China has spent a great deal of time being portrayed as an oppressive force when it comes to information traveling into and out of the country. Talk of Internet censorship began to grab some steam in 2007, and the Communist Party hasn’t escaped that label since. Yet it’s critical for outside observers to take a few steps back from the day-to-day news cycle in order to get a more comprehensive view of where it’s been and where it may go in the months and years ahead. Here we give you one such timeline.
If we’ve managed to miss any items from recent past, share your picks in the comments!
Size Matters
As we can all now appreciate, portions of China’s populace have familiarized themselves with the Internet to varying degrees over the last several years. Still, there is a real big limit to their digital freedoms. It’s called the Great Firewall.
So it’s important to understand where the government wants to carry the country to recognize that opening is happening and will continue to happen in the years ahead. It’s important to recognize the financial highlights made in the press over past few years for what they are. Seven-, eight-, and nine-figure funding deals, along with talk of IPOs, has been consistent. This year’s news of gaming venture 9you is just one example. I gather from these events that commerce has become the dominant religion of the red jungle. Which means great things for the country as a whole.
Harsh Treatment
Of course, the road for people in China fortunate enough to experience the Web has been a rough one. Not too long ago it was a weekly practice for bloggers beyond the country’s borders to make note of banned websites and censorship and, in some cases, arrests.
Remember when Yahoo and Microsoft spoke openly of their compliance with the Chinese government’s pursuit of censorship?
Yahoo’s CEO was later forced to endure congressional questioning in the US as a result of its release of user information to Chinese authorities that led to the arrest of Shi Tao, a journalist in the country.
Suffice it to say that Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google eventually came to learn that such behavior wouldn’t be accepted by American regulators as “the way things must go in the world of international business,” and agreed last month to guidelines for managing ventures in places suspect of human rights abuses.
Amplified Concerns
Forward to 2008, when we’ve seen many multinational corporations endure conflicts with China’s network of regulators. At the start of the year, Google saw YouTube blocked for hosting material having to do with protests in Tibet. CNN was later blocked for toeing a “China-no-good” line (our phrasing, not CNN’s) leading up to the Olympics.
As noise on the matter increased, Western press outfits en masse began to question the Chinese government on the topic of Web access during the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. Weeks of lingering coverage poured fourth in the springtime and early- to mid-summer.
The Olympic Games Begin to Turn the Tide
But while it made news prior to the games’ commencement, once things really began and progressed through 3 weeks of athletic records broken and, followed by a closing ceremony as spectacular as the one which started the whole thing, few news outlets based outside the Chinese mainland managed to revisit the subject of access. Or if they did, it was not to dwell on the present and the immediate past, but to hypothesize on what China would become in subsequent seasons. The pomp certainly won out over the circumstance in the Chinese capital.
That meant good news for China. Great news, in fact. The entire spectacle was a resounding success. Commentators started to believe that changes for the better would be made as a result of the games. But it was not the only advantage gained by the nation, and more specifically, the people.
The Crisis in Sichuan Province
Before the games had begun, there was the crisis inflicted by the earthquake in Sichuan Province, which wrought massive amounts of damage to infrastructure and claimed tens of thousands of lives, many of them young of age.
The sheer enormity of the event drove the Chinese government to allow for conversation about crisis to flow largely without limits on the Web. That went as much for emergency response as conversation on the how and why for the damage dealt. Local officials were blamed severely for aiding in the propagation of poor construction practices.
Thus, the question for the Chinese people and the world beyond to then consider became one of the possibility of permanent openness. Given the fact that rebuilding will take a great deal of time to fully accomplish, one can hope there is some enduring benefit to be had from the disaster, however unfortunate it was to so many citizens.
Big Change Comes Slowly
Let’s stress China’s desire to adjust at its own pace. Since things quieted down from a height of intense awareness of limits in the middle of the year, other negatives have come to the fore, not including the matter of tainted baby food. Recent reports of hacks performed via China on the White House network, for instance, while not unprecedented, have raised numerous red flags in Washington as well as the cyber division of the US Air Force Space Command (formerly known as AFCYBER), among other departments
Yes, China’s movements in the tech space are rough, sporadic, and in many ways slow-going. But there’s reason to establish an optimistic view of the future. That’s because the way the ruling party has conducted itself as of late has become very, very market oriented. It may be a heavily controlled market, but growth behooves the controller to loosen its grip to allow for continued expansion.
International commerce is what has led China to grow by enormous bounds for the last several seasons, and it is what makes Chinese society and the government’s interaction with the rest of the world considerably more transparent and open to exploration by outsiders. That goes as much for news as entertainment, too. Just look at MySpace and Facebook’s recent dealings with the Chinese market and the competition they’ve encountered there in sites like Xiaonei, Xiaoyou.
Realistically speaking, China won’t emulate the West anytime soon. It may never go so far, in fact. But it will come considerably closer to a progressive cohesiveness as we travel into the next decade. There’s simply too much money on the table not to make that effort.
Imagery provided by iStockPhoto/bkindler
; China BackPacker
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Yahoo China Launches a MySpace Clone
In China, MySpace and MSN Make Unlikely Friends
iPhone Coming to China Mobile?
MySpace China Creating an Instant Messenger Service
MySpace China Next Week - How Much Censorship?
Yahoo Goes to China; Takes 10 Percent Stake in Alibaba.com
MySpace.cn is Live
The entire Microsoft-Yahoo saga is now starting to look really sad for Yahoo. After Jerry Yang’s statement yesterday that Yahoo is suddenly interested in being acquired by Microsoft, Steve Ballmer now responds with a firm no.
“We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly,” he said. “We tried at one point to do a partnership around search, not advertising. That didn’t work either, so we moved on, and they moved on.”
Although it’s still questionable that getting acquired by Microsoft is a good thing for Yahoo in the long run, now that it’s seemingly out of their grasp, any other deal (for example, the rumored AOL merger) will seem like a desperate move. Even if Ballmer is just trying to wreck Yahoo some more and get an even better deal, Yahoo is in an awful position to negotiate; they’ve tried several avenues, and all of them turned out to be dead ends.
Now, the best - and probably only - thing they can do is get new management, and start working hard at building value for their shareholders. The ship has been sinking for quite some time, and those who wanted to leave already left. Time to go back to the old drawing board and start from scratch.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Ballmer Comments on Facebook
Ballmer Keeps Bloviating, But Actually Makes Sense!
Steve Ballmer Attacks Google’s Gmail Ads
Great, Now We’re Left with Ballmer
Microsoft CEO and CFO Schedules Early Monday Morning Chat With Financial Analysts
The Daily Poll: Should Yahoo Accept Microsoft’s Initial Offer?
Microsoft Gives Yahoo 3 Weeks For ‘Definitive Agreement’ To Buyout
Talk about a 180. Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco; him and his company are tired, battered and bruised. But his message is now - suddenly, and amazingly - clear: Yahoo wants to be bought by Microsoft.
His exact words?
“To this day, I have to say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo. I don’t think that is a bad idea at all…at the right price, whatever the price is, we are willing to sell the company. We were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate a deal, and we felt that we weren’t that far apart. But at the end of the day, they withdrew and they since have been very clear about not wanting to buy the company.”
Perhaps I have a bad memory, but Yahoo did not want Microsoft to acquire them following their initial offer which, in the light of perhaps inevitable economic recession and current Yahoo share price, now seems generous.
In fact: they did everything in their power to block the deal from happening, including negotiating a search ad deal with Google - one that was doomed to fail because of anti-monopoly laws.
Now, they’re willing to be acquired at the “right price,” which, in light of recent events, will inevitably be lower than Microsoft’s initial offer. This is a huge win for Steve Ballmer, who showed he’s a tough negotiator, who knows when to walk away and stalk for a better opportunity, and that opportunity is now. Microsoft is now buying a much, much weaker Yahoo, and even if their price is low; severely lower than their initial offer, Yang will probably have to take it.
The stage is now set for the final chapter of Microsoft-Google-Yahoo saga. Yahoo definitely pulled the shortest straw here; Microsoft may be a winner, but whether they’re capable of doing something useful with a giant such as Yahoo remains questionable. The real winner is, once again, Google, who interfered just enough to weaken both Microsoft and Yahoo as much as possible with virtually no downsides. Well played.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
MASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion
Yahoo and Microsoft Officially Call It Quits
@Yahoo is Twittering: @Microsoft: Sure, We’ll Consider an Alternative
The Daily Poll: What Should Microsoft Do Next?
Google to Acquire SimplyHired?
Battle On: Microsoft to Launch Proxy Fight at Yahoo
China’s Alibaba Wants a Voice in Microsoft-Yahoo Discussion
Earlier this year, as Yahoo fought off an acquisition attempt by Microsoft, it began to entertain a search advertising deal with Google. They even even went so far as to conduct a live trial of such a measure. Now the two Internet giants have effectively terminated the effort.
In June, as the US Department of Justice began its investigation of that arguably brazen move, the two companies forged an outline of what such an arrangement would look like if it were to see official approval.
But opposition steadily grew as Google and Yahoo heads stood strong for an October launch. Weeks later, they softened a bit, deciding to allow the DOJ to do its business. Yet, late last week, The Wall Street Journal reported a high potential of failure for their original proposal. Finally, today Google has confirmed the end of its agreement with Yahoo.
Google’s senior vice president of Corporate Development, David Drummond, who also sits as the chief legal officer for the company, cites government regulators’ ongoing scrutiny and concern and the possibility of a “protracted legal battle” and potential “damage to relationships with valued partners” as the key factors in its discontinuation of the search advertising plan put forth in late spring.
Drummond wrote that it was four months of review and “discussions of various possible changes to the agreement” that made it an ultimately unsuccessful venture. And in what seems to be a sort of token concession, the Google executive explained that an attempt to weather any and all conflicts “wouldn’t have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users.”
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Who Woulda Thunk It: Google Still Wants Deal With Yahoo
Yahoo-Google Deal Looking Good; Common Sense Packs Up And Leaves
Newspapers of the World: Google-Yahoo Ad Deal is Unfair
Pushed By Icahn, Yahoo Jumps Back Into Ad Deal With Google?
The Daily Poll: Is Microsoft-Yahoo Inevitable?
MASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion
Viacom Goes To Panama with Yahoo
As we rehash the Google-Yahoo story once more in light of the companies’ insistence to press forward into a non-exclusive search advertising arrangement - for which they have drawn considerable ire for earlier in the year when they trialed such a partnership at a time when Microsoft’s pursuit of a complete (and then partial) buyout of Yahoo, was still more or less on the table - there comes another provocation writ to the effect that the proposal is not anything to be alarmed by.
Actually, the exact title of the piece published today is “Why the Google-Yahoo ad deal is nothing to fear,” under which author and SJSU business processor Randall Stross presents a sort of “what monopoly?” flavor of argument. But the outline and commentary delivered by Stross makes some points that seem loose and even nitpicky at points. Altogether, the article hinges on the concept of auctioneering. Advertisers must bid, so all is fair, right?
Not quite. Yes, Stross makes a perfectly valid point to write up the auction process as the key factor in what drove Google and Yahoo to purportedly think they would not be troubled by a potential denial from regulators at the U.S. Department of Justice. (Though I think Stross steps a bit too far in thinking that Google and Yahoo “innocently thought that their advertising pact…would said through a regulatory review.” And Stross also steps leisurely past the fact that Google and Yahoo had played briefly without such an official OK before “they voluntarily submitted” to DOJ review, as he describes it.)
But the element of Google’s current market share (and, furthermore, what it would have access to following approval of this effort) 
is part and parcel of the sales process. It is, in short, what determines the value advertising. Advertisers pay considerably more to Google for ads that are more or less equal in size and shape to Yahoo’s own placements because Google’s audience is naturally much larger, and is growing still. (If third party analysts’ readings are accurate, Yahoo, Microsoft and others of the upper echelon of the Web search industry are either growing much more slowly, have become stagnant, or are decreasing in share.)
Another item Stross mentions is one I will just go ahead and paste verbatim:
“The deal would mean that some ads that visitors see on Yahoo’s search results page would be supplied by Google. Yahoo expects it will bring in $800 million annually in additional revenue because some search phrases get better results on Google, and some search phrases draw a plentiful number of advertisers on Google but none at all on Yahoo.
Everyone who wants to see Yahoo, the No. 2 search engine, regain some of its lost luster has abundant reason to cheer the deal on….”
The first paragraph is stands pretty much without error. Some search phrases do get better results on Google. And, yes, some search phrases do draw advertisers that don’t crop up in Yahoo’s own list of clients. But to claim that everyone who wants to see Yahoo regain some of its mojo should love the deal is, hardly something to consider seriously. That would be something a Google representative might say to sugar coat a message that would otherwise read as such: “Yahoo is hurting, folks. You want them to make more money? Here’s a quick fix. $800 mil’ for the next year, give or take some pennies. It might not budge the stock price, but Yang & Co sure could use the cash. And look at it this way, if we do good, Yahoo does good. That simple.” (Maybe throw in a “bada bing, bada boom” for spice.)
I have to say that it’s also a bit humorous to see Stross hedge some of his argument on an advertising deal made between Google and Ask.com, which started in 2002 and registered renewals in 2004 and 2007.
What this essentially comes down to is that there is always a mixture of pros and cons in the world of big business. Some win, some lose. And there’s really no disputing the fact that Yahoo will likely bring in that $800 million in revenue if the DOJ flicks on the green light. In that sense, yeah, it can be a winner. But the DOJ has to consider the perspectives of not only the advertising networks, but the advertisers themselves and the costs and potential repercussions associated with bridge-building between the #1 and #2 players in the industry. One example, the Association of National Advertisers, comprised of some 400 advertisers big and small, told the DOJ earlier this month that it was apprehensive of the deal, thinking it would amount to a 90% control over search advertising inventory. The government frankly can’t quite ignore that large an organization or pass it off as a kind of paranoia.
Also, the World Association of Newspapers too found the deal disconcerting. WAN president Gavin O’Reilly explained very plainly several days ago that, “Advertisers will increasingly migrate to Google since they will see diminishing price advantages to advertising through Yahoo. Google has refused to allow Yahoo to show Google ads on the websites of new publishing partners it acquires after the deal is finalized - in other words, Google has imposed a condition that impedes one of Yahoo’s last remaining opportunities to compete with Google.”
Statements made against the Googe-Yahoo deal aren’t, in the words of Mr Stross, an effort “to depict Google as a price-controlling monster.” At least not those statements made by parties doing business with one or both companies. Rather, they are a concerted push to scrutinize the possibility that Google, with a Yahoo partnership, will become a market controlling behemoth. Which has its downsides.
I would venture to guess others players would simply hang up their competitive hats, because so much traffic going one way means less traffic going in any other direction. Eventually the choice really just becomes a matter of being seen or not seen. That’s already the case now to some degree. It’ll be even more pronounced if Google-Yahoo becomes a real thing. The free market is quite a wonderful ideal, sure, but as observers recognize more than ever, some regulation is necessary to provide reasonable opportunity for all involved in the economic process.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
Yahoo Starts Layoffs While Deciding What To Do Next
Yahoo Gets Better Consumer Rating than Google
Yahoo and Google Sued Over Their Names
Yahoo-Google Deal Looking Good; Common Sense Packs Up And Leaves
Who Woulda Thunk It: Google Still Wants Deal With Yahoo
The Daily Poll: Is Microsoft-Yahoo Inevitable?
MASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion
Most everyone knows that the Microsoft ads with Seinfeld didn’t go over very well with the blog world, so they’ve started an “I’m a PC” campaign. And they’ve also launched an interesting online viral marketing site to go along with this new ad campaign.
If you click on the Get Into the Campaign link you will be able to upload your photo or record your video proudly proclaiming that you are a PC and it can be viewed in their Online Gallery. Even more exciting than that is the possibility that your photo or video could very well make it to the giant screens in Times Square! There’s a live view of Times Square on the site as well so not only can people in New York City see your mugshot but many more online as well.
Microsoft is actually trying hard this time to change their public image and it appears that they are succeeding with this new ad campaign. Using the Web and engaging everyone to become a part of it is a stroke of genius. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few Mac people on that site.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
BusinessWeek’s Sarah Lacy Writes Web 2.0 Expose
JamGate Launches Music Storefront to Compete with MySpace
Nabbr - Hot Stuff for Blogs, MySpace and Xanga
GoodReads Launches a Social Network for Books
MySpace API Preview
Who’s Famousr?
FlipFrames’ MySpace Slide Shows
Time Warner has officially confirmed that AOL will be split into two pieces -– access and content -– in an attempt to leverage its assets better and create a greater value proposition for those looking to acquire the embattled company.
Sounds great, but who really wants to buy AOL?
More often than not, I hear two companies names crop up every time someone wants to discuss which company will acquire AOL: Microsoft and Yahoo. I’m now here to tell you that the chances of Microsoft or Yahoo acquiring AOL are slim and none.
Microsoft
Microsoft doesn’t need AOL right now. Sure, the company can buy the content side of AOL and expand its presence online, but how does that solve its biggest problem: It needs to compete with Google in search?
Good thinking: It doesn’t.
Microsoft needs to focus on acquiring Yahoo or working to increase its presence in the search space before it can do anything else. If it plans on acquiring AOL, it won’t solve any problems and it’ll only take the company’s content business off its hands, which, to be quite honest, is something Microsoft should have no part in.
Yahoo
From a content standpoint, it makes some sense for Yahoo to acquire AOL. After all, as a company that’s already somewhat in the content business and tries to provide services for people to consume content, wouldn’t it make sense for it to continue working towards that goal?
Sure, but that assumption forgets one fact: Yahoo is in no position to start acquiring other companies; it needs to solve its own problems first.
Yahoo is in shambles right now. After being rocked by numerous acquisition attempts by Microsoft and shareholder in-fighting, how can Yahoo even consider striking a deal with a content company?
The whole point of the shareholder issue had nothing to do with content, and everything to do with the company’s future and how it can leverage its traffic to incur more revenue. On top of that, most of the company’s shareholders are deeply concerned over the fact that Yahoo simply doesn’t have any real prospect of growth in the search industry and its advertising element is woefully behind Google’s.
Taking all that into consideration, can we really say that Yahoo is in a position to acquire AOL? I didn’t think so.
Microsoft and Yahoo shouldn’t go for AOL. Instead, they need to find ways to improve their own businesses before they can worry about getting into the content business.
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
The Daily Poll: Should Yahoo Accept Microsoft’s Offer?
Microsoft Considers Raising Yahoo Bid
The Daily Poll: Would Microsoft-Yahoo Be Anti-Competitive?
Battle On: Microsoft to Launch Proxy Fight at Yahoo
Is Yahoo Worth $4 Billion More Than It Was On Feb. 1st?
The Daily Poll: Is Microsoft-Yahoo Inevitable?
Yahoo Sets $14 Billion On Fire
I think it’s time that the Web giants of the West clean house and toss away what they don’t absolutely need to accomplish goals set by management. Why? Technological focus of the highly productive sort has given way to competitive hubris, and those two terms should remain exclusive from one another often as possible. Each of the Big Four - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL - has displayed terrible redundancies in their own way, and needlessly so.
One of the most outstanding examples, perhaps, comes by way of Google. Google purchased YouTube some years aback, and its acquisition, while still not especially profitable, has come to dominate the field of Web video much the same way the company’s own search-advertising duopoly has grown. 
Still, Google Video survives. To be sure, they each serve different purposes. But why is that, exactly? Why work an ancillary angle? Wouldn’t it have been better to do away with Google Video by now and attend solely to YouTube?
Also, Google purchased Jaiku, a one-time strong competitor to Twitter that promoted itself heavily for the mobile crowd to great effect, but lost considerable ground in the last year do to the ways of popularity contest. What was the reasoning behind Google’s purchase? To get on the microblog wagon, of course. Yet, if the intention was good, Jaiku nonetheless gained little for its parent. So wouldn’t it be best to just…move on? Jaiku’s homepage signifies its status well at present. The announcement of Jaiku’s move into the Googleplex is still write large. Still.
Now, how about the smallest of the four, AOL. Seems innocent enough, trying to make things happen for itself. But perhaps it’s trying too many things, no? From the looks of it, AOL has only a few really solid efforts underway: its AIM service, its radio (plus Last.fm) projects, and its blogging network. Those are what make AOL sit unique from other giants, it seems, and which should be developed with vigor. 
Everything else appears ancillary. AOL Mail is still strong as far as users go, but in utility, it’s no market leader. Search? Three words: “Enhanced by Google.” Sure, its search and home news page are very much bread and butter to the entire operation, but again, AOL can’t survive forever on aid. It needs to find its own way. It should think less horizontal and more vertical. How best to make its most attractive properties better, in other words.
Microsoft is at this time a peculiar fellow. It has a reasonable amount of traffic, but its ambition may be too much of a fantasy. Google is very dominant in search, and while Microsoft would do well to remain in the game in order to pull in some coin to fund its Live services, to seek a real challenge with the king of the judge seems somewhat fantastical at the moment. Microsoft was hard after Yahoo, but for $44+ billion dollars, it might be better able to condition its own properties to serve users better. 
And that suite of full-fledged cloud office applications isn’t going to make itself. My last word about Microsoft for now: The company’s expansion of its original deal with Facebook to supply a search box for users something that I think is worth more to Microsoft’s future than doing anything really massive with Yahoo.
Speaking of Yahoo, it is one player that is so unfortunately confused about its plans for the future that it hasn’t yet managed to make an outright killing with its top properties. From far and wide, cries over the unrealized potential of Flickr have droned on and on and on again. Yahoo Mail, besides being visually refreshed, has remained largely unchanged. Yahoo Buzz, something which many consider to have a clear advantage over Digg, if only for its potential audience, is not displayed with any prominence on the Yahoo homepage. The user must select “More Yahoo Services” in order to gain access. For something which can make Yahoo seem more current and appear more content-rich from the get-go, it’s strangely second-tier. For goodness sake, Yahoo still features a link for GeoCities at its topmost domain. Poor prioritization for sure.
Here’s the thing. The roles of Internet giants are understandably difficult to manage. The carnal objective of enormous financial growth, mandated by the companies as well as the starseekers of Wall Street, is a massively tough nut to crack in and of itself, quarter after quarter. Brilliance is hard to repeat, after all, and sometimes there is only so much you can eek out of a particular business. The risk of having a decision deemed stupid and ineffectual by users and subsequently investors as well, is just added pressure that can only be conducive to cautiousness, and not meaningful progress.
Of course, being a giant also has its outstanding benefits. It means that you carry with your name a sizable amount of money, either in assets or in cold hard cash. Which you can experiment with very liberally, particularly in the startup market. But having the option to do so doesn’t necessarily mean you take it.
For a long time I’ve watched the Big Four mozy about and stretch themselves unnecessarily. I’ve seen things boom, bust, and languish to various degrees of boring. Sites and services launched afresh or have been purchased, and something or other has subsequently stagnated as a result. Yet all too often have those burdens been kept afloat. Why that is is a mystery. There’s no reason for it. They’re dead weight, and the sooner one is done with them the better. You have lower amount of vital statistics to watch over, giving you more opportunity to zero in on what really matters to their brands.
The fact is that excess fat is on everyone’s plate, and the more able one becomes at mimimizing one’s weaknesses, the more pronounced one’s strengths may grow. Really, sometimes it is that simple.
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
Live In NY Metro Area? Manhattan’s Got Tons Of Super Bowl Parties On Tap
YouTube Killer Gets $100M in Funding
Google Marks Five Years Of Ad Grants For Non-Profits
UK Wants To Kick File Sharers Off The Net
The Web 1.0 Companies That Got Whooped!
EduSim’s Whiteboards for Interactive Learning
Microsoft to Acquire Fast Search & Transfer
I’m tired. Really I am. I’m tired of hearing refrain after refrain of how Microsoft played hardball with Yahoo, only to capitulate to an increase of its initial purchase offer. I’m tired of Yahoo’s CEO masking his personal opposition to a buyout by Redmond with lawyerly evasions and his clear conviction that the publicly-owned company is worth a whole heck of a lot more than its stock price shows it to be. This saga between the two tech giants went from a big-money bonanza, with pundits enthusiastically tooting their kazoos, to something that can best be describe as a fiasco. A thoroughly frustrating fiasco, at that.
Not because of the length of the journey. No, one would be foolish to assume things might have wrapped up with hugs and kisses in a week’s time. Regulatory approval would be arduous indeed. Instead, it is the course which the spectacle has taken over the months it’s waxed and waned. Or should I say the lack thereof? No one seems to be privy to where things are really headed. Organized negotiation? What’s that? There was $44.6 billion on the table, originally. Which was a hefty premium over Yahoo’s public valuation circa January 31. Now the deal seems naught but a joke liberally milked out in Opinionland for all its worth. (Or not worth, depending on one’s vantage, I suppose.)
You may have already heard; you may not have. The news now is that Microsoft and angry Yahoo shareholder Carl Icahn signed their names to a time-sensitive proposal sent over Friday evening to Sunnyvale, California, to acquire Yahoo’s search business and do a bit of a corporate shuffle. Well, okay. “A bit” is putting it softly. “Complex restructuring” is the phrase being used. Anyway, as you would now reflexively guess, Yahoo essentially offer a reply of, “Thanks, but no thanks.” They still don’t like the fact that the wannabe buyer(s) would be allowed to play in Yahoo’s sandbox and do some weeding inside the employee base.
In its public response to the Microsoft, Yahoo, among its various points made about what Yahoo is, where Yahoo is, and why Yahoo is, reiterated its openness to a full-scale buyout of the company at $33/share, one dollar less than Microsoft allowed some months ago as its final straw. As we understand, Microsoft said no to the $33 deal before. Will it refuse again? Who’s to say.
I’m going to close this one out quick, because, well, I’ve no desire to prolong the agony any longer than it’s “fated” to. Some think Microsoft has no intention of finishing out the season (or even the month) sans an arrangement, either through a Yahoo board room insurgency or through a more formal handshake session and toast to big profits to come. In short, I agree. Microsoft wants to follow through. And the pressure of Yahoo’s impending shareholder meeting in August may well be the backdrop needed to get it done with some modicum of propriety.
On the other hand, if stubbornness wins out, well, ugly plus ugly is still ugly, eh? How much bigger can the mess get, really? Perhaps I’ll regret having asked that question.
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
The Daily Poll: Is Microsoft-Yahoo Inevitable?
Yahoo Sets $14 Billion On Fire
Developing: Microsoft Reconsidering Yahoo Offer
The Daily Poll: Should Yahoo Accept Microsoft’s Offer?
MASSIVE: Microsoft May Acquire Yahoo for $50 Billion
CNET: Microsoft and Yahoo in “Informal Talks”
News Corp Deal Not a Likely Alternative for Yahoo
Todd Bishop has published a 2003 e-mail from Bill Gates to some Microsoft developers. It’s basically Bill complaining about certain Windows features not working, and others being so convoluted that it’s irrational to expect a rational person to go through this hell to get an update or a piece of free software.
Read Bill’s entire e-mail here, it’s worth it.
The e-mail is fascinating for two reasons. First one is the fact that it’s such a genuine complaint, although it’s coming from Bill Gates. Had I or anyone else written the same thing, I bet there would be commenters who would proclaim us ignorant, lazy, or both. When it comes from Bill, well, it’s hard to pull that argument because he’s obviously not biased against Microsoft, he’s not lazy, and he’s not ignorant: he’s biased in favor of Microsoft, and he’s trying hard to do something with one of their products, but he cannot because - simply put - it sucks.
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:
Bill Gates: We’re Not Interested In Other Deals
Bill Gates Lied? Microsoft May Offer to Buy Out Facebook.
Bill Gates: We’re Not Raising the Yahoo Bid
Bill Gates Falls to #2 Spot on List of World’s Richest
Microsoft Will Pay Users to Search, Says Bill Gates
Google founders crack the top 5 richest Americans
Steve Ballmer Attacks Google’s Gmail Ads