For all the wonderful stuff that Google’s employees get, the Googleplex still hasn’t earned the title of “happiest place on earth”; in that sense, it might be pretty nice to get acquired by Disney.  Such acquisitions could, however, lead to a relatively higher rate of failure – Disney doesn’t have as much expertise in tech fields.

Still, so long as Disney doesn’t get overly ambitious, the money it’s willing to offer should appear quite reasonable to both sides of a bargaining table.  “What the group is looking at is less-than-$20-million-upfront deals, and some cash and earnouts as the main formula to stick to,” reports Rafat Ali.

An earlier article from Michael Arrington asserts that as many as 20 of these arrangements could be made in the next two years.  That would put Disney ahead of Microsoft’s buying binge in terms of frequency, though not in terms of dollars spent.

We’ll see how the acquisitions go, then.  Steve Ballmer was fairly widely booed when he had this idea, but it’s only natural that Mickey and Minnie would get a better reception.

They’d already heard from Steve Ballmer, who, with his infamy for saying and doing odd things, is somewhat hard to take seriously.  Liddell might have provided some solid data, or at least a comment referring to statistics, in support of Microsoft’s decision.  But he didn’t.

“Obviously, I feel comfortable with the transaction we’ve done, and I was involved in it,” Liddell told Todd Bishop.  “I think you have to look at the investment not only in the context of the dollar investment but the commercial transaction.  I think there’s a great example of finance taking a role in that and thinking about the holistic aspect of what we’re trying to do in the online services, how Facebook fits into it, and how a dual investment-commercial transaction is a very powerful way of creating a partnership.”

Liddell did allude to stock prices, later adding, “[T]he share market reaction I think was positive.”  And indeed, for about eight days following the Facebook deal, Microsoft’s stock rose somewhat sharply.  It’s now lost more than half that gain, though, so the Redmond-based corporation doesn’t seem to have received much in the way of long-term benefits.

Microsoft’s decision to invest so much money in return for so little of Facebook remains questionable.  Yet at least the company’s leaders are willing to share whatever credit or blame they’ve earned.

Francois Bancilhon has posted an open letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to complain about Microsoft’s business tactics. Mssr. Bancilhon, welcome to the real world. Microsoft has a long history of playing tough with the competition.

Mandriva’s CEO is not happy with Ballmer and Microsoft. Mandriva has been working a deal with the Nigerian government where the Mandriva Linux operating system would be in place on 17,000 PCs.

At some point, Microsoft got involved in the process. "I would not say it got dirty, but someone could have said that," Bancilhon said of Microsoft’s competitive approach.

The kicker that irritated Bancilhon came in the form of a new message from the Nigerians: though they will pay for the Mandriva software as agreed, they will replace it with Windows.

Bancilhon is not happy about this, likely due to the loss of support agreements that would have provided ongoing revenue after the initial sale:

Wow! I’m impressed, Steve! What have you done for these guys to change their mind like this? It’s pretty clear to me, and it will be clear to everyone. How do you call what you just did Steve, in the place where you live? In my place, they give it various names, I’m sure you know them.

Hey Steve, how do you feel looking at yourself in the mirror in the morning?

Considering the Microsoft CEO’s place among the world’s wealthiest people, we imagine he feels pretty good most days.

Ballmer Embarks On Buying Binge

Ballmer even gave an audience at the Web 2.0 Summit an email address (steveb at microsoft dot com) in the event anyone in it wanted to be among the 100 lucky targets. 

You, too, dear reader, are welcome to drop him a carefully-written, self-promotional line if you have something worth selling.

But what, exactly, would that be?  And what sort of sum could you expect in return? 

Our own David Utter explains that Ballmer’s looking to spend $50 million to $1 billion per acquisition, so teeny tiny companies may not be welcome, but Facebook-sized mammoths are also out of the running.

As for how this development may appear to onlookers, well . . . Chris Williams made a clever remark.  “What’s the best way to inflate a bubble?” he asked.  “Blowhard.”

Indeed, by committing his company to spending as much as $100 billion over five years – without naming so much as an area of interest – Ballmer could have made a very controversial move.

For the crew from Redmond, following an “independent path” will mean spending from $50 million to $1 billion for an acquisition. That is a pretty broad path, one that is well marked with Microsoft’s $23 billion cash pile.

Reuters cited Ballmer’s comments at the Web 2.0 Summit, as part of his keynote conversation today.

“If at some point it makes sense, maybe then it makes sense. But that’s not where we are going. We are driving in an independent direction,” Ballmer said in the session.

Microsoft has been widely rumored to be willing to take a stake in Facebook that would value the social networking site at $10 billion to $15 billion. Also, Yahoo and Microsoft have engaged in off and on talks about a possible merger or purchase, though nothing but denials have ever come of those rumors.

That’s not to imply that Yvonne Genovese, a Gartner analyst, was out of line.  She used humor to her advantage, and generally voiced what hundreds of other people have said on blogs and in reviews.  Also, Ballmer didn’t exactly break down and cry.

Still, it sounds like an interesting exchange.  Patrick Thibodeau quoted both parties, and while at a conference and in front of a crowd, Genovese reportedly said, “I’m one of those early adopters of Vista.  My daughter comes in one day and says, ‘Hey Mom, my friend has Vista, and it has these neat little things called gadgets — I need those.’”

Ballmer replied, “I love your daughter.”

And to the crowd’s amusement, Genovese responded, “You’re not going to like her mom in about two minutes.”

Genovese then stated that she’d installed Vista, only to quickly reinstall XP – Vista didn’t live up to expectations.  Microsoft had a similar problem with its Live Search overhaul.  Plus, Steve Ballmer has been at the center of some controversy due to statements about Gmail and Facebook.  It seems like Redmond is getting knocked around a little more than usual these days.

“Google’s had the same experience, even though they read your mail and we don’t,” Ballmer said, to chuckles and and a couple of gasps in the audience. “That’s just a factual statement, not even to be pejorative. The theory was if we read your mail, if somebody read your mail, they would know what to talk to you about. It’s not working out as brilliantly as the concept was laid out.”

Ballmer’s comments came in reply to a question raised at a recent speech in the UK.

Of course, it’s not such a shocking revelation. Google freely admits to examining your personal information using cookies. However, Google claims they don’t actually “read” your email.

It will be interesting to see Google’s response. If they don’t actually “read” your Gmail, they’d have to come out on the defensive–perhaps even sue Ballmer for slander? If they keep quiet, you’ll know Ballmer’s hitting close to the truth and Google would rather not debate the topic.

You can watch the video here.

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Live Search Team Channeling Steve Ballmer

And boy, is their blog post title excited about it. “Relevance, Relevance, Relevance!” Shades of the famous Dancing Ballmer video, where he chants the word ‘Developers’ over and over for several seconds.

The cheeky people revamping Live Search gave that moment a hat tip as they talked about making relevance an even greater part of their search engine. Their latest update spent over nine months in the works.

They list reduced spam as an improvement in their index:

You might ask how we know spam is down? Experts on our team take a

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/live-search-team-channeling-steve-ballmer-2007-10/feed 1 http://www.webpronews.com/ballmer-still-doesnt-get-social-networking-2007-10 http://www.webpronews.com/ballmer-still-doesnt-get-social-networking-2007-10#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:19:51 +0000 Robert Scoble http://www.webpronews.com/?p=40834 A few years ago I wrote to Microsoft’s leadership and asked them why they weren’t involved in the new Web 2.0 space. I got an answer back that was about 2,000 words long and included the words “business value” 13 times. Translation: Microsoft’s leadership thought that Web 2.0 and social software like Flickr didn’t have business value and was too much of a potential fad to invest in.

]]> A few years ago I wrote to Microsoft’s leadership and asked them why they weren’t involved in the new Web 2.0 space. I got an answer back that was about 2,000 words long and included the words “business value” 13 times. Translation: Microsoft’s leadership thought that Web 2.0 and social software like Flickr didn’t have business value and was too much of a potential fad to invest in.

Glad to see that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, is consistent. Notes that Geocities lost most of its value after being acquired by Yahoo and says “it had most of what Facebook has.” Let’s come back to that point in a second.

The thing is that Ballmer has bought into the advertising hype too. I remember when Microsoft’s President, Kevin Johnson, came to our group when I worked at Microsoft and explained that the advertising industry is 10x the size of the software industry and that he was going to steer Microsoft more into an advertising-driven business rather than just one that made its revenues from selling software. Translation: Microsoft was going to compete more with Google, Yahoo, and other companies going after the advertising pie.

Don’t miss this quote. It’s demonstrates everything that is wrong with Microsoft’s approach:

“There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure,” Ballmer said.

When I worked at Microsoft I heard this over and over and over again from various engineers and program managers who STILL haven’t competed effectively with WordPress, Flickr, Skype, YouTube, or any of the other things over the years I’ve heard this “we can build that in a few weeks” kind of arrogant attitude attached to.

But, remember eBay? Remember how dozens of competitors tried to get into the eBay space? (and still are?)

Why aren’t they succeeding? Because eBay is NOT about the technology. It’s about the community and unless you have something that’ll convince the buyers and sellers all to switch all at one moment you’ll never be able to take eBay’s market away. Translation: it’s too late and eBay has huge defensibility around its business because people won’t move away from it even if you demonstrate 5x better technology.

Same with Facebook. I’m not moving away from it. Why? I have 5,000 reasons why (and another 500 already who want to be included in my Facebook network). Unless you can convince them all to move I’m not moving. This is why LinkedIn isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, even though I like Facebook’s approach a lot better. It’s also why MySpace isn’t going anywhere. My son says his friends are all on MySpace. My brother’s bar is on MySpace. They aren’t moving no matter how hard I evangelize Facebook.

Which gets us back to Ballmer’s quotes.

First, let’s share this one: “I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people,” Mr Ballmer told Times Online yesterday.

I’m 42. Hardly young. And Facebook is appealing a lot to people in my social network and age group lately (and so is Twitter and other social tools like Pownce, LinkedIn, and sites that use social groups like Yelp, Flickr, Upcoming.org). I guess Ballmer missed that. This is what happens when Microsoft executives don’t get outside of their ivory towers very often. Steve, you really need to go to any tech industry conference and hang out in the hallways. Don’t come to San Francisco, you won’t believe anything you hear here anyway. But go to, say, LeWeb3 in Paris and hear what they say about social networks. You’ll probably hear Bebo. Facebook. And a few others. From even the old folks. Last night I was at a National Geographic event and lots of people were talking about Facebook.

Here’s another quote:

Mr Ballmer also noted that sites such as Geocities, an online community that was bought for $3 billion by Yahoo! in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, “had most of what Facebook has.”

Oh, boy. No way, no how.

First of all, I never joined Geocities. It never had utility for me. It was a place to build free Web sites. I found it had all the disadvantages to me that MySpace has and NONE of the advantages of Facebook. It was NOT a social network that exerted the kind of social pressure on me to join the way that Facebook did. I tried to ignore Facebook for years. Same with MySpace. But people I kept meeting kept begging me to join. Kevin Rose, when we had dinner, told me I was blowing it by not being on Facebook. That NEVER happened with Geocities.

Also, Facebook is now a business card collection. A rolodex. That has real utility that’ll keep me using it long after it joins the “old fad bin.”

Oh, and anytime people say “this thing is a fad?” I think of blogging. Lots of people told me that when I started it too. It wasn’t. Neither is Facebook.

But all this makes me think that Ballmer is trying to send signals to Zuckerberg (Facebook’s CEO) that the price is too high and that this is just a negotiating ploy. Nice one! But it doesn’t give me confidence that Microsoft is going to figure out Web 2.0 or social networking strategies anytime soon.

It also makes me realize that Ballmer has no clue about the future of advertising. If he did he’d be talking about how Facebook’s ability to concentrate people into buckets in a new way should be copied and studied. That’s where Facebook’s real advertising value is and Microsoft hasn’t demonstrated ANY ability to see that yet. Of course, Facebook itself hasn’t shipped its advertising platform that’ll demonstrate its vision there either, but I hear it’s coming.

Will Microsoft get a clue before Facebook gets an entrenched advertising platform going?

Ballmer proved with Google and with these quotes today: no.

Comments

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/ballmer-still-doesnt-get-social-networking-2007-10/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/ballmer-calls-facebook-a-fad-2007-10 http://www.webpronews.com/ballmer-calls-facebook-a-fad-2007-10#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:15:30 +0000 Doug Caverly http://www.webpronews.com/?p=40818 How much money would you put towards a fad?  The price of a pair of jeans?  The cost of a new kitchen counter?  Because Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has used a form of the word “fad” in connection with Facebook, and people are wondering what this signifies for the social network’s future. ]]> How much money would you put towards a fad?  The price of a pair of jeans?  The cost of a new kitchen counter?  Because Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has used a form of the word “fad” in connection with Facebook, and people are wondering what this signifies for the social network’s future.

Ballmer Calls Facebook A Fad?

After all, it was Microsoft’s interest in Facebook – an interest that supposedly equated $500 million with five percent of the site’s worth – that started a new cycle of hype.  Now, in an interview with the Times Online, Ballmer stated, “There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years.  That’s for sure.”

However, the phrases containing the word “fad” indicate that all the excitement wasn’t completely unfounded.  “I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people,” Ballmer said.

Ballmer’s comments are somewhat open to interpretation, but Facebook enthusiasts are sure to note how highly the 18-34 age demographic is coveted.  Still, adding to the confusion is the question of how “on message” the man may have been – was he voicing Microsoft’s official position, or just his own personal opinion?

Things could go either way.  But if Mark Zuckerberg weren’t already fabulously rich, I’d advise him to at least hold off on any kitchen-related renovations.

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