Gates on Yahoo: It's the people
PALO ALTO, Calif.--Bill Gates is willing to pay a lot for engineering talent.
Asked what makes Yahoo worth more than $40 billion, Gates pointed not to the company's products, its huge base of advertisers, or its market share, but rather to Yahoo's engineers. Those people, he said, are what Microsoft needs to go after Google.
In an interview after his speech at Stanford University, Gates said that it turns out it takes a lot of manpower to build tools for advertisers, mobile, and video products as well as improving its core search algorithm and building an infrastructure for cloud computing. "The amount of computer science it is taking to do that is phenomenal," he said. "As you get more scale of engineering you can just pursue that agenda more rapidly. Yes, the advertisers and the number of end users is good, but we'd put the people and the engineering as the key thing."
Of course, that's also what makes the Yahoo deal so risky. A nightmare scenario for the company would be if it succeeds in its bid to acquire Yahoo, only to see its top talent move to new ventures. Gates played down the notion of cultural differences between the two companies.
"Yahoo wants to do breakthrough software," Gates told CNET News.com. "The engineers there want to compete very effectively against Google or any other thing that comes along, so I don't think there is really a different culture."
But, he hinted that the company might have made itself less attractive had it continued down the path championed by former CEO Terry Semel.
"If Yahoo had gone the direction of just being a media company and not said that software innovation was important to them then no, there wouldn't be that intersection because we're about breakthrough software," Gates said. "Jerry Yang to his credit has kept a lot of very top engineers that have been just doing their work and improving those things. That's why we see the combination as so powerful."
Gates was quoted in the last 24 hours as saying Microsoft wasn't looking to hike its bid for Yahoo, but he sounded very much like a man committed to the deal in his comments Tuesday. He didn't say whether Microsoft would move ahead with a plan to wage a proxy battle, but that appears to be a real possibility if Yahoo does not come to the table.
The Microsoft chairman also indicated that Microsoft has a plan for taking on Google with or without Yahoo, but acknowledged Microsoft's plans can move faster if it succeeds in the acquisition than if it has to go it alone.
"It involves breakthrough engineering," he said. "We think the combination with Yahoo would accelerate things in a very exciting way because they do have great engineers and they have done a lot of great work."
Gates had plenty more to say about other things besides Yahoo. In a little bit, I'll post another blog on some interesting things Gates said about Windows 7 and a more complete transcript of my interview should be ready tomorrow. Click here to see the video part of the interview.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
This is so hillarious. And he wonders why Yahoo set it up yesterday so that ALL THOSE ENGINEERS can leave the company, with up to two years of pay and medical and dental benefits should Micro$hit win a hostile takeover of the company.
The "Golden Parachute" that Yahoo unveiled yesterday will ensure that Micro$hit does not get their hands on all that talent.
While you may bemoan the ways of MS as much as you like - it is in fact MS that keeps Apple inventing and trying to be different and that keeps google rolling on. Without Bill and MS - there would be 'no man holding us down'
whatever Windows did or did not do, it DID provide a stable platform and market for hundreds, thousands of companies around the world to write software.
I remember the earlier days as a software customizer, where clients would deliver an application written for an Atari 400 that they wanted to offer on the c64 and the Ti99 - no platform had enough share to make anyone rich and the need was to release everything in as many formats as possible.
This gosh darned Linus hippie and his Linux (wow another version of Unix that everyone will be using in 5 years - oops its now 15 years old and still hasn't got a market on the desktop) and the ever goofy Steve - Look Into My Eyes Jobs are barely players.....
oh well time for meds :-) but some of you will notice the truth in there..
and
Ideas drive innovation
Innovation drives revenue.
Bill Gates should look at Manhattan2 if innovation and market share is what he is after.
It is not just about advertising and search! There needs to be something to find! The data that populates legitimate websites and portals is were the future lies. Sensible Ventures controls that data.
don't want to work for Microsoft, and many of the best of them are
already looking for jobs.
Considering the fact that these people are being snapped up by
other companies, MS may find that they end up owning a ton of
Linux servers and little of the talent that made them work so much
better than their MS counterparts.
Bill Gates wants yahoo because it is one of the most popular websites and because he wants to control it. You control information by controlling the means by which people communicate.
Yahoo is still "wild west" in terms of groups that can be set up by anybody for the purpose of sharing information on any given topic. Bill Gates - as a conspirator in the UN Agenda (see the contract he signed with UNESCO), needs to get control of this facility so he can change it to allow only the politically correct "thinking" towards the agenda.
But c'mon... it's obvious that taking out the only other serious competitor to MSFT and Google in this arena is what it's all about.
I do agree that the idea of control is probably somewhere on his list of reasons why Yahoo needs to go, in his opinion. OTOH, this whole Internet thingy is much, much bigger than even Microsoft. It would be almost trivial to build a new website or four to host discussion groups on, and allow the planet to set and control their own individual agendae there.
--
As for the people, he is right in a way. Microsoft is, well... moribund. Their employees don't get to think very freely. Technically, I'm sure there are a lot of bright people who work there. But, MSFT's corporate culture very likely doesn't allow for things like initiative and creativity to thrive.
/P
Yahoo's architecture is primarily UNIX based and relies heavily on open source platforms. It cannot be integrated into Bill's world of Window$.
Of course, I suspect Microsoft will immediately deploy Windows everywhere they can. This will have two major effects. Increased operational costs, and mass exodus of the engineering staff they claim to be interested in retaining.
However, I might be completely wrong and Microsoft will keep the Yahoo platform in place. Any guesses on how that might affect Microsoft marketing efforts for the Windows platform?
Eventually, they were able to replace the FreeBSD servers with heavily customized code so that it would all run on Win2k3 and IIS. But then, think of all the wasted money, energy, and time poured into that... Now quadruple it if you want to estimate what it would take to do the same to Yahoo (...and I haven't even touched on Java :) ).
Of course, marketing-wise, they won't say 'boo' about it, just like they kept perfectly mum for years about microsoft.com itself being accessed through Akamai's Linux/Apache-based caching server service (again, long-running hilarity @ Netcraft).
The marketing droids know that unless you're a sysadmin, you're not going to notice these little things unless someone points it out in a very public way. So, I doubt they do much about it...
/P
The Yahoos who stay with the merged entity will soon notice that the ideas and innovations they come up with will always have to address the question "How does that protect and preserve our Windows-Office monopoly?" And since Windows and Office are based on an obsolete business model, the answer is of course "it won't." Idea shot down. So just like what happened at Microsoft itself, the best, most creative, most forward-thinking engineers will leave until only little Ballmer clones are left run the shell of Yahoo's rump.
They'll get a very nice offer like $500,000 bonus if they stay on for at least 3 years. Some won't take it but most will.
They'll throw a bone to the middle 60%, a bundle of new stock options or something.
The bottom 20% of performers will get nothing and if they leave good riddance.
Believe me they've thought this all through.
Sure they'll stay for the money, but MS will still stifle their creativity and the exodus, after a pause, will resume. Creative people do not like working away from the cutting edge, and Windows-Office is about preserving obsolete technology. How far away from cutting-edge can you get? Hell, Microsoft couldn't even hold on to their best engineers.
As for MSFT stock options? Given this merger and the write off that will slam MSFT valuations five years from now? Those options will be worth less than monopoly money.
I'm a software developer at Yahoo in a department whose
technology you covet. You can convince me that you're serious
about acquiring engineering talent in the takeover by publicizing
the general terms of the retention package you have talked about
in the past.
http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2008/2/20/gatesRelaysPhilanthropicCommitment
And all the talented engineers leave to get away from Redmond and work for Google.
A good plan :)
- Corporate Slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation
- by btljooz February 21, 2008 12:55 PM PST
- [b]Coprorate Slavery:[/b]
- Reply to this comment
-
(24 Comments)http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_schelstrate_021403_corporate.html
[b]Emancipation Proclamation:[/b]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation
[b]History Repeats Itself:[/b]
[i]"Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them."[/i]---George Santayana
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00187/
Who here is willing to learn about these things and spread the word? ?:|
Simply use your search engines to enter the [b]bold[/b] terms in, research and [u]LEARN[/u]!!! Knowledge is [u]POWER[/u]!!!!! B-)