Microsoft yahooing?

Last week ended (atleast for now) speculation about Microsoft acquiring Yahoo. But the intent and the way Microsoft carried on this process left a sour impression on techie community and consumers in general. Check out this letter that Steve Balmer, Microsoft CEO wrote to Jerry Yang, Yahoo CEO.

May 3, 2008

Mr Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Dear Jerry:
After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!.

I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!'s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible.

I am disappointed that Yahoo! has not moved towards accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers, and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace.
Our decision to offer a 62 per cent premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions. In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 per cent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31.
Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per share above our $33.00 offer.

Also, after giving this week's conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a "hostile" bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:

• First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!'s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.

• Given this, it would impair Yahoo's ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.

• In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.

• This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.

• It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google's search services.

Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo!

We will move forward and will continue to innovate and grow our business at Microsoft with the talented team we have in place and potentially through strategic transactions with other business partners.

I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.

But clearly a deal is not to be.

Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.

Sincerely yours,

Steven A Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

It is a win-win situation for Microsoft. Irrespective of whether or not Yahoo accepts their offer, Microsoft is set to gain from this episode. Yahoo is now in dire straits. Their shares fell down by 18%. I feel Microsoft knew in the first place that Yahoo will decline their bid. After fending off months of threats by Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc's directors still will have to fight for their jobs as the company's own irate shareholders plot a mutiny. I feel it is a very clever strategy from Microsoft to de-stabilize Yahoo. Their motive must have been to severely weaken Yahoo (as a competitor) or to acquire it. Either one is good for Microsoft - the latter, a better option. Now, with these diversions, Yahoo will either retrace back to Microsoft or will take a long long time to recover.

Rare Plane Images

P.S: I am not 100% certain if these aircraft exist or have existed. They might be prototypes or plain photoshop skills.

Idioms in Code (Google Blogoscoped)

It's been a while that I came across such innovative 'verbal' programming. A great compilation...

// idiom 1
cop[0].goodInPercent = 100;
cop[1].goodInPercent = 0;

// idiom 2
isCrowd = personCounter >= 3;

// idiom 3
injury += insult;

// idiom 4
1: board.draw();
goto 1;

// idiom 5
if (bird[1].feather == bird[2].feather) {
 bird[1].flock(bird[2]);
}

// idiom 6
a = getThickness('blood');
b = getThickness('water');
assert(a > b);

// idiom 7
a_spade_a_spade();

// idiom 8
die(1000);
function die(max) {
 for (i = 1; i <= max; i++) {        cut();    } }  // idiom 9 prey = 'worm'; time = getCurrentTime(); if (time >= 4 && time <= 8) {    bird.catch(prey); }  // idiom 10 while ( rome.fire() ) {    doFiddle(); }  // idiom 11 function getValue(garbage) {    return garbage; }  // idiom 12 take(salt * .01);  // idiom 13 var here = false; var there = false;  // idiom 14 if (i == 2) {    tango(); }  // idiom 15 days = 365; for (day = 1; day <= days; day++) {    if ( random(0,100) <= 50 ) apple++; } if (apple <= days) doctor();  // idiom 16 if ( !dogs.sleep() ) {    disturb(dogs); }  // idiom 17 function tunnel() {    var dark;    for (i = 0; i < dark =" true;" dark =" !dark;" a =" 0;" b =" 1;">= 1;
}

// idiom 23
if (cooks >= 3) {
 broth = null;
}

// idiom 24
if (a != 'cake') a.eat();

// idiom 25
doesStand = you == me;

// idiom 26
var location = getLocation();
if (location == 'rome') {
 do( location.getCitizen() );
}

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Idioms in Code (Take a Guess)

ISB in Top 20 (!)

Though I am not a firm believer in MBA rankings, I definitely welcome the Financial Times MBA rankings to place ISB (Indian School of Business) 20th best B-school in the world. ISB ought to receive recognition for its innovation, boldness and strategy. I reserve my judgment if it is really worth to be in the Top 20 and at the outset, it appears to be a bit premature. But, as is true with other rankings, there is no smoke without fire and FT has numbers to give this rank to ISB - which is great.

In recent times, the credibility of MBA rankings has surely taken a beating. Major reason is the mushrooming of sources that issue the rankings. It is surprising to see London Business School in #2, ahead the likes of Harvard and Stanford. But, FT is based in London and so may be they had other assessments too (?). Wharton leads the race for the umpteenth time.

Coming to India and ISB, I believe the diverse class profile, course delivery, cost of the program, duration and the return of investment worked in its favor. The average GMAT for the incoming class is high compared to most other schools in the FT list, which is largely driven by Indian applicants. It is an unprecedented and truly remarkable achievement for the six-year old school. One reason why the IIMs missed the bus, to me, is their over dependence on CAT for admission which eliminates any chance of diversity. I have high regards for CAT (it is the toughest entrance exam to crack) but I feel if IIMs reduce the weightage for CAT (and not compromise on the cut-offs and thus the quality of intake) and implement the currently non-existing requirements like admission essays, work experience in selecting the class, then they (A,B,C) would be on par with the best.

Anyways, it is great to have an Indian school in the list and it only increases ISB's responsibilities to maintain its standards and surge ahead.

India Rising!

An excellent article on India - A Pakistan editor's perspective.

"The two Ambani brothers can buy 100 percent of every company listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and would still be left with $30 billion to spare. The four richest Indians can buy up all goods and services produced over a year by 169 million Pakistanis and still be left with $60 billion to spare. The four richest Indians are now richer than the forty richest Chinese.
In November, Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex flirted with 20,000 points. As a consequence, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries became a $100 billion company (the entire KSE is capitalized at $65 billion). Mukesh owns 48 percent of Reliance.

In November, comes Neeta's birthday. Neeta turned forty-four three weeks ago. Look what she got from her husband as her birthday present: A sixty-million dollar jet with a custom fitted master bedroom, bathroom with mood lighting, a sky bar, entertainment cabins, satellite television, wireless communication and a separate cabin with game consoles. Neeta is Mukesh Ambani's wife, and Mukesh is not India 's richest but t he second richest.

Mukesh is now building his new home, Residence Antillia (after a mythical, phantom island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean ). At a cost of $1 billion this would be the most expensive home on the face of the planet. At 173 meters tall Mukesh's new family residence, for a family of six, will be the equivalent of a 60-storeyed building. The first six floors are reserved for parking. The seventh floor is for car servicing and maintenance. The eighth floor houses a mini-theatre. Then there's a health club, a gym and a swimming pool. Two floors are reserved for Ambani family's guests. Four floors above the guest floors are family floors all with a superb view of the Arabian Sea . On top of everything are three helipads. A staff of 600 is expected to care for the family and their family home.

In 2004, India became the 3rd most attractive foreign direct investment destination. Pakistan wasn't even in the top 25 countries. In 2004, the United Nations, the representative body of 192 sovereign member states, had requested the Election Commission of India to assist the UN in the holding elections in Al Jumhuriyah al Iraqiyah and Dowlat-e Eslami-ye Afghanestan. Why the Election Commission of India and not the Election Commission of Pakistan? After all, Islamabad is closer to Kabul than is Delhi.

Imagine, 12 percent of all American scientists are of Indian origin; 38 percent of doctors in America are Indian; 36 percent of NASA scientists are Indians; 34 percent of Microsoft employees are Indians; and 28 percent of IBM employees are Indians.

For the record: Sabeer Bhatia created and founded Hotmail. Sun Microsystems was founded by Vinod Khosla. The Intel Pentium processor, that runs 90 percent of all computers, was fathered by Vinod Dham. Rajiv Gupta co-invented Hewlett Packard's E-speak project. Four out of ten Silicon Valley start-ups are run by Indians. Bollywood produces 800 movies per year and s ix Indian ladies have won Miss Universe/Miss World titles over the past 10 years.
For the record: Azim Premji, the richest Muslim entrepreneur on the face of the planet, was born in Bombay and now lives in Bangalore.India now has more than three dozen billionaires; Pakistan has none (not a single dollar billionaire).

The other amazing aspect is the rapid pace at which India is creating wealth. In 2002, Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh and Anil Ambani's father, left his two sons a fortune worth $2.8 billion. In 2007, their combined wealth stood at $94 billion. On 29 October 2007, as a result of the stock market rally and the appreciation of the Indian rupee, Mukesh became the richest person in the world, with net worth climbing to US$63.2 billion (Bill Gates, the richest American, stands at around $56 billion).

Indians and Pakistanis have the same Y-chromosome haplogroup. We have the same genetic sequence and the same genetic marker (namely: M124). We have the same DNA molecule, the same DNA sequence. Our culture, our traditions and our cuisine are all the same. We watch the same movies and sing the same songs. What is it that Indians have and we don't?

INDIANS ELECT THEIR LEADERS and here we are .......who keep cursing Indian democracy and deploring the situation!!!!!!!!! "