Microsoft made an offer of $44.6bn for Yahoo! recently which Yahoo! rejected saying it “substantially undervalues†the company (personally I think it waaaaay overvalued Yahoo! and Microsoft caught a lucky break that the offer was spurned).
The New York Times is reporting today though that Microsoft are determined to follow through on this.
However, both the New York Times and News.com have published a story today that Yahoo! have offered golden parachute to all its remaining employees (it terminated around 1,000 of its 14,000 employees in the last week).
According to the News.com report, the package:
will kick into effect should that employee lose his job within two years after a new owner takes over, should she get terminated without cause, or if the employee decides it’s time to leave for “good reason.”
…The golden parachute also includes health and dental coverage for the length of employees’ severance awards, as well as reimbursement of outplacement services up to two years, or a maximum of $15,000, depending on job title
In any significant merger there are necessarily layoffs (particularly of people with similar job functions) - this seems like a cynical ploy on Yahoo!s part to up the price indirectly for Microsoft while grabbing some goodwill headlines at the same time.
I bought a Microsoft Wireless Laser Keyboard 6000 V2.0 a few weeks back because I needed an ergonomic keyboard (was suffering from an RSI) and went wireless to avoid cable clutter.
However, I have had lots of issues with the reception on the wireless devices. They report poor signal quality when 2-3 centimeters apart!
How hard can it be to get a keyboard and mouse working wirelessly? Apple have been doing this properly for ages. Of course Apple use Bluetooth instead of some bloody proprietary wired dongle which doesn’t work, takes up a USB port and adds a large cable to your desktop!
If only Apple did an ergonomic keyboard…
I was bemused then to note today that Microsoft are bringing out the Wireless Laser Keyboard 7000. It has a glass border around the keyboard to maintain the Vista Aero branding.
I only hope they remember to get the wireless part functioning this time!
I installed Ubuntu (a Linux distro) on my Vaio a few months back and loved it. It was fast, it was stable and I felt I was achieving a certain amount of geeky street cred for using it!
Then, more recently there was a new version of Ubuntu released - 7.10. I upgraded to 7.10 and found the experience even better. I booted into the Vista partition on the Vaio less and less.
However, the other day when I booted into Ubuntu my graphics settings were messed up. I couldn’t get the screen to display at full resolution. I eventually decided to re-install Ubuntu.
However, I was unaware that the installer for 7.10 doesn’t seem to recognise Windows partitions the way the previous installer did and sure enough when I re-booted the Vaio after the install my Windows partition was gone 
It is not too bad, the only thing I have lost afair is the time it will take to re-install Vista and all the apps I had on the Windows partition. Still, this has put a severe dent in my confidence in Ubuntu.
After Steve Clayton demoed it to me last week, I decided to try playing around with Microsoft’s Popfly. Popfly is a tool for creating Mashups in Silverlight, with a drag and drop interface.
It comes with a tutorial (on right) and the interface is easy to get used to. In fact it is even easier to use than Yahoo Pipes.
I built the app below in a few clicks. It displays the status of my Facebook contacts.
This app was created in Firefox on my MacBook Pro.
One glitch I did note was that you can’t write into the Search box (when using Firefox on a Mac).
I’m back in Cork after giving one of the keynote addresses at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin on Wednesday and speaking on a blogging panel at Microsoft’s TechEd in Barcelona on Thursday.
I didn’t create any formal presentation for the blogging panel in Barcelona but for anyone who might be interested, I uploaded my Web 2.0 Expo Keynote presentation to SlideShare:
The New York Times is reporting this morning that Microsoft has bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240m, this values the company at $15bn.
This values Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 23 year old founder at $3bn and Accel Partners, the venture capital firm that invested $12.7 million in May 2005 now owns 11 percent of Facebook stock worth a cool $1.65 billion.
The deal must be a huge relief for Microsoft after the stories circulating yesterday that Google were about to beat them to the post (pun intended!) in buying a piece of Facebook.
This is a dream deal for Facebook as they yield only 1.6% of the company and still manage to scoop $240m.
What is in it for Microsoft? Well, on the one hand, as the New York Times reports:
As part of the deal, Microsoft will sell the banner ads appearing on Facebook outside of the United States, splitting the revenue with it. Last year, Microsoft struck a deal with Facebook to run banner ads on the site in the United States through 2011.
but, probably equally importantly, Microsoft has stymied Google’s plans to own advertising rights on Facebook.
Is Facebook really worth $15bn? Who knows. A company is worth as much as a buyer is willing to pay for it. Today, for whatever reason it is worth $15bn to Microsoft. Who knows what it will be worth next week.
Latest Comments
RSSwilliam b, M, Rey Blanco, Harrry, New environmental blog | Writing for life, James, Philip, M Buckley, Calvin Jones, Tom Raftery [...]
jelpot, Clayton, bhupendra, Ninj, Aaron, Lance, John, Don, Don, jon [...]
Laptop Backpacks, Keith Nelson, Laura "Pistachio" Fitton, ShinyRed » Blog Archive » Links for 14.12.07, Francesco, Tom Raftery, Bernie Goldbach, Pete Connolly, Borro
Randy, Snowalker, butter, G4HQ Forum Admin, Authentic Jeans, Tom Raftery, Paul Browne - Technology in plain English, pb., The Code Cave, adam [...]
Philistine, Johnny, Mike, Graham Gosing, fed up, patrick, James, Paul M. Watson, Ronan, minionster [...]
Joe F. Martinez, Mike, Mike, Kuba, Nathan, McGyvR, Wii News, Oni, machaan, MajorHart [...]