Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:34:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080211/095817224.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080211/095817224.shtml Yahoo these days. Back in December, we noted that Danger, makers of the Sidekick mobile phone device, was planning to IPO, despite not having a track record worth an IPO. As we noted at the time, it seemed like the company was going to IPO because that was its only option. The truth is probably that the company was desperately looking for a buyout, and now Microsoft has come through. It will be worth watching to see what Microsoft does with Danger, as Danger does not use Microsoft's operating system, and its model is not based on licensing software, but in taking a toll from service fees. It would take quite a bit of effort to pull out Danger's OS, which was very carefully designed for the device itself, and replace it with Windows Mobile (and it also might lead Sidekick fans to flee to other devices). All in all, it's an odd sort of acquisition for Microsoft. One would hope that the company actually has more specific plans on what to do with Danger, because the obvious fit isn't apparent. From Danger's perspective, though, an acquisition by anyone at this point has to be viewed as a better option than trying to IPO, which almost definitely would have been a disaster.

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]]> danger,-danger,-bill-gates http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080211/095817224 Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:58:42 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080211/015628216.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080211/015628216.shtml reject Microsoft's takeover bid, which wasn't too surprising, given what the company had been hinting at all week. There was plenty of talk about looking for other suitors, but one by one, the few obvious candidates all backed away. Then, late Sunday a new rumor arose: Yahoo! might try to keep Microsoft away by merging with AOL. That seems sort of like trying to keep a wild animal from eating you by covering yourself with feces. It might make awful sense for about a second, but it's just a bad, bad idea. First, it's unlikely to work -- and, second, it's just pathetic. As much as it seemed like Microsoft merging its web operations with Yahoo would be two also-rans pretending a merger would somehow make them into a web operation people cared about, merging with AOL would be even worse. Of course, the folks over at Google must be laughing hysterically at the possibility. Not only would an AOL/Yahoo merger appear to be less of a competitive worry than a Yahoo/Microsoft merger, Google might actually make out quite well in the deal, since it owns a piece of AOL. So, in the unlikely chance that Yahoo merges with AOL and fends off Microsoft, Google would cash out of AOL, watch Yahoo struggle to merge with AOL and see Microsoft left without a big internet partner. That has to be Google's dream scenario.

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]]> seriously? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080211/015628216