Then more of a reason to buy up Adobe and combine the two apps into the best CS ever written. The mere thought of Apple owning Flash, PS, and PDF makes me tingle. The could also take the good parts of Aperture, the good parts of Lightroom and combine them to make a "killer app".
I agree. Then take development off Windozzz like M$ did with Bungie and Halo.
Yahoo! is on the wrong side of the growth and innovation curve, and has been for a while now. It is incredibly expensive. Microsoft would need to sink so much cash it would have to borrow for the first time ever.
Within a year or two it would likely write off half the purchase price.
Which suits me fine.
But for Apple, with smaller reserves, to make such a huge mistake would not suit me at all. Apple would need to raise debt too, and that would bring in the bean counters. You can count on Apple trying to shave costs on hardware in an attempt to balance the books. It would be a huge distraction.
This thing just isn't happening.
Apple is moving forward to become a technology Bloomingdale's or Tiffany, not backwards to the dot-com era.
I would think that Yahoo! would be a distraction for Apple. Possibly as much (maybe slightly less) of a mistake as it will be for Microsoft.
However, I'd love to see some bidding force Microsoft to pay a few (10?) billion more, thus causing even more of a mess for Microsoft to find ways to justify this buyout.
Yahoo! is a "fixer upper" project I think. Probably has lots of great assets but probably lacks real focus. This is a perfect fit for Microsoft (sarcasm fully intended). This will keep Microsoft distracted for years trying to figure out a way to properly ruining the things that are good about Yahoo!
It would be a real challenge for Steve and his team to see how well they can shape up such a large organization (in a very different business) by Steve's sheer force of will. I suppose if anyone could do it, he can (making this a slightly smaller mistake for Apple). But it would scare me.
Apple's best strategic acquisition would be Adobe to get control of a bunch of decent software assets (including media content formats and technologies widely used on the Internet). Then partner closely with Google for the "cloud computing" side of things. Maybe even sell off .Mac to Google and much greater (and cooler) integration of Google with Leopard, Safari, iPhone, iPod touch, etc.
I think that's where I'd go if I were Apple.
Acquire Adobe - great. Pdf is still the king of electronic documents and OS X has it baked right in (Opens pdfs blazingly fast in Preview). Design/Image products are often used by Mac users so they will definitely sell. But, most of Apple's software right now is developed for mac-only (except Safari and iTunes for Windows). Do you think Apple wants to manage developing the software for both platforms? Perhaps they would rather continue improving OS X and their base software offerings.
Give .Mac to Google? I love using google, but everything is so half-finished and has toy-like simplicity. Apple products have sophisticated simplicity. Apple is better off making a beautiful interface to google's services. In the case of .mac, much of the beautiful simplicity is on the web. The photo galleries would become toyishly simple like Picasa web albums.
Acquire Adobe - great. Pdf is still the king of electronic documents and OS X has it baked right in (Opens pdfs blazingly fast in Preview). Design/Image products are often used by Mac users so they will definitely sell. But, most of Apple's software right now is developed for mac-only (except Safari and iTunes for Windows). Do you think Apple wants to manage developing the software for both platforms? Perhaps they would rather continue improving OS X and their base software offerings.
Give .Mac to Google? I love using google, but everything is so half-finished and has toy-like simplicity. Apple products have sophisticated simplicity. Apple is better off making a beautiful interface to google's services. In the case of .mac, much of the beautiful simplicity is on the web. The photo galleries would become toyishly simple like Picasa web albums.
PDF is an open standard now so that doesn't warrant any buying. I do think acquiring Adobe would be nice. Apple could write the next Windows versions to be more "Mac-like" like iTunes and Safari. Since it's a high-end product this may help more switchers and allow for a more unified transition from one platform to the next for those in video and graphic fields. Will they do it? i don't think so, but if I think the rumour looks like it's going to happen i will invest heavily into Adobe.
I also agree with your Google comments. They seem to be torn between a coder designed UI and simplisitc lack of features for ease of use. They don't meld the two well at all. Though .Mac has its uses it is still lacking in many ways. Speed, interactivity with with Mac apps and syncing all need to be worked on.
For example, even though my Address Book is correctly saved online the web interface willnot show any changes unless I manually sync for there. It also doesn't show all the info I have for my contacts, which is really a shame since it's easy to code with all vCard field defined. If they can make ,mac web-mail look and function like Mail.app they can make the address book look and function like Address Book.app.
Yahoo is a has been trash. A company like Apple could home grow a .mac into an empire easily. Make .mac free, and there you go. It would cost Apple less than $ 100 million to get 10 times the yahoo users.
Not a great buy for the price. I think Microsoft will get it, but it won't really be worth it. They are buying a database at this point, and I imagine it is going to turn out like the AOL/Warner buy.
But Microsoft has the cash. And it will make them think they are making progress.
Google would be the only other option, but that is even a worse anti-trust situation.
I think Apple buying Yahoo would be cool. But not at this price range. Getting some cross Platform IM that works without begging for M$ mercy for a decent Messenger for Mac would be one.
Shaping the web against M$ Web Standard is another.
Intergating Itunes into Yahoo Portal would be one.
Making Yahoo default for Iphone?
All these are great. But just not worth 40 Billion.
1) Apple will not bid on Yahoo, let alone want to buy it.
2) Microsoft will buy it, and while trying to integrate whatever technologies that Yahoo may have that are good, will make a mess of the whole thing... but they will buy it.
In my opinion, Yahoo has been floundering to long and Google has just booted them out of the water. The only company that would want to buy Yahoo is Microsoft.
I don't see any real solid references to any company putting in a bid for Yahoo other than Microsoft, who expressed interest in early 2007, so they are actually truly interested.
I do agree that Apple should put a LOT more resources into .mac without infringing on Google. I think that a .mac and Google arrangement could be made that would benefit both companies without Apple having to put out many billions of dollars.
I repeat... Apple has no interest in Yahoo. They will partner with whomever provides them with the technology that will enhance their core business(es) and I agree with the person who said they will have a keen eye open for smaller/startup companies with great technologies that can be incorporated into existing products and into products that Apple is already deeply invested in that we aren't yet aware about. Consider the iPhone with Multitouch that took 2 or 3 years to develop without us having any idea that Apple was getting into the phone market. Then they bring out the Touch. Both of those are leveraged on their existing asset of the Mac OS and the acquisition of technolgies from other companies.
Buying Yahoo would put AAPL in more direct competition with
Google, currently a close ally. I can't see it happening.
Not that i think apple should buy yahoo (it's too big a risk) but apple caring about what happens to a close ally?.. now that's an eye opener. Steve Jobs probably laughed his head off when he read that. I'm sure apple will get over screwing Google if it had to. Google too would get over screwing apple if the opportunity for them to do so ever came up. I'm not sure apple shareholders feel they owe google anything and vice versa.
Yahoo is a has been trash. A company like Apple could home grow a .mac into an empire easily. Make .mac free, and there you go. It would cost Apple less than $ 100 million to get 10 times the yahoo users.
Ten times the yahoo users?.. wow, that would mean that apple would have over 50% of the computer market share (since .mac is basically for macs.. i'm pretty sure a windows user would never get .mac, even if apple was giving it away for free with some cash). So, the only thing holding apple from achieving a fantastic market share in computers is a free .mac right?.
Now i'm gonna make a comment
1. If you are a high school student, you are forgiven, while you may be smart, we don't expect you to really think quickly on your feet.
2. If you are a college student, i hope you are not just about to graduate.. if you are, please stay in school for 4 more years.
3. Do you have any ideas how many millions of users yahoo has?.. don't be confused by google search numbers.. google has search, yahoo actually has members. (you do realize that they are different type of companies right?). Even google, the wildly successfull search engine does not have 10 times more customers than yahoo and google could buy apple.
4. If you are not a college student but actually working, i hope it's not a job that demands critical thinking (like airplane manufacturing, or a similar job impacting the public). I'd hate to have to depend on anything you made or are involved in.
5. If .mac was that great, all mac users would have it. I'm a mac user and i don't have it. Making it free would not cause me to choose it over yahoo (i would definitely try it out though). Yahoo has paid services.. people actually pay to use yahoo services when they could have paid to use .mac. Obviously, .mac is not the greatest thing since sliced bread else people would pay for it rather than use yahoo paid services.
Really, is it too much to ask people to think before they type?
This is just silly. Apple is a hardware company that also sells software, mostly as a value-add to make it easier to sell their hardware for a big profit (a Macbook that costs about $500 to make sells for $1400, if it wasn't for MacOS/X and the rest of Apple's software they'd have to sell it for $600 like all those Windows loser companies like HP). Yahoo, on the other hand, is a pure portal play that wouldn't sell any Apple hardware. Not a good fit. Apple needs to buy stuff that sells Apple hardware, not stuff that has nothing to do with their core business of selling Apple hardware. I really can't see Steve Jobs being that stupid.
This would actually be an excellent fit for Apple, but the up front costs would probably be too high for Apple to jump on. It would free Apple from their dependency on Google, give Apple a massive (and social) userbase, and also a considerable number of quality web services. With a little vision and done right, it could give Apple the ".Mac" service that Apple otherwise could only dream of ... and might possibly not get another shot at.
But, the question is if it's worth $45+ billion to do it though.
But, the question is if it's worth $45+ billion to do it though.
That question isn't important when you look at the first question: can Apple afford it. Apple has around 16B in cash. Microsoft's offer is cash+stock mix, so even if you assume Apple spent all 16B in cash, they'd need to give away 25-30B in stock to top Microsoft's offer. That's about 1/4th of Apple's market cap. No way anybody on Apple's board is going to give away 1/4th the company's value in stock. Also Apple's market cap dropped around 35% lately, so they don't have the stock value to toss around like they used to. Any decently sized company will never agree to an all-cash transaction, especially in a hostile takeover--the more stock involved, the more shareholders that have to vote yes, and getting them to vote yes usually means giving up a boatload of cash, paying off existing debt, etc.
Even Adobe would be a stretch for Apple. Adobe has a market cap of 20B, but to buy them (which would be an unsolicited/hostile takeover) you'd need 25-30B at least. Even if the board approves using most of their cash, you are left with anywhere from a 5-15B shortfall depending on cash used.
This would actually be an excellent fit for Apple, but the up front costs would probably be too high for Apple to jump on. It would free Apple from their dependency on Google, give Apple a massive (and social) userbase, and also a considerable number of quality web services. With a little vision and done right, it could give Apple the ".Mac" service that Apple otherwise could only dream of ... and might possibly not get another shot at.
But, the question is if it's worth $45+ billion to do it though.
Comments
Then more of a reason to buy up Adobe and combine the two apps into the best CS ever written. The mere thought of Apple owning Flash, PS, and PDF makes me tingle. The could also take the good parts of Aperture, the good parts of Lightroom and combine them to make a "killer app".
I agree. Then take development off Windozzz like M$ did with Bungie and Halo.
Within a year or two it would likely write off half the purchase price.
Which suits me fine.
But for Apple, with smaller reserves, to make such a huge mistake would not suit me at all. Apple would need to raise debt too, and that would bring in the bean counters. You can count on Apple trying to shave costs on hardware in an attempt to balance the books. It would be a huge distraction.
This thing just isn't happening.
Apple is moving forward to become a technology Bloomingdale's or Tiffany, not backwards to the dot-com era.
I would think that Yahoo! would be a distraction for Apple. Possibly as much (maybe slightly less) of a mistake as it will be for Microsoft.
However, I'd love to see some bidding force Microsoft to pay a few (10?) billion more, thus causing even more of a mess for Microsoft to find ways to justify this buyout.
Yahoo! is a "fixer upper" project I think. Probably has lots of great assets but probably lacks real focus. This is a perfect fit for Microsoft (sarcasm fully intended). This will keep Microsoft distracted for years trying to figure out a way to properly ruining the things that are good about Yahoo!
It would be a real challenge for Steve and his team to see how well they can shape up such a large organization (in a very different business) by Steve's sheer force of will. I suppose if anyone could do it, he can (making this a slightly smaller mistake for Apple). But it would scare me.
Apple's best strategic acquisition would be Adobe to get control of a bunch of decent software assets (including media content formats and technologies widely used on the Internet). Then partner closely with Google for the "cloud computing" side of things. Maybe even sell off .Mac to Google and much greater (and cooler) integration of Google with Leopard, Safari, iPhone, iPod touch, etc.
I think that's where I'd go if I were Apple.
Acquire Adobe - great. Pdf is still the king of electronic documents and OS X has it baked right in (Opens pdfs blazingly fast in Preview). Design/Image products are often used by Mac users so they will definitely sell. But, most of Apple's software right now is developed for mac-only (except Safari and iTunes for Windows). Do you think Apple wants to manage developing the software for both platforms? Perhaps they would rather continue improving OS X and their base software offerings.
Give .Mac to Google? I love using google, but everything is so half-finished and has toy-like simplicity. Apple products have sophisticated simplicity. Apple is better off making a beautiful interface to google's services. In the case of .mac, much of the beautiful simplicity is on the web. The photo galleries would become toyishly simple like Picasa web albums.
Acquire Adobe - great. Pdf is still the king of electronic documents and OS X has it baked right in (Opens pdfs blazingly fast in Preview). Design/Image products are often used by Mac users so they will definitely sell. But, most of Apple's software right now is developed for mac-only (except Safari and iTunes for Windows). Do you think Apple wants to manage developing the software for both platforms? Perhaps they would rather continue improving OS X and their base software offerings.
Give .Mac to Google? I love using google, but everything is so half-finished and has toy-like simplicity. Apple products have sophisticated simplicity. Apple is better off making a beautiful interface to google's services. In the case of .mac, much of the beautiful simplicity is on the web. The photo galleries would become toyishly simple like Picasa web albums.
PDF is an open standard now so that doesn't warrant any buying. I do think acquiring Adobe would be nice. Apple could write the next Windows versions to be more "Mac-like" like iTunes and Safari. Since it's a high-end product this may help more switchers and allow for a more unified transition from one platform to the next for those in video and graphic fields. Will they do it? i don't think so, but if I think the rumour looks like it's going to happen i will invest heavily into Adobe.
I also agree with your Google comments. They seem to be torn between a coder designed UI and simplisitc lack of features for ease of use. They don't meld the two well at all. Though .Mac has its uses it is still lacking in many ways. Speed, interactivity with with Mac apps and syncing all need to be worked on.
For example, even though my Address Book is correctly saved online the web interface willnot show any changes unless I manually sync for there. It also doesn't show all the info I have for my contacts, which is really a shame since it's easy to code with all vCard field defined. If they can make ,mac web-mail look and function like Mail.app they can make the address book look and function like Address Book.app.
But Microsoft has the cash. And it will make them think they are making progress.
Google would be the only other option, but that is even a worse anti-trust situation.
-M
http://cartoonshmartoon.blogspot.com/
Shaping the web against M$ Web Standard is another.
Intergating Itunes into Yahoo Portal would be one.
Making Yahoo default for Iphone?
All these are great. But just not worth 40 Billion.
2) Microsoft will buy it, and while trying to integrate whatever technologies that Yahoo may have that are good, will make a mess of the whole thing... but they will buy it.
In my opinion, Yahoo has been floundering to long and Google has just booted them out of the water. The only company that would want to buy Yahoo is Microsoft.
I don't see any real solid references to any company putting in a bid for Yahoo other than Microsoft, who expressed interest in early 2007, so they are actually truly interested.
I do agree that Apple should put a LOT more resources into .mac without infringing on Google. I think that a .mac and Google arrangement could be made that would benefit both companies without Apple having to put out many billions of dollars.
I repeat... Apple has no interest in Yahoo. They will partner with whomever provides them with the technology that will enhance their core business(es) and I agree with the person who said they will have a keen eye open for smaller/startup companies with great technologies that can be incorporated into existing products and into products that Apple is already deeply invested in that we aren't yet aware about. Consider the iPhone with Multitouch that took 2 or 3 years to develop without us having any idea that Apple was getting into the phone market. Then they bring out the Touch. Both of those are leveraged on their existing asset of the Mac OS and the acquisition of technolgies from other companies.
My 2 cents.
Sachin
I would love to see Apple or Google buying Yahoo because Microrosoft will never be able to defeat either AppYah or GooHoo.
Sachin
Apple won't buy, or attempt to buy them. And if Google did, they would change their name to Google.
I would love to see Apple or Google buying Yahoo because Microrosoft will never be able to defeat either AppYah or GooHoo.
Sachin
Oh, please! Haven't you read anything here?
Apple can't afford it, even if it were a good idea, which it isn't.
Google would never be allowed to buy it, even if it were a good idea, which it isn't.
Buying Yahoo would put AAPL in more direct competition with
Google, currently a close ally. I can't see it happening.
Not that i think apple should buy yahoo (it's too big a risk) but apple caring about what happens to a close ally?.. now that's an eye opener. Steve Jobs probably laughed his head off when he read that. I'm sure apple will get over screwing Google if it had to. Google too would get over screwing apple if the opportunity for them to do so ever came up. I'm not sure apple shareholders feel they owe google anything and vice versa.
Yahoo is a has been trash. A company like Apple could home grow a .mac into an empire easily. Make .mac free, and there you go. It would cost Apple less than $ 100 million to get 10 times the yahoo users.
Ten times the yahoo users?.. wow, that would mean that apple would have over 50% of the computer market share (since .mac is basically for macs.. i'm pretty sure a windows user would never get .mac, even if apple was giving it away for free with some cash). So, the only thing holding apple from achieving a fantastic market share in computers is a free .mac right?.
Now i'm gonna make a comment
1. If you are a high school student, you are forgiven, while you may be smart, we don't expect you to really think quickly on your feet.
2. If you are a college student, i hope you are not just about to graduate.. if you are, please stay in school for 4 more years.
3. Do you have any ideas how many millions of users yahoo has?.. don't be confused by google search numbers.. google has search, yahoo actually has members. (you do realize that they are different type of companies right?). Even google, the wildly successfull search engine does not have 10 times more customers than yahoo and google could buy apple.
4. If you are not a college student but actually working, i hope it's not a job that demands critical thinking (like airplane manufacturing, or a similar job impacting the public). I'd hate to have to depend on anything you made or are involved in.
5. If .mac was that great, all mac users would have it. I'm a mac user and i don't have it. Making it free would not cause me to choose it over yahoo (i would definitely try it out though). Yahoo has paid services.. people actually pay to use yahoo services when they could have paid to use .mac. Obviously, .mac is not the greatest thing since sliced bread else people would pay for it rather than use yahoo paid services.
Really, is it too much to ask people to think before they type?
Apple is a hardware company that also sells software
What makes you say that?
But, the question is if it's worth $45+ billion to do it though.
But, the question is if it's worth $45+ billion to do it though.
That question isn't important when you look at the first question: can Apple afford it. Apple has around 16B in cash. Microsoft's offer is cash+stock mix, so even if you assume Apple spent all 16B in cash, they'd need to give away 25-30B in stock to top Microsoft's offer. That's about 1/4th of Apple's market cap. No way anybody on Apple's board is going to give away 1/4th the company's value in stock. Also Apple's market cap dropped around 35% lately, so they don't have the stock value to toss around like they used to. Any decently sized company will never agree to an all-cash transaction, especially in a hostile takeover--the more stock involved, the more shareholders that have to vote yes, and getting them to vote yes usually means giving up a boatload of cash, paying off existing debt, etc.
Even Adobe would be a stretch for Apple. Adobe has a market cap of 20B, but to buy them (which would be an unsolicited/hostile takeover) you'd need 25-30B at least. Even if the board approves using most of their cash, you are left with anywhere from a 5-15B shortfall depending on cash used.
This would actually be an excellent fit for Apple, but the up front costs would probably be too high for Apple to jump on. It would free Apple from their dependency on Google, give Apple a massive (and social) userbase, and also a considerable number of quality web services. With a little vision and done right, it could give Apple the ".Mac" service that Apple otherwise could only dream of ... and might possibly not get another shot at.
But, the question is if it's worth $45+ billion to do it though.
No to both.