Microsoft buying Yahoo!

I had joked with a friend of mine who works for Yahoo that MS will asset strip like crazy.

One snippet from him was that everyone in his team immediately cashed in their share options. :LOL:
There might be a bidding war with google, although i think it unlikely myself.
 
HA, looks like news corp (owner of myspace) is putting a bid for yahoo. lol.
http://www.reuters.com/article/busi...Type=RSS&feedName=businessNews&rpc=23&sp=true
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is in talks to combine MySpace and other Internet properties with Yahoo Inc to fend off Microsoft Corp's $42.1 billion bid, according to several reports.

One proposal under discussion would value the MySpace online social network at around $6 billion to $10 billion and would give News Corp a more than 20 percent stake in a combined company, according to the Wall Street Journal Web site Wednesday.
 
If you dislike MS you'll dislike an unfettered Google even more (and for the same reasons).

For the time being this is simply untrue. I don't see MS giving away Office software or free online storage.

As for the future - none of us knows that.
 
I don't see MS giving away Office software or free online storage.

MS suggested the "store all your documents on our servers and access them over the Internet, it's great!" thing years ago. It died a fast and fiery death because nobody trusted them not to rummage through the contents.
 
MS suggested the "store all your documents on our servers and access them over the Internet, it's great!" thing years ago. It died a fast and fiery death because nobody trusted them not to rummage through the contents.

Well that's the point. Hardly anyone trusts MS (and rightfully so). Google hasn't done anything to deserve the same reputation.

Just for clarification's sake: I'm not some Google fanboy, nor am I a rabid anti-MS fanboy. All people are capable of "evil", especially in groups. Companies are some of the worst offenders, IMHO. Given enough time and enough power, I've no doubt Google would do some dastardly deed that would put them "on the same level as MS."
 
Well that's the point. Hardly anyone trusts MS (and rightfully so). Google hasn't done anything to deserve the same reputation.

Sure, reputation is all, I just find it rather amusing that the same people who wouldn't trust MS with the time of day are quite happy to store personal email, documents, photos and the rest on the servers of a company whose aim is to "know more about you than you know yourself".

Google may well not have done anything big, bad and wrong, but it is being given the power to do so by the very people who are paranoid about what MS might do if given access to the same personal info. Google give away some shiny trinkets and suddenly they can do no wrong.

I'm neither anti-Google nor pro-MS, but the general perception of Google as Luke Skywalker to the Darth Vader of MS worries me. No business can be as squeaky-clean as the Google image and survive, yet along make billions of dollars. People should be more worried about Google precisely because they're so much more adept at gaining mindshare than MS.

I just wish people would be slightly more sceptical why that nice friendly man is handing out all that candy for free.
 
Sure, reputation is all, I just find it rather amusing that the same people who wouldn't trust MS with the time of day are quite happy to store personal email, documents, photos and the rest on the servers of a company whose aim is to "know more about you than you know yourself".

Google may well not have done anything big, bad and wrong, but it is being given the power to do so by the very people who are paranoid about what MS might do if given access to the same personal info. Google give away some shiny trinkets and suddenly they can do no wrong.

I'm neither anti-Google nor pro-MS, but the general perception of Google as Luke Skywalker to the Darth Vader of MS worries me. No business can be as squeaky-clean as the Google image and survive, yet along make billions of dollars. People should be more worried about Google precisely because they're so much more adept at gaining mindshare than MS.

I just wish people would be slightly more sceptical why that nice friendly man is handing out all that candy for free.

Again - what has Google done to deserve people's mistrust? Nothing, hence the seemingly vast amount of respect this company has garnered. MS OTOH...

For the record - I don't even use my gmail account, nor any of Google's apps. Nice that they offer them, however.
 
Google certainly has a shinier image than MS, but don't be fooled into thinking all that free stuff is altruism.
 
Yahoo's internally run poll found the public (in Europe) were "going off" Google and Yahoo's image was rising. I questionned the validity with the chap who told me but he insisted Yahoo was on the up. Bless 'em.
 
Google certainly has a shinier image than MS, but don't be fooled into thinking all that free stuff is altruism.

I'm not saying Google is perfect or that they only have the best intentions. It is obvious to anyone with a modicum of business sense that Google's moves are positioned to open up markets which had previously been inaccessible due to MS' dominance.

All I'm saying is: enjoy the free ride while it lasts :) No sense in not doing so just because several years down the road they might start charging for the same products/services. In fact, all the more reason to use them now!
 
Google isn't making money by selling consumer level products, they are making money by selling your personal information (at least indirectly). Every 'free' thing they give you is just another way for them to collect and sell more of that information.
 
I understand Google's business model. I still find it preferrable to MS' dominance of the industry since the 80's. No organization with the singular goal of making money is going to do only the right thing always.
 
You suggested google has done nothing to garner mistrust, but they've done plenty. It's just that somehow people seem to overlook it, or care about it less.
 
You suggested google has done nothing to garner mistrust, but they've done plenty. It's just that somehow people seem to overlook it, or care about it less.

Such as........? I have yet to see anything put forth that would be an example of something Google has done to earn mistrust.

If you have nothing specific to object to other than their business model then you object to targeted advertising period, which means you object to demographic marketing, which means you object to the way just about every company operates.
 
Such as........? I have yet to see anything put forth that would be an example of something Google has done to earn mistrust.

If you have nothing specific to object to other than their business model then you object to targeted advertising period, which means you object to demographic marketing, which means you object to the way just about every company operates.

Many people would be very concerned about Google's lack of concern for an individuals privacy. And Google isn't far off of being a monopoly, but they're a good monopoly right? Because they give you free stuff?
 
Many people would be very concerned about Google's lack of concern for an individuals privacy. And Google isn't far off of being a monopoly, but they're a good monopoly right? Because they give you free stuff?

So you don't have any specific examples of wrongdoing, just an overall objection to their business model?

That's fine with me, btw, I would just appreciate if you would come out and admit to that, rather than making statements like this:

You suggested google has done nothing to garner mistrust, but they've done plenty.
 
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