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Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Proposal
May 3, 2008
In a surprise move, Microsoft announced it has withdrawn its offer for Yahoo. Boy this thing is taking a long time. If this is just posturing, it seems like it is taking focus off the big picture for both firms.More to come.
Update from RTT News:
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said on Saturday that it has withdrawn its proposal to purchase Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO). Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer said, “We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo! and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo! was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees.”
Ballmer added that despite the best efforts, including raising Microsoft's bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting the offer. After careful consideration, Microsoft believes the economics demanded by Yahoo! does not make sense, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw the proposal.
Ballmer said, “We have a talented team in place and a compelling plan to grow our business through innovative new services and strategic transactions with other business partners. While Yahoo! would have accelerated our strategy, I am confident that we can continue to move forward toward our goals.”
Microsoft's president for platforms and services, Kevin Johnson, said, “We are investing heavily in new tools and Web experiences, we have dramatically improved our search performance and advertiser satisfaction, and we will continue to build our scale through organic growth and partnerships.”
I believe this is typical posturing. Generally, an acquiring company expects to pay more than the first bid and the company being purchased expects to do what it can to increase the initial bid. The only challenge in this case may be that Yahoo seems to care more about being independent than it does doing what some think is best for shareholders.
I am personally not convinced a Microsoft/Yahoo combination makes good sense for either company because Yahoo is just so large it will take a long time to digest properly. In a market that evolves as rapidly as the web, a large acquisition makes it that much more difficult to respond to changing times.
Update #2
Microsoft raised its offer by $5 billion to $33 a share, but Yahoo wanted $37 a share.
Final Update?
"We remain focused on maximizing shareholder value and pursuing strategic opportunities that position Yahoo! for success and leadership in its markets. From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft's offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making. Today, Yahoo! has:
- a refined strategic focus to drive enhanced volume and yield;
- reorganized to focus its efforts on its most promising products and services;
- invested in innovations designed to revolutionize display advertising and facilitate closing the competitive gap in search; and -- enhanced expense and resource management to support improved profitability."
Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. added, "I am incredibly proud of the way our team has come together over the last three months. This process has underscored our unique and valuable strategic position. With the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users."
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OK -- is this still posturing? Maybe not. These seem like final words from both parties. Am I right? Wrong? Time will tell as always.
Stay tuned.
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CellPoint Flamingo Music Headphones
May 3, 2008
A little known fact about me is I love to review products. Of course if you know me well, you know I just don't have the time to test every product I learn about. Moreover many of the items I discover take up space and my wife has been complaining about the pile of softswitches and session border controllers I lug home to review in my home office. 
So when I got an e-mail asking me to review a pair of Flamingo Music headphones from CellPoint, I figured... A headset? How much space could it take up?When I received the box, I was pleasantly surprised as the package was very professional and was the size of a small diary.
The headphones look unusual as they have something called EarClick technology which means there is a rubber attachment at the top which actually goes over the cartilage in your ear. This little piece of rubber hugs the little piece of cartilage and moreover presses against the top of the ear for a snug fit.
I have always had a problem getting small round headphones to fit in my ear and they often fall when I am active or even when I am just sitting. This EarClick technology is great because I could shake my head violently and the earphones just wouldn’t come loose. Of course this test caused me to faint but these are the lengths I go to in order to have happy readers.
The flipside to the secure fit of course is that the headphones could pinch your cartilage after time. It is for this reason there is a plastic bag in the box which includes rubber attachments of various sizes.
I had better success with the smallest size of rubber adapter and I learned it takes a bit of effort to remove attachments once they are secure.
The headphones have a frequency response of 16Hz-21kHz but at 16Hz you should be able to feel the music and the drivers of in-the-ear headphones generally lack the punch you get with over-the-ear models. The Flamingo was unfortunately no exception to this rule.
But what they lack in bass they make up for in depth and clarity. I tested the headphones with the following music:
- Beethoven
- Bach
- Mozart
- Def Leppard
- Webster Hall (dance)
- Eart Wind And Fire
- Rihanna
- Abba
- State of Shock
- Paul Oakenfold
- D.H.T.
In all cases the music sounded well above average for in-the-ear headphones. I also noticed that this unit isolates your ears more than typical in-the-hear headphones which can be good or bad depending on whether you are sitting at your desk or jogging across an intersection.
One other differentiator is the headphone cord which is made of a shoelace type material which is good from the standpoint of ensuring you reduce tangles. Otherwise the fit and finish of the unit was great and my area of improvement would be a longer cord and better low-end response.
I do think the headphones are a good buy and would recommend them. The one point of caution is that it is difficult to know in advance if you will find a comfortable fit. There is no guarantee you will, but then again there are rubber attachments of at least six different sizes. In addition, if you are very active while listening to music these headphones will likely be worth your while.
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The Liability of Social Networking
May 3, 2008
About a decade ago an attorney friend of mine told me that you should always delete emails that are one year old. He went on to explain from a lawsuit/discovery process, these e-mails could come back to haunt you.And I think of this statement every time someone writes me via one of the myriad social networking sites on the market. I wonder for example, is there any recourse for me if I want to permanently delete messages at a later date?
Based on the preliminary research I have done, the answer is a resounding maybe. Even some sites which allow you to delete messages still archive them and may or may not get rid of the content.
In a society where there is likely to be more and more lawsuits, I wonder what sort of disastrous mess many are getting into by communicating via sites which could in turn could be broken into or even subpoenaed at a later date. This information - as innocuous as it seems today could be used at a later date to help make a case for you to go to jail or pay a fine or whatever.
Whatever your opinion is of lawyers, the few I have had contact with over time are very smart and can take scraps of paper and combine them in a way to turn a mouse into a monster.
Giving a lawyer access to years or decades worth of your most personal conversations seems like the making for century's worth of lawsuits where people will kick themselves for saying something that seemed innocent at the time.
If you have any thoughts on the matter - please do not use Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn to send them to me. ;)
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Blackberry Outage
May 3, 2008
If you are having trouble getting e-mail on you mobile device it just could be because there was a scheduled Blackberry outage that ran over by approximately six hours.Engadget has more details and to be honest, I did some searches for others covering this news and couldn't find anything. Either I am just not having a good search day or this is an unusual scoop by engadget. Of course this could also mean engadget has it wrong so feel free to comment on whether your RIM device has been working overnight.
See also: Zenprise on BlackBerry Outage
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