Laying off talented web designers seems like the worst possible strategy for Yahoo.
Unless your strategy is “get acquired by Microsoft”.
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Full of sound and furry
You mean Depends like the adult under garment right? Then I couldn’t agree more with your assessment.
Well played, Macalope.
I still don’t get it.
Microsoft doesn’t want Yahoo’s contrary executives, or their competing brands, or their non-Windows server infrastructure, or their existing non->.NET codebase; I just always assumed that the talented developers were what Microsoft hoped to gain from Yahoo to begin with.
I want google to acquire them to flickr is linked to my google world.
I’m with Bergamot here.
Perhaps the Macalope’s implication is that Microsoft just wants Yahoo!’s users and doesn’t give two craps about, y’know, the people responsible for gaining them users in the first place. That would be a very typically corporate perspective to have, but surely MS isn’t that stupid.
There is nothing in Yahoo’s technology stack that could not be duplicated by reading all of the papers published by Google Research. MS is hoping for a network effect here: the fusion of Live and Yahoo traffic would be great enough to launch the combined brand into the public consciousness, and more importantly the advertisers’ consciousness.
Most of the talented people still there will leave if the acquisition goes through, and Microsoft knows that. Remember: because turnover is so high in mature web companies, the people who actually got the system up and running have already left. Nobody buys a mature company for the employees.
I had assumed that Microsoft was interested in 3 things. Yahoo!’s user base. Yahoo!’s existing technology. A cheap-to-operate acquisition.
Eliminating top-tier, expensive talent helps Yahoo! offer the third. I’m sure Microsoft believes they already have top-tier talent so why would they really want more if they don’t have to pay for it.
I wonder what percent of the Flickr user base would jump ship if it was acquired by Microsoft.
Microsoft’s days as the evil empire went out around the same time “Ace of Bass” was a popular band and Netscape was “K-rad”
Update your hate, people. Wasting it on MS is plain embarrassing.
Obama uses a Zune and now so do I.
Nice Jason. Good point. Thanx. MS is indeed the good guy now.