Bob Caswell

Full Disclosure: I work for Microsoft and enjoy my job. And this blog post is my opinion, not Microsoft’s.

This past week ended up being one of the most intense, yet rewarding, weeks of my career. For the past three weeks, I put my day job mostly on hold and took on the challenge of leading a team to put together a free virtual training event for Windows Phone 7 developers. We had developers in the thousands participating in four 3-hour sessions that covered the ins and outs of developing applications and games for Windows Phone 7.

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Microsoft’s new search engine (or “decision engine” as the Bing team calls it via their Twitter profile) is now live at Bing.com. Early adopters already had a chance to preview/review Bing last week. So this launch has left bloggers coming up with more creative ways of covering the release.

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Check out the email (below) I got from the Hotmail team. Much has changed in the last 10 years, but somehow I’ve managed to hang on to my original Hotmail email address. (I opened my account the end of 1998.)

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Leaving aside whether or not the potential Microsoft takeover of Yahoo is a good idea (strategically), I’m surprised the whole idea hasn’t caused more analysis on how Wall Street works (or doesn’t). The fact is, Microsoft’s first offer back in January was a 62% premium on the market valuation of Yahoo. It only went up from there, but Yahoo never took the offer.

Juxtapose that fact with another fact that according to Wall Street / business schools / the financial system, corporations are expected to maximize shareholder value, and we have a problem with the current example. Even if Yahoo is able to create enough value at some point in the future to meet the value offered by Microsoft in January, it would not be enough. This is because of the “time value of money” concept that Wall Street loves. Without diving into detailed examples, let’s just say that one dollar today is worth more than one dollar at some point in the future.

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The title of this post was originally going to be “Delicious: A Review from a Late Adopter.” But that was four months ago and only a few days after I started using social bookmarking site Delicious. At the time, I found it useful even if lacking in a few areas.

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TechConsumer has had its fair share of Digg coverage lately. But for those of us who remember what Digg was back in the glory days, we can’t help but draw attention to its flaws in the here and now.

First, we had our April 1st interview with Digg’s founders discussing priorities and progress and how Digg is just a game. Second, we discussed the Digg paradox and how getting rid of the editor/gatekeeper just creates new gatekeepers.

But today’s topic, for me at least, feels like the most interesting twist on the story of where Digg started as compared to what Digg has become:

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) just broke the story that Yahoo’s board plans to reject Microsoft $44.6 billion offer, citing our favorite source: “a person familiar with the situation.” Apparently, $31 per share “massively undervalues” Yahoo, according to the same source. The logic is that the offer doesn’t take into account risks Yahoo would go through (that is, if regulators overturned the deal) by entering into an agreement with Microsoft.

Accordingly, Yahoo’s board will send a letter to Microsoft on Monday explaining the situation. This article comes just hours after another WSJ article quotes several investment bankers who basically say that “investors have lost confidence in Yahoo management’s ability to reverse the company’s fortunes on its own.” Nevertheless, here’s Yahoo’s reasoning for rejecting the offer:

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Given the rumor that today is the day for Yahoo to speak on the pending Microsoft take over, I thought I’d revisit the question I originally asked a year ago. Of the big three, what services do you use from each?

But first, I feel compelled to point out that at this same time last year, Google was being cited as Yahoo’s major obstacle. Now, of course, a partnership with Google is Yahoo’s theoretical last chance at avoiding Microsoft as its new owner.

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