Microsoft's Yahoo acquision

Good or bad for MSFT?

Smart move by Steve Ballmer. Ever since Bill has (or was few months into leaving), MSFT has become increasingly acquisitive, compared to the earlier mentality of : We will build it and in time (no matter how long it takes) take the no1./no2 position. Clearly that strategy was working before Google came into the scene. Now though, MSFT has to move faster than it's used to, and it tried to be competitive to Google and Yahoo!, but failed. Ray Ossie turned MSN into Live, but it still is in infancy compared to where Google and Yahoo! are.

Will it pass the government's scrutiny?

This is going to be a pretty tough one, as noted in the response letter by Google, some areas : such as email and IM, Yahoo and MSFT will take a far larger lead compared to a number two player (AOL/GOOG). I personally think it would be pretty hard for MSFT to acquire Yahoo! as is. Yahoo! will have to be broken into 2-3 units, such as search & search marketing, Media (music , video , portal etc) and communications (email, IM etc). MSFT would be allowed to acquire the search and search marketing unit, although the other two would likely get bought by some big investment bank OR a News corp etc


Is the MSFT/Yahoo merger good for the consumer?

I dont think the consumers benefit or care as much. Competition is always good and 3-4 players aren't so many. The real benefit could come to advertisers, who end up paying a boatload of money to GOOGLE to be on the top 5 ads should next to the search results.

the game just started, time to focus on Superbowl!

-D