StrictNon-Conformist

Facebook Is Now the 4th Largest Site in the World

Being that large is great, in theory, except for one thing: businesses exist to make a profit, and unless I'm mistaken, FaceBook has been nothing but a loss statement, so what has that size gotten them?

Microsoft Gets the Yahoo Deal Done

"Bing, the new Internet Browser, was announced a few months ago and Windows OS7 is on the horizon for Microsoft, so don't write this computing pioneer off."

Hey, do you check what you write before posting???

Yahoo's Bartz Minimizes Microsoft's Bing

Quote from article: "Her other key point was that Yahoo didn’t need a Microsoft deal and said that the company’s future is “cleaner” without one. Those comments backtrack a bit from Bartz’s comments that Yahoo would need a boatload of cash to do a search deal with Microsoft."

Actually, no: those don't backtrack at all: what's really being said is that a boatload of money would be required to make it worthwhile at all to go through the big expense and hassle, and while the cash would be nice, it'd be much easier (most likely) to regrow organically.

Having been a Yahoo! until I was laid off December 2008, my observation is this: Google is a verb, Yahoo is not, Live is not, and it appears Microsoft is going for a verb with Bing, as it makes more sense to "bing" it than Yahoo it or msn it, etc. and Bing tends to indicate action: now, whether or not the general public can be convinced that since it has been renamed to be more verb-worthy that they can now Bing search results, that's the bigger question!

Internet Advertising Grew 10 Percent in 2008, Outpacing TV

Ok, but tell me: are these numbers for the first 14 years adjusted for inflation, or unadjusted? If not adjusted, it doesn't really mean anything for comparison purposes! Cable has been around quite a bit longer than internet ads, and regular TV much longer before that.

If it is adjusted, it's sloppy writing to not mention that, and expect readers to assume that it is.

Automaker Bailout Fails: This Is Not Good

Well, unless the government somehow pulls a rabbit out of a different hat, this is going to get incredibly ugly. If the UAW had been willing to make concessions, it had a reasonable chance of only being ugly.

We can only hope that all those auto workers and the workers of all the suppliers have been wise enough to have saved enough cash away to live and reinvent themselves better than they were before, and keep the economy humming along, or else taxpayers will be stuck with a far larger expense for unemployment costs, combined with lost tax revenue and a larger number of foreclosures due to mortgagees not being gainfully employed at all, as opposed to (perhaps) a smaller number of inevitable foreclosures of those that were living too close to the edge already. Oh, and let's not forget the retirees that may find no pension benefits that'll suddenly need to be covered by Medicaid, and all that does, too.

Stay Away from Yahoo Despite Persistent Microsoft Merger Rumors

User 281086, you're paranoid and plain stupid: it was Steve Ballmer's comments at a conference that set off this big flurry! Jerry Yang and Yahoo! employees had nothing to do with this: loose lips sink ships, or in this case, buoy them up artificially, only to be dashed against the rocks after the toying lines are cast aside from the lips of the bigger ships of rumors.

Pull your head out of your assets, and use it rationally and logically, and not some jerk-knee reaction where you're trying to kick someone in the crotch.

For Yahoo and AOL, Will Opening Up Their Portals Be Enough?

Steer clear of Keith Jones! He's clearly got more than a few screws loose, and is likely to shoot you if you look at him funny!

Hurco: A Buy at the Current Price

Chandler,

Hurco doesn't have anything outside of the tools it sells, unless they've suddenly branched out into teaching people classes, which is largely redundant with their CNC machines: I know how redundant that'd be, because I was laid off from Hurco in 2001 when they went down into the bad part of the cycle, where I was working on the code for the CNC and press brake control software.

I understand from talking to my former boss that while Hurco clearly appears to be far more profitable financially, it has changed atmosphere in a way that's not as employee-friendly.

Yahoo Goes Purple (And You Thought Microsoft's Ad Campaign Was Weird)

It's clearly a success: you're describing the marketing program as though you've actually used the site, and now you're doing viral marketing as a side-effect, and what's even better is you don't even recognize the fact that it has worked!

Yahoo! has just done subversive marketing and has snared you in its (inter)net! :D

Missing: 200 Million Yahoo! Shares from Last Friday's Annual Meeting

If people were betting on the takeover going through at a price and are losing their shirts because they jumped in for the kill and expectation of making a lot of money in a short time, they're damned fools and deserve to lose that money, udirtyrat. Carl Icahn has earned his loss, and so, too, all the short-term speculators. Of far more concern for Yahoo! are the employees with stock options that they'd like to see around for the long haul, that have little reason to stay.

Believe it or not, Yahoo! isn't losing money: the only thing being lost at Yahoo! right now is investor and employee confidence in them. By the measures of most companies in the world, they're suitably profitable, but when compared to the likes of Google, they seem like they're not doing well.

I'm hoping by your comment that you were one of those short-term fools that lost a lot of money because you counted on something you just can't count on: what people will do. If you can't tolerate the risk, you shouldn't jump into the deep end of the pool with all the sharks that haven't been fed recently. If you can, just shut up about it, because that's the nature of such things: they're inherently risky.

Icahn "Encouraged" by Yahoo, But Retains Cudgel

The creator of such a stupid way of measuring dropping percentage should still be flogged until dead, and all people that use it deserve the same treatment for sheer stupidity and violation of mathematical common sense.

Yahoo: Fighting for Its Life, Uses Homepage To Battle Icahn

It's really rather comical: all the pundits screaming how desperate Yahoo! is to use their webpage to detail their position, when in reality, it shows simple reasonable logic: it demonstrates how much reach they have in terms of audiences, and that they're not without a lot of value. 304 million unique viewers for that page??? That's more than the whole US population! And... well, not everyone in the US is online, so that says a lot about how many people it reaches that may be useful for it to reach. Now, whether or not it'll have the desired effect is incredibly hard to judge, even if it is truly successful: there's so many other places online as well as just listening/watching news offline that's going on and on about the whole thing that it makes accurate attribution of effects effectively impossible.

Now, as to the Search thing referred to by hw2h: Microsoft can, in fact, lower the price for those that are paying the bills: the advertisers. They have, in fact (in a limited manner) lowered the price for searchers with their recent promotion (do you know what that promotion is? Search for it! :) ) but if people don't want to use it, even for free, or even when paid to use it, it's purely a liability on the balance sheet, as it has been almost the entire time, and the losses are only getting bigger. If advertisers don't get results, why bother with them? Microsoft doesn't have the volume of either Yahoo! or Google, and therefore can't get the results advertisers want, and therefore can't get the advertisers Microsoft wants, and it seems users rarely use it, so as a side-effect of that, the search results are going to be subpar, and not give the users of Search what they want, and... nobody gets what they want, so the value proposition is in the crapper for all parties involved. Hence, Microsoft wanting and needing to buy Yahoo! to achieve critical mass. Yahoo! has the numbers, and while not as profitable as Google at this time, is at least profitable, while Microsoft's online properties have only had a single quarter where they were in the black, and every other quarter has seen massive losses for all the years.

Either Microsoft needs to complete the deal, or they'd be wiser financially to work on other things, if they're not going to make it grow into profitability. You can't simply increase profitability long-term by taking on more and more losses for a long time, if you're not actually growing customer base to where they'll eventually pay off. It seems Microsoft is simply not growing Search user or Search advertiser customer base towards profitability, and both need to be synchronized for the bottom line: if you don't have searchers, you can't get much for advertising, but if you don't have advertising that's effective, you may not get as many searchers, and without enough searchers, there's less complete detail as to what people are searching for: this completes the vicious cycle.

Talk of AOL-Yahoo Combo Raises Its Ugly Head (Again)

I'll go out on a limb and predict that Microsoft will wind up with both, whether it be through Yahoo! first buying/merging with AOL, or a combined deal.

Then again, tying up that much capital in AOL AND getting Yahoo! at a price the Yahoo! board and stockholders will go for seems like a bit of a stretch. However, due to China having new laws/whatever in effect, Microsoft would have to sell off the Asian assets of Yahoo! which could make it all feasible overall.

Of course, it'd be simpler if Microsoft just either threw enough money for a whole Yahoo! or actually did walk away, and mean it this time.

Whatever the final result, being a pawn in the whole thing, I have hopes for one thing: that Carl Icahn loses money in the whole deal, seeing as he has zero interest in long-term benefits other than to his short-term profit prospects. After all, he doesn't know squat about the tech world, and definitely this is all out of his realm.

Yahoo/Microsoft: Dead Deal Talk Replaced with New Buzz

The only "win" Microsoft could have out of this is having destabilized the reputation of Yahoo! but that by itself won't help them gain any traction online: they'll still be losing at least as much money as Yahoo! remains making in profits every year, while Google sits back and laughs at Microsoft's stupidity. The only way Microsoft can throw money at this whole thing and hope to come out ahead is to buy Yahoo! in a friendly acquisition (more money=more friendly, and it seems a lot of money will be needed at this point to make it more friendly) at which point they have a chance, assuming the existing Yahoo! employees aren't sufficiently disgruntled at the whole thing to leave, leaving Microsoft with a brand and a huge set of hollow buildings and depreciating computer hardware (surely Microsoft has at least as much of that of their own, with currently several times as many employees).

If Microsoft could have made meaningful progress by throwing money at the whole thing, surely they would have made progress by now, via marketing and/or getting the needed employees: but, the evidence shows they have not. If people have chosen not to move to where Microsoft wants them to move, and won't interview at Microsoft, it doesn't matter how much money Microsoft has: they can't do it. I know many people that reject considering Microsoft as an employer purely on principle. You factor that in with Microsoft's reputation for the wringer they put interviewees through, and you have a double whammy that makes it less likely. If Microsoft wants to have a chance (a chance, not a guarantee) they need to buy something that already is successful, and hopefully not change things too much, lest they manage it into complete failure: after all, they've already got MSN as an example of their management.

Microsoft Crosses a Line

user86999,
the change of control severance plan is NOT a poison pill to any would-be acquiring entity that actually wants the most valuable assets: the people and technology. It's also not uncommon to have similar things enacted for higher management: it's only unusual that it extends to everyone, down to the lowliest clerks/peons in the company. But if you want something intact and aren't intending on gutting it, it helps to assure those that desire to stay (for whatever reason) that at least if there is a major layoff, they will have something to live off while competing against all their former coworkers for a dearth of jobs with a sudden glut of people to compete against. In all reality, it's the people and their knowledge of the technology and their established teams that Microsoft values: without that, none of what you know as Yahoo! would have succeeded. Without the people who already know how to work together, all Yahoo! (or Microsoft, or Google) would be is a bunch of leased buildings and rapidly depreciating, horribly abused computer hardware.

If it were only about money to get things done by hiring people, Microsoft would already have managed to do it: the reality is if people don't work together properly, things aren't managed properly, and you can't get people to even interview because of who/what you are in the eyes of the potential employees, you'll never achieve the goal. You can't simply hire a bunch of software developers and point them at something and say "Go make us a bunch of money, and we'll pay you!" and have it be successful. After all, how many people do you think Microsoft has working on MSN and all other online properties? Now, how much have they made in terms of profit? (Answer: it'd only be impressive if negative numbers were considered profitable).

Both Yahoo! and Microsoft know that regardless of all other outward appearances, money isn't the solution: having the people Yahoo! has already is the solution, because they know what they're doing from a technical standpoint. Now, the management, well, it may be sinking towards the mess that defines Microsoft: if Microsoft could already manage their way to success, with their many times larger employee base, surely they would have done so by now, wouldn't they?