Article: Gates explains why Microsoft needs Yahoo
I think what Gates says in this interview pretty much tells it all:
“We have a strategy for competing in the search space that Google dominates today, that we’ll pursue that we had before we made the Yahoo offer, and that we can pursue without that. It involves breakthrough engineering.”
I’ve heard this before from MIcrosoft for a few years now. Question is: Where is this breakthrough engineering? Oh yeah…you haven’t developed it yet.
“We think that the combination with Yahoo would accelerate things in a very exciting way, because they do have great engineers, they have done a lot of great work. So, if you combine their work and our work, the speed at which you can innovate and get things done is just dramatically more rapid.”
What if their work is dramatically different from your own? How do you combine two thing together that follow completely different philosophies? It’s like trying to convince a vegan to eat a steak. Getting Yahoo! engineers to do things the Microsoft way isn’t innovation…it’s torture!
“So, it’s really about the people there that want to join in and create a better search, better portal for a very broad set of customers. That’s the vision that’s behind saying, hey, wouldn’t this be a great combination.”
Great…but what if the people at Yahoo! don’t give a shit about your vision. Chances are that if the merger goes through, a lot of the engineers that make Yahoo! great might very well go bye-bye. So much for that great combination.
Regarding culture differences:
“Yahoo wants to do breakthrough software. The engineers there want to compete very effectively against Google or any other thing that comes along. So, I don’t think there’s really a different culture.”
But the engineers there also want to compete by offering a great degree of openness, something Microsoft has had a problem with in the past. Yahoo! also has embraced the open-source community which, again, is something Microsoft has had a problem with in the past. How is the culture between these companies not different?
Gates still didn’t talk about the one thing that separates Google from the rest of the crowd, which is just straight-up great online applications. The search and advertising part is important, but those two things are just piggy-backing on the success of Google’s repertoire of online apps like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and others. For Microsoft and Yahoo! to compete, they need to embrace this and come up with their own solutions that follow this train of thought. Yahoo! has a shot at doing this…but not if it means altering their philosophy to match Microsoft’s. Till Microsoft, Gates & Co. get their head out of their ass, I just don’t see it happening for Microsoft anytime soon.
