This is a shameless reprint of my post exactly two months ago:

Yahoo running to AOL to avoid assimilation by the (Micro-)Borg?  Hm… I don’t know which one is worse. (Actually, I do.)   The funny (actually, sad) thing is, most of my Best MicroHoo quotes apply to a Yahoo/AOL situation, you just have to replace Microsoft with AOL

Stowe Boyd:

Personally, I think the Microsoft and Yahoo matchup is like two tired swimmers who bump into each other and then wind up drowning each other in their scramble to survive. But Yahoo will be the first to go under in this embrace.

Fake Steve Jobs:

It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.

Imagine a circus act in which two enormous, clumsy, awkward elephants that don’t really like each other are supposed to mate while riding on skateboards.

Oh, well… a sad soap opera. 

Related posts (a few of the many): Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch,  BoomTown, BloggingStocks, Technology news, Tech Beat, HipMojo.com, Deal Journal, Mark Evans, TECH.BLORGE.com, BuzzMachine ,  MarketingVOX

Tags: acquisition, aol, feke steve jobs, fsj, Humor, mergers, microsoft, yahoo

Actually, I don’t know how, but Xobni apparently does: Bill Gates presented Xobni for Outlook as “the next generation of social networking” (is that why he quit Facebook?) at the Microsoft Office Developers Conference yesterday (video here).

Now, let’s think for a minute. What does it mean when Bill Gates presents your product, a super-cool Outlook plugin to his crowd of developers?

1. Gates’s message: now go back and copy this fast. That would be the classic Microsoft style, as many software startups can attest to. It would also put the market introduction to somewhere … around 2015? Unlikely.
2. Microsoft will acquire Xobni in no time. Sweet and fast deal. Congratulations to the Xobni team and investors!

Update (2/15): Xobni has a new CEO: Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo’s vice president of social search until now. Did he just escape from one Microsoft acquisition and get into another one?

Update (3/2): TechCrunch has sources confirming the Microsoft negotiations.

Update (3/20): Bob Warfield believes Microsoft is about to close the deal with Xobni.

Tags: acquisition, bill gates, email, microsoft, ms outlook, Outlook, startup exit, Startups, xobni

Yahoo running  to AOL to avoid  assimilation by the (Micro-)Borg?  Hm… I don’t know which one is worse. (Actually, I do.)   The funny (actually, sad) thing is, most of my Best MicroHoo quotes apply to a Yahoo/AOL situation, you just have to replace Microsoft with AOL

Stowe Boyd:

Personally, I think the Microsoft and Yahoo matchup is like two tired swimmers who bump into each other and then wind up drowning each other in their scramble to survive. But Yahoo will be the first to go under in this embrace.

Fake Steve Jobs:

It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.

Imagine a circus act in which two enormous, clumsy, awkward elephants that don’t really like each other are supposed to mate while riding on skateboards.

Oh, well… a sad soap opera. 

Tags: acquisition, aol, feke steve jobs, fsj, Humor, mergers, microsoft, yahoo

There’s hardly anything new to add to the MSFT/YHOO story, except two great quotes.

Stowe Boyd:

Personally, I think the Microsoft and Yahoo matchup is like two tired swimmers who bump into each other and then wind up drowning each other in their scramble to survive. But Yahoo will be the first to go under in this embrace.

Fake Steve Jobs:

It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.

Now, for the best part: this last one isn’t from FSJ, after all.. it’s from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer himself. (that is if you can believe anything a blog with Fake in the title says)

Ballmer said he loved when his rivals merged, because whenever the also-rans in any market start teaming up they might as well be waving a white flag. Because it’s over. You’ve beaten them. You’ve driven them to despair. They haven’t been able to beat you on their own; there’s no way they’ll do it together. Then he told me that line about the hundred-yard dash.

Btw, this Fake Steve post is not exactly short of great metaphors. Here’s one describing the post-merger integration (you know, the stage where all mergers fail):

Imagine a circus act in which two enormous, clumsy, awkward elephants that don’t really like each other are supposed to mate while riding on skateboards.

and this one:

That giant buzzing sound you hear is the whirring of photocopiers in Redmond revving up and spitting out resumes.

It’s worth reading in full.

Update (2/4): Robert Scoble’s version: Put two turkeys together and you don’t get an eagle.

Tags: acquisition, feke steve jobs, fsj, Humor, mergers, microsoft, yahoo

After all the speculation, it finally happened: there’s a Microsoft (MSFT) offer on the table to acquire Yahoo (YHOO) for a mix of cash and stock valued at $44.6 Billion, which is about a 62%  premium to Yahoo’s current market valuation.  Well.. current as of yesterday, when it closed at $19.18 - right now, pre-market it trades at $30.80, almost at the offer price of $31. (I suspect some early buyers will regret that…)

Update: Here’s the “you’ve failed” part from Steven Ballmer’s letter to the Yahoo Board, fully quoted on ZDNet:

In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that “now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction.” According to that letter, the principal reason for this view was the Yahoo! Board’s confidence in the “potential upside” if management successfully executed on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment. A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.

A few early posts, before the world wakes up: Between the Lines, Irregular Enterprise, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch. Parislemon’s title (and pic) is telling: Join us - or die!.

Tags: acquisition, microsoft, yahoo

Atlassian,the Sydney- and San Francisco-based software company, maker of enterprise wiki Confluence (and more) has just acquired a single sign-on solution company, Minneapolis-based Authentisoft. Single sign-on is something we all need whether behind a corporate firewall or on the Web. Without it, there are only bad and worse solutions:

• try to remember the myriad userid /password combinations we have for different systems - bad
• have some “algorithm” built in our passwords - bad
• write down all login info - really bad
• use the same userid / pw combo across all systems - really, really baaaad

I could go on… we need single sign-on. It’s that simple. I believe this make Atlassian the first “wiki-company” to offer 3 products in their portfolio. See Mike’s post on further plans.

Now, for the “sign-in” part: in an amazing coincidence, I was just reading the above announcement when I received the email from Cynapse, revealing their “flagship product”, cyn.in (pronounced “sign-in”). Yes, as in sign-in. In the very second I read the sign-on announcement. Isn’t this scary?

Anyway, cyn.in promises to be a web based service that enables the enterprise to build, collaborate, manage and publish: knowledge, documents, media and files, all within hosted sub-systems. It intends to apply the effectivity of Web 2.0 and the SaaS model, to deliver an information management, publishing and collaboration platform. Applications of cyn.in include Knowledge Management, Content Broadcast and Publishing, Collaborative Workspaces, Secure Online File Storage & Versioning, etc.

As I am reading it I can’t help but think those are the things I also do on a wiki … but I don’t think it’s a wiki… I don’t know what it really is though, at this point all you can do on the site is register for notifications and watch a a short tour.

Tags: acquisition, atlassian, authentisoft, Collaboration, confluence, cyn.in, cynapse, Knowledge Management, online storage, single sign-in, single sign-on, wiki, wikis