Thursday, February 18, 2010

Full speed ahead for MicroHoo

The US Justice Department and European Union have given their approval to the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal.


Friday, December 4, 2009

MicroHoo is one step closer

Microsoft and Yahoo! have formally signed off on their July pact to team up, with the intent of destroying Google.  Uncle Sam has to approve this one, and the principal parties involved think that will happen in early 2010.  Then maybe we’ll see “Yahoo! Search powered by Bing.”  Or something.microhoo-t-shirt


Saturday, October 17, 2009

Is the European road rocky for Microhoo?

Loquacious Microsoft CEO Steven A. Ballmer says his shop’s search partnership with Yahoo! faces some legal snags, mainly due to pesky jurisdictional hurdles.  He adds, “Europe is a little confusing.”  Well, it’s all those tiny countries.


Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Dear Jerry Yang: Don’t read the Journal for a while


So Carl Icahn says he wants Jerry Yang fired. It is now only a matter of time before Icahn’s hatchet hacks at the Wall Street Journal work up one of their classic Page One “What really went on behind the scenes” stories about Yahoo in which Yang is depicted as an indecisive and incompetent yet hubristic buffoon. Katie’s operatives say the hit could come as early as this week, maybe by Friday. Jerry, my dude, if you wake up one morning and see a little pencil drawing of yourself on the front page of the Journal, take my advice — don’t read the paper, and just go back to bed and pull the covers over your head. And yes, I know I’ve already wondered out loud about this. I’m just still wondering out loud.

PS please drop the black mock turtleneck look or I will be forced to initiate legal proceedings to enforce my trademark and copyright. Much love.


Friday, May 23, 2008

The Borg: Just makin’ granola

Girlfriend Kara Swisher’s doing the Beastmaster’s bidding this week, talking up the borg’s alleged “organic” Web-search-and-ad stew. Project Granola they call it. The thinking is that Microsoft has so much cool crap in house it doesn’t need no stinkin’ Yahoo.

Yeah. Okay. We’ve heard about the billions the Borg spends on R&D. Problem is, no one can think of one truly creative thing it’s ever done. Oh, wait: my people do rave about Nathan Myrvold’s cassoulet.

Word of warning to the Yangster if he’s still in the game: Despite all its cash, the Borg won’t buy what it can steal.


Monday, May 19, 2008

Much love, Joe Doe


Who’s Joe Doe? I have no idea. But he’s the dude who made the other Microhoo animation for us, and now he’s made this one. I love it. Namaste, Joe Doe.


They’re back!


Well these crazy frigtarded mofos are back at it again and I am jumping for joy. Because honestly this ridiculous pas de deux is the gift that keeps on giving. Remember almost a year ago I wrote that we need a good merger — “one of those deals where tens of billions of dollars change hands and everybody knows it’s a train wreck but the two CEOs get up and talk about their wonderful synergies and blah blah and everyone just kind of snickers and waits for the disaster to happen.”

Well, the tech gods (with a nudge from Carl Icahn) are trying to make it happen.

As for this video, well, I just can’t think of anything better to say about Microhoo than what this video says in its own sophisticated, eloquent way. Peace out. Fingers crossed.


Wednesday, May 14, 2008

How long until the Journal does a classic nasty takedown on Jerry Yang?


So now Carl Icahn has bought a chunk of Yahoo and may launch a proxy fight. See today’s Journal story about it here. Now the question is how long will it be until Icahn gets his minions at the Journal to do his dirty work for him by producing a devastating hatchet job on Jerry Yang. I give it a week. Two weeks, tops. This is how Icahn operates. Remember the black ops work he did on Ed Zander of Motorola? First, on a Friday, Icahn planted a story that destroyed Zander’s reputation and pretended he had nothing to do with it; then on Monday he took out a full-page ad in the Journal saying he was “shocked — shocked!” by what he’d read in the Journal on Friday, and that Zander had to go.

As for Yahoo, the Icahn shenanigans have already begun. Today’s story in the Wall Street Journal carries two bylines plus a reporting credit for a third hack, and is loaded with anonymous sources who are “familiar with the matter.” Translation: Icahn and his guys are feeding info to the Journal, and the deal with the devil is this — we feed you inside info so you get a Page One scoop, and you slant the story in a way that helps us, and you leave our names out of it.

Now Icahn and his guys will worm their way into Yahoo and find insiders who hate Yang and want him out. Then they will tee those people up to talk to the Journal and spill their guts (anonymously, of course) about what an incompetent nitwit Jerry Yang is.

The strange thing is that the Journal isn’t ashamed of this kind of thing. In fact they’re proud of it. See, this is how they do their jobs. They curry favor with scumbags like Icahn and carry his water for him and help him make millions on these proxy fight deals.

Hey, it’s a living, I suppose, but what bothers folks like me who actually run these companies is that the Journal then has the gall to call what they do “journalism” and say it’s all done in the pursuit of truth and justice and Mom and apple pie — when really they’re not much different or better than the idiots who follow Britney Spears around hoping to get a photograph of her doing bong hits with her 3-year-old.

Frankly it makes me sick. I don’t know how these filthy hacks can look at themselves in the mirror. Katie and her team are already on notice to be looking for the Yang attack piece when it runs so we can deconstruct it and figure out who’s leaking what to whom. Why not have some fun and point the gun back at the hacks, right?

FWIW, you should have heard the Journal freaks squeal when I busted them last year on the Icahn-versus-Zander story. All sorts of angry email from these holier-than-thou journalists (that’s what hacks call themselves when they get a master’s degree) who were soooo pissed and totally indignant about being called out by some lowly blogger. Well, tough noogies, freaks. I’m watching you. I’m a CEO citizen journalist, using technology to disrupt your business model and give you a taste of your own medicine.

More as this story develops.


Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Steve Ballmer as Hamlet


More praise for Monkey Boy today as Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times uses his “Dealbook” column to cut Ballmer a new one, in a column titled “How Not to Make a Deal.” Sorkin says Ballmer “looks like all hat, no cattle,” and says “when Yahoo’s Jerry Yang refused to knuckle under, Mr. Ballmer just … waffled.” Sorkin says that while Yang comes off looking like an idiot, so does Ballmer, who “miscalculated from the start” and “misread his own shareholders, who hated the deal.” Money quote: “But most of all, Mr. Ballmer didn’t realize — though he had been warned by his advisers — that when you make a blockbuster unsolicited offer, you must be prepared to win.”

Right on, Andrew Ross. Or, as the Bard might have put it:

To buy, or not to buy: that is the question.

Or, as the Bard actually did put it:

And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Namaste, William Shakespeare. I honor the place where your words and events four centuries later become one.


Monday, May 5, 2008

Jerry the genius says he’s open to another offer from Microsoft

Well, that didn’t take long. See here. Amazing what a little plunge in your stock price can do to awaken your senses.

Question: How long until Jerry Yang is booted out of Yahoo?