In the wake of Microsoft’s failed attempt to acquire Yahoo, “this is now an excellent opportunity to sell any Microsoft stock you have left,” Brett Arends writes for The Wall Street Journal.
Arends writes, “The bid itself, followed by its swift abandonment, should raise serious questions about Microsoft’s leadership and direction. Does Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer really know what he is trying to do?”
“Ordinary consumers might legitimately ask if Microsoft’s corporate strategy is any better than the company’s mediocre software,” Arends writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Beautiful line! We couldn’t have done much better ourselves. 
(We would’ve gone with “mediocre-at-best,” instead.)
Arends writes, “It was always hard to see why combining Microsoft’s third-rate Internet strategy with Yahoo’s second-rate Internet strategy was ever going to take on Google. It’s like tying two rocks together in the hope they will float,” Arends writes.
Arends writes, “Private investors should ask themselves why they are bothering to own Microsoft stock directly anyway.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Make the world a better place. Get a Mac and buy some AAPL!
Amusing so much anti-MS chatter yet your hope of iphone getting enterprise acceptance relies on Microsoft ActiveSync connectivity ..
Big merger plans = red flag for tanking earnings. A merger is meant to obfuscate the numbers; disguise the continuing slide; create a quantum discontinuance in the negative trend. The question is why didn’t he follow through? I’m still waiting for MSFT to fall into the single digit range.
@ MobileAdmin
I believe we’ve covered the Embrace and Extinguish method a number of times. To kill the dark lord you have to get hold of his ring.
Or, at least lose a hand. Then come back and kick his ass later, while convincing him to destroy his mentor, the Emperor, before you send him off in a pyre.
May the Source be with you.
Hey where’d that hook come from? Aaaaagghhh……
They are being cruel. Windows is a necessity of the average computer user due to the software that it runs. Also, I don’t like their insulting of Yahoo! After all, what is the most popular internet site in the world? Pretty lame, WSJ, but a satisfying article nonetheless.
This actually makes me worry about the WSJ a little. I guess we already knew its best days were behind it. But, while the day that the WSJ started to sound like MacDailyNews may be a proud one for Apple fans–even if it’s only Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ that sounds thus way–it is not a very happy day for the quality of American journalism.
Sorry not to whoop and holler–I would if these quotes were from television, or somebody’s blog. But it’s as sad to be present for the death of the WSJ as it would have been to see the death of Apple in 1996.
Zune Tang,
You can do better. Come on, man – you can do it!
“Windows is a necessity of the average computer user due to the software that it runs.”
Best laugh today. Thanks!
I don’t know how they expected to merge the #2 and #3 search engines and get to #1. If they averaged out, at best they’d be at #2.5 The only other way I know how to get 1 from both 2 and 3 is to subtract 2 from 3 which is still a dubious approach at best. I do not believe they could as #3 buy out the #2 spot and then basically kill it and magically catapult past Google. Have about as much chance of that happening as Iraq becoming a useful world power like Japan did after WWII.
As far as the captain going down with the ship, perhaps that’s not really why Ballmer’s the CEO. After all, he’s just a more baboon-like Uncle Fester. Methinks he went down ‘on’ the ship aka Bill Gates’ U.S.S. Microsoftie. Now excuse me while I talk my PowerBook out of committing seppuku for allowing me to type such a disturbing mental picture.
“Hey MAC sheep it’s not too late to get on the Vista train.”
Is that like the Poo-Choo train from South Park?
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