Microsoft Offers for Yahoo: Welcome to the Land of Neuromancer
02/01/2008, 7 months ago
The Internet is, of course, all abuzz over the $44.6 billion offer Microsoft has made for Yahoo. Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree with discussion of the offer. And it's a great deal for Yahoo with a 62% premium above Yahoo's close price on Thursday. Odds are if they don't take this offer, Microsoft will opt for the hostile takeover route.
The offer may meet resistance on the anti-trust front, especially from the EU, who don't seem to go along with the American motto that bigger is better. But for any fellow sci-fi fan, it's hard not to notice that William Gibson's world is coming to life right before our eyes.
Take a look at the tech landscape. What doesn't Google own? They have your search, your ads, your documents, your blog, your shopping, your cell phone (they hope), your books, and soon, your health information. Microsoft (odds are) has your PC desktop, your browser (and all your Internet are belong to us), your application software, and, if they pull off this Yahoo takeover, can get most of what Google has as well.
Anti-trust laws were originally set up to prevent this type of large, over-reaching corporate control, and yet we've slowly watched the huge, multi-national corporations growing in size and control slowly, but steadily. We worry about Big Brother when it comes to information oversight, yet we are neglecting other warnings that also come in the form of “fiction.” The mantra of Web 2.0 seems to be “Build something Google will buy,” but maybe the little guys should be resisting instead.
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This skeeves me, but I can’t decided if it skeeves more because I am so anti-Microsoft or because of all the creepy ramifications this much centralization of data has.
I appreciate your views, but something inside me tells me that this deal would not go as expected if it takes place. This deal spells doom for the free web culture that we are used to for years.
Microsoft’s oppressive monopolistic culture could possibily kill Yahoo and services that we have come to assoiciate Web2.0 with namely Flickr and Del.icio.us
For more on this read my thoughts at my blog here : http://dailyapps.net/2008/02/what-does-a-combined-microsoft-yahoo-look-like/
I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.
@leslie It’s the latter for me.
@Karthik As who expects? It’s a given that the two corporate cultures would clash wildly; can you see Balmer being known as CEO and Chief Yahoo? I’m not sure if you are just unfamiliar with Gibson (which probably makes you less nerdy than I am) or if you just didn’t understand. When corporations become as large as they are becoming, they essentially become the government. Forget free web culture and start thinking freedom at all.