Microsoft and Yahoo - Who Wins

More news today about Yahoo holding out for more cash from MS
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120273921745558817.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/technology/11cnd-yahoo.html?ref=technology

So who would win and who would loose if (when...I think) this deal goes through?

You (me, us, the consumer): WINNER. The Yahoo brand combined with Microsoft big iron and adult management will give some competition to Google. This buyout would push Yahoo branded cloud services - particularly storage - but also online apps etc. Probably more content in search. Maybe some good mobile devices in the future. This would spur Google - we would win.

Goolge: LOOSER. For reasons mentioned above. MS money, management, and hardware combined with Yahoo branding and users (from Yahoo mail, Yahoo personals, etc. etc.) would push Google to innovate in its core competencies and grow it's businesses.

Yahoo: WINNER. Mostly because Yahoo is a decent service, a great brand, and no real hopes of making the real money (or at least the money MS is throwing at it). Yahoo is much more valuable as a brand then a company - or as a brand attached to company that has real way to make real money. If Yahoo is so stupid that they screw this up (and I think they are just trying to extract a better price...and will be successful)...then Yahoo will whither. A 40 billion offer today will quickly seem very high if Yahoo is finds itself going it alone - as again the model for making money with Yahoo is not good in the free economy.

Microsoft: WINNER AND LOOSER. Is this equivocating? Sort of. Yahoo is not worth $40 billion...but may be worth $40 billion (or $48 billion or whatever) to a company playing with monopoly money, who can't brand, and is in real danger of becoming irrelevant in the software as a service era. Overpriced yes. But overpriced with your money (and mine..and everyone else who has a Windows machine and uses Office). If Yahoo keeps being stubborn, then I'd hold to around my price (maybe make an honest 10 percent offer) - and wait to next year or the year after as Yahoo shares tank.

Universities: No idea. Not sure it matters to us. I sort of wish that Microsoft would focus in a real way on the higher ed. vertical. I wish as I posted yesterday that MS would focus on hardware...building a cheap $200 Win/Vista laptop. I wish MS would use it's ransom money and make content deals so we could have good search and real deep video on mobile devices (Zune could be good if MS made long term bets with rich content deals in music and video etc..).