While Office 2008 for Mac is a wonderful upgrade from the previous version, it leaves much to be desired when compared to its Windows counterpart. Particularly the lack of the ribbon interface makes it feel like it’s a step behind. But don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of bright points.
The first big plus is the Mircrosoft Project Gallery. While aspects of this program were part of the previous Office for Mac, the new version offers a more complete user experience. The first thing you will notice is that you can launch any blank or recently used document from the Project Gallery. Additionally, you can create projects by linking documents. For example is you had could combine a PowerPoint presentation with an Excel spreadsheet. Without a doubt, many users have come up with their own solutions to these tasks, but I like this program as an alternative.
The bottom line is that since most Mac users don’t have the option, Office 2008 is going to be an obligatory but enjoyable upgrade. Those users who, through Bootcamp or other virtualization software are able to run XP or Vista, will probably be better served by Office 2007.
A screen cap after of Word after the jump.
February 1st, 2008
Posted by
stefan |
Apple, Office, Applications, General |
one comment
The Xbox Live Video Marketplace has added Lost, the hit ABC TV series about a group of plane crash survivors stranded on an island. Starting now, you can download any episode from season 1, 2, and 3, either in standard definition for 160 Microsoft Points ($2) or high definition for 240 MSPoints ($3). Saladhats did the math, and a season of the high def episodes is actually cheaper on Xbox Live than on Bluray, by about $24.
Not only can you download the old episodes, but you can pick up the new episodes, including last night’s season four premiere, as soon as they air on TV, and for the same price. If you missed last night’s episode (like I did), three bucks to see it in HD isn’t bad. In fact, I’m going to watch it right now. No spoilers in the comments for at least two hours!
Also being added to Xbox Live are other ABC shows, Disney Channel shows, and movies from a number of studios.
Other TV shows coming to Marketplace this week are Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy. Essentially the big guns from ABC, and new episodes will be available within 24 hours of airing on TV. The Disney deal also extends to shows like Hannah Montana and High School Musical. Tell yourself it’s for your kid, but I can just tell you want to rock out to some teenage singing and dancing.
Lastly we’ll be seeing new content from the just signed on movie studios Lionsgate, Warner Bros, Paramount, New Line and MGM. The documentary King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters is set to hit Marketplace later this month. Other titles you can look forward to are The Usual Suspects, 3:10 To Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and others.
February 1st, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Xbox Live, Xbox 360, Xbox |
no comments
I missed Microsoft’s earnings release last week (I was on a flight back from my vacation), so here’s a look back. Microsoft’s revenue for its second quarter were up 30% to $16.37 billion, and profit was up 92% to $6.48 billion. Based on the last six months, Microsoft now brings in $60 billion a year and profits to the tune of about $25 billion a year, enough to buy a Yahoo every once in a while.
By division:
Client (operating systems for PCs): Revenue - $4.335 billion, up from $2.586 thanks to Windows Vista. Profit - $3.358, up from $1.838.
Server and Tools: Revenue - $3.278 from 2.843, profit - $1.172 from $981 million.
Online Services Business (Windows Live and MSN): Revenue - $863 from $625 million, losing $245 million, as opposed to $118 million a year earlier.
Entertainment and Devices Division (Xbox, Zune and others): Revenue - $3.060 billion, up from $2.969 billion and representing a profit of $357 million, as opposed to a loss of $302 million a year earlier. The profit, despite a gain in revenue of only $91 million, implies the division is profiting by spending less, not just because of Halo 3, and is thus becoming a healthy division with a real future.
Joe Wilcox has a detailed look at the earnings.
Microsoft’s earnings were considered a success by Wall Street, coming during the same quarter that saw dissapointing earnings by Apple, Google, Yahoo and Intel.
Other news: Microsoft offered $1.2 billion to buy Norwegian search firm Fast Search & Transfer, a 42% premium on the stock.
Also, Microsoft hired a new Chief Information Officer, picking up Tony Scott, former CIO of Disney. Ironically, he replaces outgoing CIO Stuart Scott, which means the company will save money by only having to change part of the letterhead. Chuckles.
February 1st, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Corporate |
one comment
I think we all knew it would come to this one day. Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, has made an offer to buy Yahoo, formerly the largest trafficked company on the internet. Microsoft’s offer is to buy the company outright, either in cash or stock, for $44.6 billion, offering $31 per share of Yahoo, a 62% permium over the share price when the offer was made.
Yahoo’s misfortunes are well known. The company, with a rich portfolio of internet properties, bet against web search and outsourced its search engine, licensing technology from a little company called Google. Eventually, web search became the driving force in how users navigate the internet, and users decided to go straight to Google, instead of accessing it through Yahoo.
Yahoo had a chance to buy Google, first for a billion dollars, later for a few billion, but the offer was always slightly less than what the search company thought it was worth. Eventually, it was too late, and Yahoo realized it needed to build its own search engine. Yahoo’s search engine was a long, costly effort, including a $2 billion acquisition of Inktomi, and by the time it hit the market, users had left for Google-y pastures. Yahoo’s effort, while good enough, was too slow and too late.
A little company called Overture invented a means for combining search and advertising, with auction-based keyword targeted text ads. Yahoo bought Overture, then proceeded to sue Google, whice made sense: Google had completely ripped off Overture’s concept, and was liable for every dollar it earned using that form of advertising.
Rather than aggressively fight the small search company, which was clearly infringing on Yahoo-owned patents with every dollar it earned, Yahoo settled, agreeing to take 2.7 million shares of Google, just over 1% of the company (at the time). Yahoo sold those shares as soon as Google went public, for $82.62 a share, or $223 million.
In November, Yahoo could have sold those shares for $2.017 billion. However, the bad investment is not the real story. Yesterday, Google announced revenues of $4.8 billion for the quarter, or $16.6 billion for the last 12 months. All but less than 1% of those revenue are earned on the back of a patent Yahoo still owns to this day, but Yahoo gave up the rights to sue for those $16 billion for just $223 million. When the opportunity was there, Yahoo was not aggressive and did not go for the kill.
Instead, Yahoo began developing an alternative ad technology, combining Overture with its own systems, in order to provide greater value to the advertiser. Yahoo had more traffic than Google, though at this point, less search traffic, and if its new project, code-named Panama, could bring in more money for that traffic and more happy advertisers, Yahoo would be strong and healthy for the next round, in which it would hopefully do better.
That plan failed. Project Panama was plagued by delays, and by the time it finally made it to market, the damage had already been done and Google was a $100 billion company. Panama’s benefits took too long to materialize and after years of waiting for them and letting Google take over the market, there wasn’t enough valuable search traffic or enough of an advertiser community for Yahoo to save itself. Yahoo’s effort, while good, was too slow and too late.
Last year, Yahoo fired Terry Semel, the CEO who made most of these bad decisions. Yahoo installed Jerry Yang, founder of the company, as the new CEO, and began grooming Sue Decker to eventually run the company. Yahoo has now had seven months to turn the company around, but it has made no aggressive moves, built no investor confidence. Now, Yang can oversee the sale of the company he created.
Yahoo may not choose to accept the offer, but it is a good one. The company’s shares were trading at $19.18 last night, a market cap of $25.6 billion. Microsoft’s offer represent a huge premium over the stock value of the company, over $18 billion higher, and is aggressive enough that, if Yahoo’s board says no, could be a very successful hostile takeover. Yahoo may have no choice.
What about antitrust regulators? Won’t they be concerned? After all, Microsoft’s antitrust agreement with the U.S. government was just extended. No, or at least not likely, because Microsoft’s antitrust agreemeng covers operating systems, not internet properties. However, there could be concern in some areas that Microsoft is amassing too much market share.
Microsoft and Yahoo’s email properties are strong, numbers one and two in the market. Their instant messenger products are also among the most used. An argument could be made that the two should not be allowed to combine, but it is likely a failing argument, due to the strength of competitors, like Gmail and AOL Instant Messenger.
What would a combined company have?
- About 30% of the search engine marketplace. Microsoft has wanted a position to challenge Google for a long time, and this would give them a big enough search engine to hopefully make some noise. However, Microsoft would have to reverse Yahoo’s decline in order to take advantage of that market share.
- Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail. Yahoo claims 255 million email account, Microsoft 280 million. Reports put Gmail at around 51 million accounts. If properly leveraged, Microsoft’s 500 million-plus accounts could represent an insurmountable number one.
- Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. As of 2006, Microsoft had 61% market share worldwide, good for #1, and Yahoo had between 27% and 37%. Yahoo’s number were the same as AOL Instant Messengers (there is more than 100% because users often use more than one client). Google Talk is a non-factor practically abandoned project, and Microsoft one-two punch could bury this market for good.
- Advertising revenue. Microsoft pulled in $1.5 billion from its online services division in 2007, most of it in ad dollars, losing $510 million. Yahoo made $7 billion in 2007, turned a profit of $700 million, on $6.088 billion in advertising revenue. It isn’t quite Google’s $16 billion, but Yahoo is a profitable online advertising company, and gives Microsoft a strong, larger base to grow from. It will take seven year for Yahoo to make enough revenue to cover the acquisition cost.
Is the price too high? Perhaps, given that the market thought Yahoo was only worth $25 billion, not $44 billion. However, the stock has shot up to $29.21 in pre-market trading, just shy of the acquisition price, which means investors are confident Microsoft will be able to do it. Microsoft has only $7 billion in cash on hand, which makes you wonder where it would get the money to buy Yahoo. Either they are hoping Yahoo takes stock, not cash, or Microsoft plans on offering more stock to pay for it.
However, last year Microsoft acquired $22 billion in investments and sold $26 billion in investments, so in theory the money does exist, or could be found relatively easily.
But is Yahoo worth the money? According to an off-the-cuff analysis by Valleywag last month, Yahoo’s investments around the world are worth more than the company! Besides getting Yahoo, and the ability to compete with Google, Microsoft would get one-third of Yahoo Japan, or about $9 billion, 10% of Alibaba, or $1.7 billion, 40% of Alibaba Group, or $8-16 billion, among many other investments. Microsoft could sell off many of these units and recoup possibly $20 billion of the acquisition cost within a year or two, making Yahoo a bargain.
In Microsoft’s letter to Yahoo’s board of directors, Steve Ballmer says that one year ago, Yahoo’s board rejected Microsoft’s offer to buy the company, saying Yahoo had much potential upside due to project Panama. Ballmer says:
A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.
Ballmer argues that scale is very important factor in the online economy, and there is only one competitor who is at scale right now. The argument is that Microsoft and Yahoo cannot compete if they are not also at scale. He also argues that there is one player in this market who is increasingly dominating the industry and consolidating its power through acquisitions, and Microsoft and Yahoo can together present a viable alternative.
If Microsoft sells off useless Yahoo components, combines Yahoo and Windows Live products, takes advantage of the dual-headed research and innovation capabilities of both companies, and better monetizes the existing Yahoo than Yahoo ever did, then this acquisition could be the market breaker it needs.
Follow continuing coverage of the acquisition on this page.
February 1st, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Yahoo Acquisition, General |
13 comments
