Steve Ballmer and His Moment of Epiphany

While watching Charlie Rose last night, at least one third of the show was dedicated to trying to figure out, with the help of a couple of industry insiders, from Tech Crunch, and Wired, and a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, exactly what the head honcho at Microsoft was thinking when coming up with the current Yahoo deal.

No doubt Microsoft has gotten a better deal than if Yahoo had simply sold out at the first offer from Mr. Ballmer; still you have to wonder exactly made him pursue this to such great lengths. ( Had that first offer been accepted, I firmly believe that Mr. Gates would have stepped in, and forcibly retired the monkeyboy. Over the course of this courtship, enough people have been so conditioned through repetition as to not question the need for the men with the little white suits, with long arms. )

Together with a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Nick Wingfield, and one of the people from Tech Crunch,  the possible motivations, and the outlook for this move that, at once, shocked and yet didn’t, was dissected.  Steven Levy, from Wired, is not that enthused about the deal, citing the fact that from now on, Yahoo is going to be a bunch of glorified salesmen. As this is written by a salesman, I can say that no matter how highly valued a salesman is, they are always considered expendable. No one was shocked about the pursuit, that has been clear for sometime – most would say that this pursuit was a subtle as a bull moose in heat. The shocking part is how much Microsoft gives up at first, and why the head Yahoo did not see the urgency of Ballmer’s need, grabbing for even more gusto, in the form of yet more dollars. Remember the first offer to her predecessor, Mr. Yang, was roughly 44 billion dollars.

Wingfield gave the explanation that Ballmer had given yesterday, but once explained, seemed more than a bit anxious about the idea that Ballmer continues to repeat, almost as if it was coming from a chip implant.

The Tech Crunch writer, Eric Schoenfeld,  was questioning the whys of Bartz’ motivations, and injected the idea that waiting for the upcoming freedom of AOL, and then merging with that company would have been the smart move. I found it very interesting that his ideas diverged greatly from the story found on Tech Crunch covering the deal. That account put a much different shine on the proceedings, making it seem as though Mr. Ballmer is a modern day William Seward.

The final assessment was that Mr. Ballmer realizes how much money this is costing, and the scandalous amounts of money that Microsoft will be losing in the short term, but since search is really big business, they will make it up in volume. ( I certainly hope that was a whiskey-tango-foxtrot moment for you too, dear reader, because it appears it hasn’t hit Mr. Ballmer, and he was running the play. )

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Today, BOTH of these are so appropriate…

Quote of the day:

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. - H. H. Williams

and:

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. - John Wanamaker