{"id":228,"date":"2008-02-02T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.garfnet.org.uk\/cms\/marriage-of-minds-or-just-a-shotgun-wedding\/"},"modified":"2024-07-18T14:48:26","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T14:48:26","slug":"marriage-of-minds-or-just-a-shotgun-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/cms\/2008\/02\/02\/marriage-of-minds-or-just-a-shotgun-wedding\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage of minds or just a shotgun wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Microsoft has been in trouble for some time &#8211; but has taken its executives quite a while to realise it. Vista has been a massive flop. And M$ is becoming increasingly perceived as a company that has ruthlessly exploited its monopoly &#8211; fleecing its customers for vast sums of money whilst providing poor quality, insecure products.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Reading around the web there seems to be a growing feeling afoot that Microsoft has somehow &#8220;<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">missed the boat<\/span>&#8220;and is clinging to Yahoo in order to compete with its new arch-rival, Google. Indeed, BBC&#8217;s Website Business Editor, Tim Weber describes itas, &#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;\">Microsoft and Yahoo&#8217;s shotgun marriage<\/span>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/7222199.stm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/7222199.stm<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>But let&#8217;s cast aside personal bias and feelings and look instead at the figures. Both M$ and Yahoo&#8217;s shares have been on a downward trajectory since before the beginning of the year. This trend pre-dates the current &#8220;<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">sub-prime lending<\/span>&#8221; gloom. Since 2007-11-01 Micro$haft has seen its shares fall from over $37.00 to around $32.00. In the same period, Yahoo shares have tumbled by over 33% from around $31.00 down to below $20.00. Yet M$&#8217;s offer for Yahoo of $44.6 billion is 62% more than Thursday&#8217;s closing price. Also Yahoo is in the process of shedding 1000 staff &#8211; hardly the act of a booming corporation methinks.<\/p>\n<p>This suggests that either&#8230;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Yahoo has something bloody good stuff in the pipeline that it has carefully hidden from the rest of the world or<\/li>\n<li>Micro$oft is desperate.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I think all-in-all, I have to agree with Tim Weber. And whilst Microsoft is a huge company with a lot of resources at its disposal compared to its rivals, I seem to recall the similar things being said in the 1980&#8217;s about the seemingly invincible &#8220;Big Blue&#8221; IBM.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>Sources for additional financial info&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/7222114.stm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/7222114.stm<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Mercury News\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/ci_8149194\">http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/ci_8149194<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Mercury News\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/ci_8149204\">http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/ci_8149204<\/a> &nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft has been in trouble for some time &#8211; but has taken its executives quite a while to realise it. Vista has been a massive flop. And M$ is becoming increasingly perceived as a company that has ruthlessly exploited its monopoly &#8211; fleecing its customers for vast sums of money whilst providing poor quality, insecure&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,18,692],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journal","category-technology","category-windows"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Marriage of minds or just a shotgun wedding - GarfNet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/cms\/2008\/02\/02\/marriage-of-minds-or-just-a-shotgun-wedding\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Marriage of minds or just a shotgun wedding - GarfNet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Microsoft has been in trouble for some time &#8211; but has taken its executives quite a while to realise it. 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