Aral Balkan

According to Forbes.com, The New York Post is reporting that Microsoft has asked Yahoo! to re-enter formal negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion.

Discuss...

Comments

• VERY interesting should this happen. Few points that i'd be interested in: Yahoo has invested heavily in the Flash platform... would MS change this to Silverlight (I'd assume so and don't htink it would be a necessarily bad move for adoption of Silverlight... IF handled correctly) Yahoo MSN would make a more realistic contender in the search engine wars Yahoo have alot of assets (as in companies), would these be left alone or MS'd? I'm impartial as to whether this would be a good/bad thing. I'm confident it would be very interesting and a definite FUD nuke!

  by DannyT on 2007-05-04 15:27:22

• This whole Silverlight issue has got me thinking a lot. It's obvious MS's motive is the almighty $$, otherwise, they would be trying to integrate with Flash and SWF, helping to improve the codebase and in general partnering with the Flash team. But Adobe (actually Macromedia) has been kicking MS butt for the last couple of years all over the internet, and MS is pissed. Silverlight (read "Ray Ozzie") definitely poses a threat to Adobe, be afraid, be very afraid. Not that it would kill Flash or Flex any more than the Zune has killed the iPod, but it will impact the distribution of the Flash Player, and it will win over developers more loyal to .NET and, most importantly to MS, it will win over businesses who use ASP.NET as their primary platform, especially those businesses who MS has close relationships with. IMHO, Adobe has a lot more to lose here than MS, like Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen said recently,"Microsoft is a $50 billion monopolist who's in the software business. I take them very seriously." Whatever strategy Adobe is thinking of right now, I believe if it doesn't include more open sourcing of their formerly closed source software, Flex, Flex, Adobe is due for some serious smackdown. Jesus said, "Whosoever shall save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life...shall find it." Wise words. If Adobe is going to try to keep their fingers in the Flash pie and keep it as a 'Cash Cow', licensing and limiting it's use by the millions of average developers out there, I predict they will seriously lose out by curbing it's distribution and limiting the potientials of those who would make with it more than the small dev team working at Adobe could ever dream of. If Adobe completely open sources Flash/Flex they will have given over a powerful weapon to the 'developer masses' and gained the trust and loyalty of those same developers who would use and sharpen these tools in the battle against MS domination. Adobe needs to 'win the hearts and minds' of the people and open the flood gates, because if they depend on $$ and business alone, MS will eat them alive.

  by Asai on 2007-05-04 19:33:23

• Microsoft owned Flickr would put me off using flickr.

  by gabes on 2007-05-05 16:45:58

• I can't wait when something like "Open Source Investor Company" will appear. Just to buy Microsoft and get rid of this global headache; to make people closer to total happiness of dis-microsofting. The day will come I believe...

  by Rostislav Siryk on 2007-05-10 16:47:39