All evening I have being trying to come to grips with this whole Microsoft, Yahoo and Google thing. I’ve been reading and rereading the puff type posts and the equally well thought out posts on the events of the last couple of days. Everyone from MG Siegler with his two excellent posts on the matter, to Paul O’Flaherty who thinks Google is reacting out of fear and then to the typical Duncan Riley and Michael Arrington pieces on TechCrunch.
As interesting as all the posts I have read might be and as much as I might have learned bits and pieces from the different view points I am still left with one question. What the frak is the point of this deal. It makes absolutely no sense what so ever – none – nada. I don’t care what the spin is that Microsoft is trying to put around the whole deal. But then neither do I believe the crap that Google is spewing as to why this is a bad deal. The fact is the more they open their collective mouth the more they are beginning to sound like Sun, Netscape and a bunch of other companies from years ago that went crying to the government over some silly piece of software called a browser.
Let’s look at the players in this pending fiasco for a minute and try and make some sense of this. First of all we have the unwilling bride to be Yahoo who is looking more like a peanut butter sandwich that has fallen face down onto the floor and no matter how you pick it up there’s gonna be mess. Yahoo have become nothing more that a disparate collection of services that have the company spread all over the place. Yahoo seems to have become nothing more than a spaghetti throwing company and nothing is sticking long enough to form anything around.
As for Microsoft – well someone please take the crack pipe away from Ballmer and the sooner the better. Microsoft is already having enough of an identity crisis what with MSN this and Live that. This isn’t even taking into account the mess that the whole operating system division is in and now they are wanting to bring this whole SaaS stuff into the mix. At this point Google might be the 1,000 pound gorilla of the Internet but Microsoft is quickly beginning to resemble a 10,000 pound chicken with its head cut off – it doesn’t know which direction it wants to go.
As much as Microsoft might want to wish it was an Internet company it is nowhere near to being one – especially on the scale of Google, and no amount of billions is going to buy its way onto that dance card. So the idea of buying Yahoo as its entry fee into the Internet world is nonsensical to say the least. The very idea of having to mesh two totally different mind sets to operate as one huge entity should be enough to make the most sane man want to run and hide in a corner somewhere – if he doesn’t go screaming mad first.
Then we have Google circling the whole thing and watching for any opportunity to throw in a monkey wrench where ever it can. While Google might not have the resources themselves to do a deal against Microsoft it will be doing everything it can to make the process as difficult as possible. The last thing that Google wants is another player with deeper pockets playing in the sandbox of information that they have considered their exclusive property for so long.
Personally I can only think of one reason why this deal is going ahead and that is Steve Ballmer. To me this is his last great hurrah and he doesn’t care what the common wisdom is saying about how bad this deal could turn out to be. Ballmer wants his place in history and since Bill Gates has taken the all important places in history Ballmer is having to settle for second best.
Now whether that second best will be the successful purchase and meshing of two giant corporations or whether it will be the decline of the worlds greatest corporation into a morass of meaninglessness – well only history will tell us.
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