Obviously the hottest story on the wire this morning is Microsoft’s $44.6B bid for Yahoo! (That wasn’t meant to be exclamatory, but writing “Yahoo!.” just looked odd.) Given that the struggling Internet giant just announced on Tuesday that it would be cutting a thousand jobs, reported internal concerns that Jerry Yang can’t rally the troops and the departure of Terry S. Semel all point towards a great big “ACQUIRE ME” sign Scotch-taped to the company’s forehead, and the fact that Microsoft’s bid places a 62% premium over yesterday’s closing stock price ($31 a share bid versus $19.18 a share on the market) suggests that this might well go through.
If it does happen, the resulting megacorp may suddenly give Google new cause for alarm, which might (but probably won’t) lead to a merger between Google and Apple, followed rapidly by an entire raft of antitrust suits, and possibly both companies’ lobbying the Fed for recategorization of Internet and computing services as utilities.
Mr. Bastin, would you like to use your legal superpowers to explain why this won’t happen? 🙂
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
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