Microsoft has long been kicked round the block in the Web company for going on 15 a long time. Now it really is possibly payback time.
While everybody else hunkers down and fights to survive, Microsoft will get to sit back and choose who to buy. When it decides, it might dig right into a $20 billion dollars pile that can nearly replenish by itself this 12 months with $15 billion of totally free cash movement. No one else, like Google, will gain this considerably of the relative advantage in the world-wide financial collapse.
(Google,
Office 2010 Activation, in addition, is now hamstrung by alert regulators--thanks,
Windows 7 Download, in portion, to Microsoft's lobbying--and is centered on cutting costs and narrowing its ambitions. These need to retain it distracted for the next couple of a long time.)
Who could Microsoft buy? Some obvious names,
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, and many smaller not-so-obvious ones.
But the first thing Microsoft needs to do if it truly is to succeed long-term within the Internet company is build a central consumer brand that it may hang everything else off of. (Alternatively, it may focus on the back end, via search and other technologies, but this likely won't be as profitable. The vast majority of Google's immense profit comes from searches on its own site,
Windows 7 Professional, not third-party sites, and the same will hold true for Microsoft).
The big consumer Internet brands other than Google include:
Yahoo AOL Facebook MSN, et al (Microsoft needs to consolidate ALL its Web brands into 1. This one's probably the most prominent).
Microsoft could probably purchase Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook today for $20 billion of dollars. It could then consolidate them under a single brand and build a strong alternative for advertisers vis a vis Google. (Vastly easier said than done, but possible.)
If Microsoft isn't willing to put all its weight behind a single brand, it will probably fail regardless of what it buys. This continues to be Microsoft's Achilles heel for your past fifteen years--an unwillingness to commit to 1 Web brand and strategy--and we're not optimistic that it will be able to get out of its own way this time either.
We still think the smart play here would be for Microsoft to spin its Internet operations OUT of Microsoft and INTO Yahoo and then build everything close to that brand as a separate public company. We think Steve Ballmer is congenitally predisposed against this approach, however, even though it would likely be a great move for Microsoft shareholders (who would own most of the new Yahoo AND the original Microsoft).
But, in any event,
Microsoft Office 2007 Professional, as the Valley goes into the fetal position, Microsoft's relative position is growing stronger. And we imagine this is not lost on the folks in Redmond.