Microsoft will pay high price for failing to learn history lessons

[David Farber <dfarber () cs cmu edu>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk>
Date: February 10, 2008 5:20:14 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Microsoft will pay high price for failing to learn history  
lessons

Hi Dave:

You - and IP if you wish - might enjoy the way that the Nicrosoft bid  
for Yahoo is being commented on this side of the pond - at least in  
the Observer, one of the better national Sunday newspapers, part of  
Guardian News and Media Limited.

Cheers

Brian

====

Microsoft will pay high price for failing to learn history lessons

   * John Naughton
   * The Observer,
   * Sunday February 10 2008

It's the metaphors and similes that get me. It's a shotgun marriage,  
declared one commentator, 'with Google holding the gun'. Putting  
Microsoft and Yahoo together, said another, was like trying to produce  
an eagle from an alliance of two turkeys.

This is unfair. Microsoft isn't a turkey, but a profitable, boring  
mastodon that entertains fantasies about being able to fly. Yahoo, for  
its part, is an ageing hippy who invented hang-gliding but aspired to  
fly 747s and then discovered that he wasn't very good at it. The  
mastodon hopes that by employing the hippy it will learn to hang- 
glide. The hippy's feelings about the whole deal are plain for all to  
see.

Microsoft's $44.6bn offer of cash plus shares for Yahoo has got  
everyone in a spin, partly because of its sheer size but mostly  
because they fondly imagine it heralds an exciting future. At last,  
they think - something that might stop the inexorable advance of  
Google toward world domination! If that's what they're hoping for,  
then this ain't it, alas.

[snip]

The joke is that all of this was going on in a week when Time Warner  
announced that it was looking for ways of divesting itself of AOL,  
that poster child of an earlier dotcom era. Marx was right about  
history repeating itself, 'the first time as tragedy, the second as  
farce'.


Full story at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/10/microsoft.microsoft?gusrc=rss&feed=media


--
School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/



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