AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of text churned out since Microsoft’s announcement of a bid for Yahoo. Here are a few of those I found useful:

Microsoft/Yahoo: Facebook is the Real Reason… Seeking Alpha

Balmer is dancing, Yang is sobbing. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the distant sound of Taps playing as the vultures are circling what is left of a once gorgeous technology story. After a pathetic quarter and an even more disappointing year, Yahoo! is now bleeding a slow death. The takeover announcement has opened a hole in the fabric of the universe today. It may seem like an alternative reality that Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo! (YHOO) will merge, but that was precisely what was announced. For $44 billion (66% premium), Microsoft will step up their web presence and create the most significant competition to Google (GOOG) that we have seen since Google’s inception…… keep reading….

Yahoo Deal Is Big, but Is It the Next Big Thing? John Markoff on p. 1 of the NY Times

In moving to buy Yahoo, Microsoft may be firing the final shot of yesterday’s war.
That one was over Internet search advertising, a booming category in which both Microsoft and Yahoo were humble and distant also-rans behind Google.

Microsoft may see Yahoo as its last best chance to catch up. But for all its size and ambition, the bid has not been greeted with enthusiasm. That may be because Silicon Valley favors bottom-up innovation instead of growth by acquisition. The region’s investment money and brain power are tuned to start-ups that can anticipate the next big thing rather than chase the last one.

And what will touch off the next battle? Maybe it will be a low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, that Intel plans to announce Monday. It is designed for a new wave of hand-held wireless devices that Silicon Valley hopes will touch off the next wave of software innovation.….keep reading

Yahoo Sale Could Be Bad for Minnows — NY Times business section

FOR decades, Silicon Valley has been the land of eternal optimism and high anxiety, traits that pitch into overdrive anytime a seismic business event washes across the corporate and entrepreneurial landscape here — like, for example, Microsoft’s blockbuster $45 billion bid for Yahoo on Friday.

The legions of high-tech entrepreneurs who have set up camp here with clever ideas, a willingness to scramble for financing and the energy to weather round-the-clock days have typically tethered their dreams to a singular outcome: getting fabulously rich by selling to one of the three Internet giants, Microsoft, Google or Yahoo.….read on….