Here are the first three thoughts that came to my mind when I heard about Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo (in order, to the extent that I can remember):
- After XBox this will take their focus further away from enterprise software. Good for Oracle.
- I wonder how my friends at Yahoo (none of which I know to be great fans of Microsoft’s software) feel about this (on the other hand the stock price rise can’t be too unpleasant for them)
- Time to get ready to move away from Yahoo Mail
Turns out I should have added an additional piece of good news to the first bullet: after this they won’t be able to afford SAP for a while. This I just realized after reading this New York Times column which argues, in short, that Microsoft should acquire SAP rather than Yahoo.
A few quotes from the article:
- “you’ve probably never heard of BEA“: this obviously doesn’t apply to readers of this blog.
- “it’s not much fun hanging out on the enterprise side of the software business“: ouch. If it’s fun you’re after, try the IT management segment of enterprise software business.
- “to find the best acquisition strategy, ask, ‘What would Larry do?’“: does this come as a bumper sticker?
Of course if Microsoft gets Yahoo and things go really badly, then it could be SAP who acquires Microsoft…