How Many Fronts?

Interesting how this

became this.  Hoo boy, I'll bet the folks at Yahoo loved that memo.

I've heard it said that no army should try to fight a war on three fronts.  How many fronts does Microsoft think it can handle?  Right now it's under attack from Google and clearly losing on that front.  There's a war starting with VMware and on that front Microsoft currently lacks sufficient arms.  Microsoft is spread across internet, OS, personal apps, databases, virtualization, business apps, and home gaming.

Can they really handle a Yahoo acquisition and turn it into something positive vs. Google?  Could they handle a Citrix/Xen acquisition to battle VMware as well, or if not invest enough development and focus to battle VMware with Hyper-V?

While Microsoft earnings clearly make them a force and they have enough money to try and compete in diverse markets, I have to wonder whether they ought to retrench and pick a specific set of battles while giving others up.  Money and clout is one thing, but personnel to achieve excellence and a willingness to break from the past is another.  Whether Microsoft likes it or not, Google is crushing them in attracting the best talent for internet development and buying Yahoo probably won't help since all the remaining top talent will leave.  See that link above for a clue -- right now Microsoft has cultural and historical problems that are working against it in attracting top talent for the key markets of the internet and virtualization, both of which (like it or not) are built on open source and lots of non-Microsoft technology.  Are you going to make everyone at Yahoo use Silverlight and SQL Server?

If Microsoft thinks it's going to buy Yahoo and then have Microsoft technology and culture spread through Yahoo, they are in big trouble -- they'll bleed people and they'll ruin the value of Yahoo.  If instead they do the reverse and actually let Yahoo technology and culture penetrate Microsoft, then maybe they have a chance to make it work.  Of course it's hard to imagine that since it would be so unlike Microsoft of the past, but the one hope I guess is that Ray and Jack Ozzie understand. 

Still, Microsoft better be careful that it doesn't bite off more than it can chew, the result of which would be a dilution of their brand and of their market share in every major category.

Comments

[caz]

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