“Google proved to be the final straw that broke Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s back,” Yi-Wyn Yen reports for Fortune.
“After weeks of threatening Yahoo that the software giant would attempt a hostile takeover if the company refused its bid, Ballmer explained Saturday why he decided to withdraw his offer for the Internet portal. He was walking away because of his archrival Google,” Yen reports,
“Yahoo would become ‘undesirable’ if it formed an alliance with Google, Ballmer said in a statement. Last month, Yahoo had outsourced some of its search advertising results to Google in a two-week trial. The Internet portal said it was considering a long-term partnership with Google and that a deal could be announced as early as next week, a source familiar with the matter said,” Yen reports.
Full article here.
Excerpts from a BusinessWeek interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, October 12, 2004:
Steve Jobs: Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. That’s a long time. And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly. But after that, the product people aren’t the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It’s the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what’s the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself? So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy… Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they’re no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn’t.
BusinessWeek: Is this common in the industry?
Steve Jobs: Look at Microsoft — who’s running Microsoft?
BusinessWeek: Steve Ballmer.
Steve Jobs: Right, the sales guy. Case closed.
Source: The Seed of Apple’s Innovation
I highly doubt that is the sole reason…
Finally!
Good, now I can continue using Yahoo without worrying about it going to hell after a Microsoft acquisition.
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MDN
Thanks for reminding the old Jobs Interview. it is very appropriate here…
I love Jobs’s thinking.
now I can use my yahoo id without worrying about microsoft
Ballmer: “Yahoo has cooties”
*runs away*
*whew*
I realize Yahoo’s future is still somewhat uncertain, but at least Yahoo’s properties and open-source efforts won’t be usurped/destroyed by Microsoft. The internet is better off with an independent Yahoo.
And, once more and whatever the reasons, Ballmer made a fool out of himself… When will he stop?
Don’t forget that you are dealing with the Borg. These soulless creatures are more tenacious than starving pit bulls at a wiener roast.
Come Monday, Yahoo! stock takes a big dive.
Yahoo! shareholders are none too pleased.
The Borg lets the kettle boil and then returns later with an offer significantly above Yahoo!’s lower stock price, but below what the Borg previously offered. Yahoo! stockholders pressure Yang to take it while he can.
Monkey Boy dances screaming: “Dividends, Dividends, Dividends!” Scary, huh?
There’s NO way MS backed down over a Yahoo/Google alliance.
Ballmer is being surprisingly modest. Something happened. I’m betting some adult supervision somewhere (the bankers, the lawyers, MS’s own board) finally stood up to him.
If anyone’s watching this, it should be Steve Jobs. As screwed up as MS is, this means they aren’t completely clueless.
@ sparkplug
Drat… my relief overwhelmed my critical thinking, you unfortunately paint a likely scenario. There was even a recent story I read about how Microsoft could step away from the deal for the time being, then pick up Yahoo on the cheap a year or so from now if things go badly in Sunnyvale. Sadly, that’s still a possible future…
Means nothing.
Microsoft are still clueless because they dont need to be anything but clueless.
Yahoo is still a sick-ish puppy and Vista still sucks big time.
Yahoo is a portal – portals are meaningless. No longer relevant.
Google is a true search engine – software driven, BIG upside.
Apple has a real set of people that can innovate, can engineer, can THINK. BIG upside.
Microsoft are a dying giant who have stopped the evolution of computing to the point where they need to f**k off.
Massive downside.
Enough with the yapping – let Google and Apple take computing to the next step – let the rest bugger off.
Let’s just imagine – stay with me – imagination is sometimes fun!
Ballmer’s folly really is his undoing – unless he is undoing all of the zippers in the bored room… (mis-spelling is intentional) and he is caught mis-speaking one too many times. And the board asks him to quietly resign – as he is ALWAYS quiet.
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So he tenders his resignation and all of the developers breath a sigh of relief and begin migrating to iPhone and OS X development.
Jobs has pity upon Monkey Boy and hires him to be the “Microsoft Start Your Copiers” poster boy for —-
Wait for it…
$1 a year.
The Apple Board feels the price is too high and encourages Mr. Jobs Sir to not hire him.
Ballmer spends his $8 Billion on help from Dr. Phil (two sessions) and begins to languish in self-pity until Guy Kawasaki tells him about the net potential race for mankind – space – as in the space between Ballmer’s ears. (None – all filled with bouncing monkey fat).
Ballmer finally gets a Job with his old buddy Paul Allen and his new master – Sir Richard Branson and becomes the new test monkey for the private space race.
Isn’t imagination fun… Anyone want to continue?
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(OBTW – on topic) I was ready to migrate all of my Yahoo email and registrations to G-Mail… but I will wait a little longer and then maybe to runbox instead – no snooping in Scandinavian webmail boxes allowed by law.
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Ballmer has only stepped away for a moment. He will try later — for less money.
But, later might be too late. Yahoo might find some strength. Enough to repel MS.
This deal is only good if it ALSO takes down MS. Collateral damage of Yahoo, but MS is destroyed.
Anything But MS!
Darn, I wanted to see them pull each other down the drain together.
I especially wanted to see M$ waste all their money on the deal.
🙁
What a relief. If MS took over Yahoo, they would have screwed it all up. Probably would have added fees to use the service.
What’s really depressing about this is that Microsoft has realized they don’t need to buy Yahoo to be successful. They’ve found someone higher up the food chain and they’ve already bought them:
DNCC names Microsoft Official Software Provider
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the official software providers of the 2008-2012 White House. Microsoft will get cozy with the Dems and the country is once again fscked.
How could this happen with Al Gore on the Apple Board?
Thank God! (I hope anyway.) Personally I’ve never been a fan of Yahoo, but the internet would have been SCREWED if that merger had gone through.
To get the gig for the Democratic National Convention, Microsoft must’ve gotten to somebody very high up in the Democratic party.
What do you bet that if a Democrat is elected (ever seena surer thing?), then for the next four years, Microsoft has a very easy ride with respect to anti-trust issues, DRM, Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, and generally advancing their evil agenda?
Great. Microsoft gave up on buying Yahoo and instead has bought the US Government.
Google’s involvement is just an excuse for sales guy Ballmer, who’ll end up like John Akers at IBM did. This will ultimately turn out to be one of those “the bigger they are the harder they fall” stories in business. Yes, M$ is already declining. Its software will implode at the Democratic convention in Denver. In Chicago, you had Daley’s police. In Denver, it will be M$ software.
@oh no my shorts–
Here’s an idea… Keep the politics out of this discussion; they don’t belong here. No one is here because they want to read about your version of the way you think the future is going to be in the US. By the way, this is a global site, so many of the people here aren’t even from the US.
Also, just because Mac users have been stereotyped as being liberals, doesn’t mean that we all share your view.
That being said, it ain’t gonna happen. Hillary and Obama are going to continue destroying each other, and McCain is going to swipe it when they’re not looking. Only since you brought it up though and asked the question, “ever seena surer thing?”
However, I don’t really care to discuss this here. I come here for Mac news. Hey, I just noticed… The title here is Mac Daily News!!! I guess I came to the right place after all, eh?
@TheConfuzed1
Hey, you’re right! This is Mac Daily News!
That’s why we’re all here reading about… Microsoft!
It’s just as relevant. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
BTW, confused1 —
With Al Gore involved in the Democratic party and also sitting on Apple’s Board of Directors, I think that Microsoft getting to be the official Software Provider of the DNC is a perfectly valid topic for this site.
@TheConfuzed1
I have to tell you, the more I read your idiotic post, the angrier I get.
Who are you to tell me to leave politics out and stick with Mac topics… in a thread in which Apple and the Mac are conspicuously absent? Go ahead, re-read the main article. Before the MDN take, there is absolutely nothing about Apple or the Mac.
If you don’t like politics, that’s fine. You want to read about Macs, that’s fine too. But this particular thread is about Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. There’s nothing here for people looking for Mac news.
You knew that when you began reading this thread. You knew it was all going to be about MS, Yahoo and Google. So — if all you care about is Mac news — why are you reading this thread?
On the other hand, my post — how did Microsoft become the Official Software Provider of the Democratic National Convention when Al Gore, a noted Democrat and former Presidential candidate, sits on the Apple Board, is on-topic and quite relevant to the conversation. It even brings Apple into the mix where they were not before.
> Also, just because Mac users have been stereotyped as being liberals, doesn’t mean that we all share your view.
You don’t know my political leanings and I didn’t give you enough information to make an intelligent judgement. You’ve made a very poorly-considered assumption.
Take your sanctimonious attitude and stuff it, confuzed1!
first of, like we all couldn’t figure out that microsoft was going to pull out of this when they didn’t react to yahoo not responding to the bid by their last deadline. common sense people. a prolonged hostile bid for yahoo, and the horror that vista is would’ve put microsoft in a tail spin.
secondly, what are all the repubs on this site gonna say if microsoft provides all the tech for the republican convention? would you be saying the same “the sky is falling” crap that’s been spilling like the exxon valdes (sp) since the microsoft/dem convention article was posted? give it a break already.
just cause al gore sits on the apple board doesn’t mean that apple is required to offer any tech support to the dem convention. period. it would distract from what apple does best: creating the best computers and digital platforms on the planet.
as it is, the democrats probably put an rfp out for the tech work and microsoft came in with the best bid. are you dumb enough to believe that the democrats knocked on microsoft’s door and said “hey we want you to do this”? i doubt this was a “no contest” bid such as we’ve seen in the case of halliburton. i’m certain if ibm was providing this service people on this board would be bitching about ibm’s inability, and unwilligness, to supply a laptop g5 processor for apple.
putting on a conference costs a lot of money. the producers of the conference are going to want to save as much of it as possible, so they’re going to go with the lowest bid that meets their needs. pure economics people.
i for one am glad that this whole microsoft buying yahoo crap is over; now microsoft can go forward producing bloatware and yahoo can get its act together.
Yahoo walks away with $billions in ‘advertising’ having been mentioned in the News reports for the past few weeks with all their services mentioned as desirable, at least by MS. Yahoo is now in people’s mindsets.