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Week in review: Yahoo snubs Microsoft
February 15, 2008 -
Week in review: Yahoo in Microsoft's sights
February 8, 2008 -
Week in review: Teaming up against Google
February 1, 2008
(continued from previous page)
So it came as little surprise Tuesday morning as Toshiba waved the white flag and declared it would stop producing HD DVD products, officially ending the two-year war between HD DVD and Blu-ray.
The company, which began sales of HD DVD in March 2006 with the HD-A1 player, "decided it was not right for us to keep going with such a small presence," said Chief Executive Atsutoshi Nishida. The Blu-ray format is now the definitive winner in the war and stands unopposed as the optical media replacement for DVD.
The announcement effectively stamps Sony as the new standard bearer of high-definition video. Sony has long been associated with the Blu-ray Disc format, but HD DVD's demise brings new opportunity for the Japanese electronics maker to effectively take control of the future of high-definition in consumers' living rooms.
The fall of HD DVD gives Sony a chance to really extend its high-definition strategy with the pieces it already has in place. It's the only major consumer electronics player with a real presence in every high-profile consumer market: HDTVs, cameras, notebook PCs, gaming, and even a film studio that creates high-definition content. It has positioned itself so well that it would have to really screw up to not seamlessly ascend the throne as king of HD.
It's a change in fortune for the company whose gaming and electronics divisions were struggling throughout the past year. Suddenly the company's PlayStation 3 strategy appears smarter than previously thought.
The real issue in the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD, according to CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos, was royalties. With the competition gone, he argues, the Blu-ray consortium now has the opportunity to persuade PC makers and consumer electronics makers to adopt Blu-ray drives as their optical drives of choice. It will also get studios and disc makers to deliver Blu-ray discs to consumers. And every time one of those drives or discs leaves a factory, the Blu-ray Disc Association will get a royalty.
The numbers add up quickly. Look at DVD, for example. To make a DVD player legally, manufacturers recently had to pay around $4 per player or drive, according to some estimates. A few years ago, those fees were around $15 to $20. Fees get paid every time a DVD drive gets included in a PC. Nearly every PC in the world has a DVD drive these days and roughly 250 million PCs get shipped every year. Companies that legally make discs also pay fees. The DVD6C licensing group dropped the per disc fee in January to 4 cents per disc. Years ago, it was 7.5 cents per disc. Then there are verification fees.
All about the Yahoos
Apparently Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is a people person. When 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 are what Microsoft needs to go after Google, he said.
In an interview after his speech at Stanford University, Gates said it takes a lot of manpower to build tools for advertisers, mobile, and video products as well as improve its core search algorithm and build 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."
Gates spoke to News.com about how Microsoft needs Yahoo's engineering talent, how Windows 7 will make the keyboard and mouse less essential, though far from obsolete, and what journalism will look like in the future. Read the interview here.
Meanwhile, Yahoo laid out its golden-parachute plans for all of its full-time employees in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing outlines two change-in-control severance plans, should the Internet search pioneer find itself under new ownership, aka Microsoft.
Yahoo, which is facing an unsolicited buyout bid from Microsoft, will offer both full-time employees and executives anywhere from four months to two years of severance pay, depending on their job title.
The parachute, or cushion, will kick into effect should that employee lose his job within two years after a new owner takes over, should the employee get terminated without cause, or should he decide it's time to leave for "good reason."
With the deadline fast approaching for Microsoft to name an opposition slate to Yahoo's board of directors, chances are that the software giant is looking at corporate governance experts, academics, bean-counter types, and former or retired Internet executives.
That's the assessment of proxy solicitors and executive search recruiters, as the March 14 deadline approaches for Microsoft to announce its dissident slate. The software giant, which launched an unsolicited $44.6 billion buyout bid for Yahoo on February 1, is likely planning to offer candidates for 10 director seats that are up for re-election at Yahoo's next annual shareholders meeting. A date for the meeting has not yet been set, but last year's was in June.
The purpose of running an opposition slate is twofold: to put pressure on Yahoo's board of directors to enter into negotiations, rather than remain radio silent; and, if no deal is reached by the time Yahoo holds its annual meeting, to get its dissident directors elected with the hope of paving the way to a merger.
Also of note
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in an appeal of a lawsuit accusing the National Security Agency of illicit spying on millions of Americans communicating with foreigners...Sellers angry over higher fees and other policy changes launched a weeklong boycott of the auction site in protest...Jai Singh, an internationally recognized pioneer in online journalism, is leaving CNET Networks (publisher of News.com) after more than a decade in executive editorial positions.
See more CNET content tagged:
interoperability, open-source developer, commission, Week in review, protocol
If I can borrow a quote from Mahatma Gandhi...
-----
First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
(Describing the stages of a winning strategy of nonviolent activism.)
Microsoft has undergone all of these stages. They had tons of FUD getting cranked out every week aimed at IBM about how Windows would be cheaper. How they find Linux to be more "expensive" and so on....
The laughing part.... There def. was some laughing at FireFox ( http://www.getfirefox.com/ ) for example. Since FireFox is a mostly open project. Microsoft said Firefox would barely get market share.
Then Microsoft started saying how a whole slue of people are using their ("I wont tell you which ones") patents as M$ claimed......
And once SCO's case against Novell didn't work and it slammed M$, and their efforts--- towards thwarting the tide of change now they want to partner with everybody.....
So HAHA we win... I'm still not going to use it though the momentum on the third party stuff is just what we need..... VIVA LA DESKTOP!!!!
-----
"First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
(Describing the stages of a winning strategy of nonviolent activism.)
Microsoft has undergone all of these stages. They had tons of FUD getting cranked out every week aimed at IBM about how Windows would be cheaper. How they find Linux to be more "expensive" and so on...."
OS/2 Lives, OS/2 Is Dead - Again; So, now that the world will be able to access the "30,000 pages documenting all the APIs and communications protocols that Microsoft products use to connect to Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista (including the .Net Framework)..."
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/022108-microsoft-open-source.html
all will be known just how Code-Based OS/2 Windows is really is. The funny this is according to IBM the OS/2 Codes cannot (yet) be Open-Sourced. So, until that time comes - read the subject line. ;-) !
First they "guess" your end,
then they "guess" your end,
then they "guess" your end,
then you win. (Describing the stages of an idiotic theory of fantasy bankrupcy.)
Microsoft haters have undergone all of these stages (several times). They have tons of FUD getting cranked out every second aimed at Microsoft about how Windows supposedly sucks (yet it (still) dominates the market with over 90% market share). How they claim Linux to be "better" and "cheaper" and so on despite the clear market share and the studies that prove the exact opposite... Always the "end guessing" part (year over year)... There definitely was some "end guessing" at Internet Explorer (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx) for example. Since Internet Explorer also (still) dominates the market with over 75% market share. Microsoft haters said Firefox would overcome Internet Explorer. Then Microsoft haters started saying no one is using their patents as Microsoft proved they were (with the usual "I-won't-tell-you-how-I-came-to-this-scientific-conclusion" argument)... And once the pact with Novell was done and they started being friendlier with open-source as Microsoft haters always said they should but wouldn't now they say it's a sign of weakness and "it sounds like Microsoft is in it's (they are probably American and write English worse than me, who don't have English has native language) Final Throes"... So HAHA you wish... I'm still not going to comentate on Vista's, though its sales is just what makes them angry... VIVA MICROSOFT!!!!
have lost and continue to lose countless hours due to MS charting
their own course because of market share. They're losing some of
that market share as a result, but developers continue in
frustration.
http://www.apple.com/safari/
http://www.firefox.com
http://www.opera.com
Who knows what they are after this time. Maybe to "inter-operate" themselves into another companies software secrets so they can copy them. Or maybe just to look innocent to anti-trust officials, or congress officials investigating Microsoft. Perhaps this is to look less evil to Yahoo's major stock holders to woo them into approving the merger.
Whatever it is we can be sure of one thing, its not to help the world, or consumers, but to help their bottom line.
competitors could create products that would
inter operate with your products could attract
anti trust lawsuits and this looks like a good
way to dodge it. But it also gives several future
options for Microsoft to sue linux software
like samba in future if these open standards
are implemented and a non commercial entity
starts using the software. So the disclosure
seems like a win-win for Microsoft.
On the other hand, what kinds of patents is Microsoft supposed to have on, say, the office format or the Exchange protocol anyway? There is unlikely to be anything essential in there that's patentable, and Microsoft can't have any patents on those protocols or formats anyway because if they did, they would be public alreayd.
How about "Atilla the Hun, the soft-hearted".
Or, "Vlad the Impaler, the Misunderstood"?
Microsoft does NOTHING which does not profit Microsoft.
Ever seen video of a snake-charmer with his cobra? The cobra NEVER takes its eyes off the snake charmer, and vice-versa. This is a good metaphor for anyone or any authority dealing with Microsoft. Never, ever let your attention be diverted by what they say or do, or you're dead.
Keep switching to Linux, FireFox, and Thunderbird.
That's the only real protection against Microsoft's duplicity, and the only way Microsoft will be really kept honest (don't laugh: you started this off with the ultimate oxymoron, in the title).
- Microsoft the magnanimous? Unfortunately to many, yes, definitely.
- by Fil0403 February 27, 2008 8:57 AM PST
- Now that Microsoft has done what Microsoft haters asked for for many years, it's time for them to come and comment on how this is really just a plan to enslave the world and eat little kids and on how this is the 347th step taking them to banrupcy.
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