07.20.09

Guess Who Inside Yahoo! Supports a Microsoft Deal? Microsoft’s Correspondent, Icahn

Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Microsoft, Search, Virtualisation, Xen at 2:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Even the yellow press misses the historical record of Icahn’s role

According to news reports, Microsoft and Yahoo! are still talking.

The talks between the two have been continuing off and on since earlier this year, after Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s new chief executive, responded to Microsoft’s repeated overtures for discussions.

Reuters shows that one prominent advocate of a deal is one whom we suspected and considered to be a Microsoft "proxy fighter" that the press spoke about (the press openly spoke about “proxy fight” over Yahoo!).

Yahoo board member Icahn wants Microsoft deal

[...]

Icahn declined to comment on the state of any negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft. He had tried to broker a partnership between the two companies last year, when talks on Microsoft’s $47.5 billion takeover bid for Yahoo fell apart.

“I’ve been a strong advocate of getting a search deal done with Microsoft,” Icahn, who owns about 5 percent of Yahoo and is a director on its board, told Reuters on Friday.

He also put friends of his on the board, so his influence there may be greater than 5%. For a bit of history also see:

There is nothing final or concrete to indicates a Yahoo!-Microsoft deal materialising, which would show sheer hypocrisy because Microsoft blocked a similar Yahoo!-Google deal. This would prove cheaper than a full acquisition, that’s for sure. Speaking of which, there is one writer with the opinion that Microsoft should buy Citrix.

Why Microsoft Should Finally Buy Citrix

I’ve written a good bit here about the various ways Microsoft and Citrix overlap in the hypervisor space, ranging from topics like shared code base through competition for the desktop space.

[...]

To be clear, I am not being critical of Microsoft technologies or business practices (as any long-time readers of my blog will undoubtedly know). I am suggesting that when compared on a chart, Citrix is closer today to where the market and VMware are going for virtual platforms, and if the goal is to compete with VMware for both enterprise and cloud virtual platforms then Microsoft could benefit in leaps and bounds by acquiring Citrix for both Xen and their networking products. Microsoft would get virtual platform, application, and networking tools that they don’t have today.

Microsoft might not need Xen all that much. Microsoft has just released a new Linux patch to advance Hyper-V. While it is commendable that Microsoft is no longer entirely allergic to the GPL(v2, not v3), it ought to be strongly emphasised that this is the latest example (amongst others) where Microsoft submits an open source patch from which Microsoft Windows or another part of the proprietary Microsoft stack is to gain. Prior such examples were beneficial to SQL Server, for example. I would be more delighted if Microsoft decided to rescind its patent threats, which it uses to suppress adoption of the very same kernel it purports to be contributing to. The accompanying press release is sign that Microsoft also uses this as a publicity stunt — selling people the impression it needs for all sorts of reasons. We shall write about this later. █

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2 Comments

DiamondWakizashi said,

July 20, 2009 at 2:22 pm

Microsoft would quickly ruin Yahoo.

aeshna23 Reply:
July 20th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
I know I’m biased, but I would never use Yahoo again, if MS bought it out. It bothers me, because I don’t want a Google monopoly either.