There’s hardly anything new to add to the MSFT/YHOO story, except two great quotes.
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.
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.
[…] for an entertaining view of the Microsoft-Yahoo merger, check Zoli’s round up of metphors. Or Kara Swisher’s interpretation of Steve Ballmer’s letter to the Yaho! […]