>>> off Msft back !! I hope they acquire Seek as it would be great and maybe even Yahoo!!
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Isn't the market cap and current earnings of those two insignificant compared to MSFT? I can see MSFT playing that game, and surely buying one search engine company would not be anticompetitive when there are so many. But how much can they add to the bottom line?
Also, MSFT has tried to play the portal game several times now with no particular success, and seems pretty capable of screwing up what they buy in that arena. MSN, WebTV, not exactly thrilling yet. Surely acquisitions in banking and auto sales and so forth would be more promising for them, since they involve capital, finances, business plans, fulfillment and marketing skills to make money. (Granted, retail has special complications in every specialty, still, look at Branson...) Whereas portals and online services involve human intangibles like quality of service, content, value, fairness, privacy expectations, user experience, usability and so on that are not strong MSFT talent areas?
OTOH: I guess they have had some recent success. I hear their investor site is pretty good, and they now have some chat areas and email and whatnot that work pretty well. I haven't tried them, but the MSFT boosters here tell me this is true, and I believe them. Also, Yahoo is now getting a harder time from Netscape (Check where yahoo is listed when you press the search button :-)
But anyway, if you have Yahoo stock and they offer you a premium, good for you! Good luck on that.
Cheers,
Chaz |
