EU slaps Microsoft

EU slaps US$1,3 billion penalty on Microsoft.

The European union fined Microsoft a record 899 million Euros on 27th Feb.2008,for charging too much for software information.In an antitrust ruling in 2004,the European commission has fined the same company Euros 497 million and ordered it to open some key softwares to rivals.
In my opinion EU has taken a very sound judgement which is very good for small and medium software enterprises and startups.These SME’s(small and medium sized enterprises) will get a chance to put their products forward thus putting a severe blow to monopolies which these big cash rich companies have enjoyed for a long time.Whenever some enterpreuner comes out with a new product the big player buy them off thus stoping a budding startup from becoming another Bill Gates.On back of these monopolies it is rumoured that many of these cash rich MNC;s have become so arrogant that they fail to see beyond greed and filling up personal bank accounts.EU has shown that it will always favour fairplay.The recent yahoo-Microsoft-Google tussle is a good example of these corporate coups.
Reference:Metro now-dated:28th feb 2008

Clash of the Online titans

Clash of the Titans

Even as the verdict has to be taken on whether a Microsoft-Yahoo deal woll redo the online space,the story gets murkier.Yahoo has been tagged at US$44 billion by Microsoft
Pundits.yahoo wants to take its time and is welcoming bids from rival to push up the price.
Rumour is that Yahoo’s financial advisors,golman sachs and Lehman Brothers are looking for potential bidders who can outbid Microsoft .Research firm Gartner thinks if they get together it shall be mutually beneficial for both.However only few very cash rich companies can afford to play this bidding game in today’s world.Microsoft and Yahoo are eaders in their own domain, and if they come together can give tough competition to Google who has a monopoly in search engine technology.
Google has hit back thru its official blog stating that if this deal goes thru than the future of internet is at stake.Talking of monopoly many users of Google have felt lately that Google has become arrogant .Many users had complaint about gmail malfunctioning and Google did not pay any heed and was not interested in user feedback-this was rumoured.

Google has 5% stake in AOL Time Warner and may coax them to bid for yahoo as it is very careful about anti trust scrutiny.However before all this drama,yahoo has been negotiating with Google but the negotiations fell thru because of differences over online revenue sharing.If they would have agreed,than Yahoo most probably would have outsourced its searches and webservices to google meanwhile itself focusing on its strength eg:mobile application,social networking and content sharing.
Many other companies like AT&T,Comcast,Verizon have been interested in yahoo too but so far not was able to outbid Microsoft.
There are two options left for Yahoo,either to sell its stake in “Yahoo music unlimited” and “auctions” to boost revenue or chalk out a mutually beneficial deal with Google.
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