Comments on: Does Microsoft's new LLC point to a search deal?

An acquisition of Citrix would make business sense, but Microsoft's registration of a limited liability company in Delaware is likely to lead to a deal with Yahoo.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Speculation is rampant. Nobody knows what this means at this point. There are no clues to really say anything at all.

Now that being said, buying Citrix would be financially positive but socially unpopular I think with the existing Citrix users. Citrix has a wonderful remote desktop service that works on all platforms wonderfully and is basically the business standard in the industry. I don't think the rabid Mac and Linux fans would like to see that happen to a product they use now. Citrix is big enough already to not need MSFT so far as I know, but that's limited to what I read online.

Yahoo search? Bing? To this date I have never understood the desire for MSFT to get into the search market. I know there is money to be made off the ads sold next to the results, but to really go after Google, they would have to reinvent the entire concept of search and that's just simply too daunting of a task I believe. Not without overcomplicating it to the point where it becomes unwieldy and unusable.

[monkeyfun14]

Im all for competition in all markets. Do you really think Google would of unveiled new search features so soon if it wasn't for MS trying to step up the game?

[Aaron Kempf]

why would anyone be stupid enough to use citrix? windows terminal session gives like _ALL_ the benefits, without the $30,000 fees, right?

[Vegaman_Dan]

Windows Remote Desktop and Terminal Server do not connect with Macs or even the iPhone, whereas Citrix has several products that can, including GoToMyPC which works on Macs and iPhones to cross connect platforms.

They also offer meeting solutions software and other business suites that are attractive to enterprise customers.

[eadeguzman]

Hey Aaron, obviously, you have used Citrix MetaFrame... Are you able to manage access and feature-set of individual applications that users can use through terminal services from a web page? Users would just browse-through the web page for available apps, say MS Word, then launch only that application (as opposed to creating a new OS session) from a pool of servers.

[explorer5]

Um, what's the LLC that Microsoft registered? Isn't that an important part of the whole story?

[Maclover1]

eadeguzman TS 2008 now allows the publishing of applications. So to your point yes, you can launch just applications from a list.

That said Citrix has way more options, and it works on Linux and OS X. Citrix also owns Xen, a competitor to VMware and Hyper V. Citrix solutions usually cost more than plain TS. Not much though.