nadella is also expected to announce that Microsoft will begin to allow advertisers to pay for their search ads based on sales conversions, rather than clicks from Microsoft's search results page to the vendor's, an option Google has long offered. (Photo by stopnlook)
Soon America's most bright-eyed graduates will enter the workforce and make their workaday homes in cubes at Google, MySpace, or Amazon.com. And they will suffer not just the indignity of having to work for a living, but also the dispiriting realization that a job at a cool company isn't always that hot. These employers, and the others hiring for tech's 10 worst entry-level jobs, listed below, will look spiffy on a resume someday, but for now the only good these jobs promise the world is the pleasant feeling you and I can share knowing we're not the ones stuck in them.
Remember that brief moment this spring when everyone was saying Microsoft-Yahoo was a sure thing? That was when ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley must have put the finishing touches on her new book, Microsoft 2.0. On page 4, Foley writes: "This is a book on Microsoft's next chapter. It's going to be an unpredictable one, as Microsoft's purchase of Yahoo earlier this year makes evident." Committing the purchase to ink on paper was foolish of Foley, no matter what the odds were on Microsoft buying Yahoo, since even a clean deal would likely have taken a year to close.
Right after Microsoft withdrew its offer, Yahoo shares dropped to $20 and Carl Icahn snapped up 15 million shares. The next day, while Yahoo traded at $24 to $25, Icahn purchased another 15 million. He bought another 29 million or as Yahoo shares hovered around $25 to $26 per share. Icahn purchased the shares using options, so it wasn't obvious right away that a raid was in progress. Prices jumped $2, immediately putting Icahn in the black by at least $120 million. (Photo by AP/ho)
For a while it looked like Google had successfully killed the Microsoft-Yahoo merger with its promise to pump up the profits of Yahoo's search results. So perhaps you'll forgive Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page for a little crankiness now that talks between Yahoo and Microsoft are on again. Asked about Microsoft's plans to buy Yahoo's search business for a rumored $21 billion, Page told reporters in the U.K. he's tired of talking about the deal and would like them to stop asking about it: "If we're focused on what the other companies are doing we won't make much progress." The Financial Times reports that Page and Brin even complained that the "horse race" between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo "was unhealthy for the development of the Internet." It was much easier when no one was paying attention to Google, wasn't it, Larry and Sergey?
Yahoo execs got a good look at Microsoft's latest plan — Microsoft has proposed acquiring Yahoo's search operations, buying a minority stake in the rest of the business, and selling off Yahoo's Asian assets — and these executives responded "lukewarmly," reports the Wall Street Journal. Need an aside to clarify the motives for each party in this drama? Here goes.
Joining John Paulson in support of corporate raider Carl Icahn's plot to force a Microsoft-Yahoo merger, Texas oilman and longtime Icahn ally T. Boone Pickens purchased 10 million shares of Yahoo. Pickens told CNBC he plans to support Icahn in a proxy fight. By our count, PIckens's addition puts 30 percent of Yahoo shares in control of those favoring a merger with Microsoft — a merger that Microsoft, having been rebuffed the last time, has yet to propose.
