

Microsoft is 2000 times less effective than Google; Yahoo Board seems to be insane - __
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/02/09/microsoft-is-2000-times-less-effective-than-google-yahoo-board-seems-to-be-insane/

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dcurtis
I would hardly call Google's interface designers "tasteful."

It seems more likely that they knew they were bad designers so they just went
with the simplest possible design.

Yahoo doesn't get enough credit. They are doing some pretty awesome and
forward-looking stuff. The reason they're falling behind, I think, is because
the "yahoo" brand is so large and complex that it's hard to find anything by
going to their site. It probably doesn't help that AOL.com ripped off the
design almost to the pixel (I'm extremely surprised there has not been a
lawsuit there).

~~~
watmough
I've switched my search from Google to Yahoo, but Yahoo mail still sucks too
much to use over GMail.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a Yahoo documents.

If Microsoft want to beat Google, they need to start pushing out on-line
document editing, Excel, etc., under the MS brand but through Yahoo
infrastructure and internet know-how.

~~~
stillmotion
I think no matter how hard Microsoft tries to beat Google at their game, it's
not going to happen. Google has held the upper hand since day one. It's
obvious they know the pressure points to their own company and they sure know
what to do when someone thinks about beating them at their own game.

Microsoft is making the mistake of trying to beat giants in one market when
they are already a giant in their own. I'm not sure how Microsoft wants to
play, but I am certain this isn't going to turn out like a David vs. Goliath.

~~~
watmough
Yeah, I posted the above, but I don't believe that current management at MS
has a prayer on executing successfully on anything different or new. I sure
that there are factions within MS that viewed the obvious lock-in of
Sharepoint as the great white hope that would roll back the internet threat
and safely lock the 'intranetwork' to MS. Well, they can forget that, except
for a few of the 'large client' sheep.

It seems like any new interesting project is always 'Skunkworks'ed, thinking
of XBox, Zune, MS Research - "The Project formerly known as 'Half the World's
Smartest Researchers (Being Paid not to work ((At Google)))"', LOL.

I really mean 'why', just why are they bothering with Yahoo? I mean, they will
just run it into the ground. The "Next Great Idea" (tm), the next Facebook,
the next You Tube, the next Slashdot is probably swiftly exiting Yahoo as we
speak.

~~~
mooneater
MS Research is completely separate from the product teams. Researchers seem
disdainful of product team folks, and vice-versa.

One time over lunch I asked a technical manager about the role of theory in
our work. His response: "Remember that time we had a guy with a phD in our
group? We wasted so much time on theory and did nothing practical". Everyone
laughed, and promptly changed the topic.

Another time I had an interview with their search engine team. I ended up in a
fairly heated argument with the interviewer about where innovation comes from.
Her contention was that Research should do all the innovating, and throw the
innovations over the wall to product teams, and product teams obediently
implement. Which I said was... less than ideal. "No hire" =)

Seems to me in Google, product people and theory people are tight, or even the
same people. MS's schism approach will never touch that.

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mynameishere
_The interesting question is why a company that claims to know how to program
would pay anything for Yahoo, much less a P/E ratio of more than 60._

Huh? Sounds like someone needs to cut back on the sauce.

 _We can infer from this offer that Microsoft expects its own programmers to
be only 1/2000th as effective, dollar for dollar, as Google’s._

We _can_ infer that, if we're near the bottom of a Chivas bottle.

 _The chance of a Yahoo shareholder ever getting more than $31/share, adjusted
for inflation and risk, seems remote_

Hey, I know a place where you can put money down on such predictions. Good
luck!

 _Microsoft is to Yahoo as Time Warner is to (correct answer) AOL._

Except...the purchase was in the opposite direction.

 _despite the fact that the $31/share bid was higher than Yahoo has typically
traded since mid-2006_

Here's the thing...if Ballmer logged into his Ameritrade account and started
buying YHOO at 10000 shares per second every second until it was all bought
up, the share prices would probably hit about 50000 dollars. When Microsoft
makes an offer, it's understood that that is equivilent to skyrocketing
demand.

~~~
xirium
Likewise, if Ballmer steadily sold Microsoft shares then they'd be worth
almost nothing by the time he finished.

1 million * $1 share != $1 million

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anewaccountname
More Greenspun hyperbole:

"Google unseated Yahoo at a cost of about $20 million in financing"

That completely ignores major things such as, oh I don't know, _the Google
Pagerank patent_. It isn't like Google just won on simple UI; if their search
hadn't worked way better than anything else, they never would have taken off.

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Raphael
Microsoft has decided to buy another Microsoft instead of making a Google.

