Comments on: Ballmer Confirms Yahoo Brand Will Live On, MSN The Likely Casualty

By: fitnessanywhere.com

fitnessanywhere.com — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 18:43:10 +0000

Don’t forget that MSN is ubiquitous in China: almost everyone uses MSN messenger and hotmail, not so with Yahoo. I can’t see MSN being dropped. In fact, Live.com has always been a confusing brand, and they can’t even fix an affiliate network log in bug. For the short term (like 1 to 2 years), I think none will be dropped. In the long term, live.com is more likely to be dropped.

By: Me

Me — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:32:51 +0000

This is a pretty obvious decision, but what people are saying about Europe’s internet market being stronger than Asia’s is rediculous.
Just because there are some pretty good European startups means NOTHING. The number of internet users in Asia (let alone the number of people :)) is growing rapidly; much faster than in Europe.

By: msnhoo.com

msnhoo.com — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:48:34 +0000

of cause Msnhoo.com

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 22:00:16 +0000

My only question is, what happens to Open Source friendly aspects of Yahoo! ?

Yahoo! runs on FreeBSD and provides gratis Internet connectivy for FreeBSD.org

Nevertheless I’m glad to hear that it is Yahoo! that will live on. Both Yahoo! and MSN have good offereings, but Yahoo! offerings are superior.

As long as Yahoo! doesn’t lose what it already has I suppose I could live with all this.

I’m still not happy about it, but I do realize that it may end up being the only way Yahoo! will stay alive.

By: Billy

Billy — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:55:05 +0000

MSN is awful, awful, awful. The only way people end up using it is because it is the default homepage on the default browser on their newly-purchased computer. Good riddance to it.

By: rubu

rubu — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:39:58 +0000

Rename everything Live whatever, with Yahoo being renamed Yahoo MSN Live Then Yahoo Live then Live later on so it wont appear that different then over maybe a year or two slowly transfer the names to Live, Yahoo, Windows Live or whatever they choose.

By: BinaryDay

BinaryDay — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:27:53 +0000

In all this discussion, we seem to miss one of the most important assets of yahoo. That asset is some of the best brains that work for yahoo. These are the people who have built all these great products. Any attempt to phase out yahoo will mean that many of them will leave. So I see brand yahoo staying alive for quite some time to come.

By: Nina Hartley

Nina Hartley — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:00:36 +0000

The YAHOO domain alone is worth 3x

By: seamus

seamus — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:52:23 +0000

Yahoo! : MSN :: Toyota : Isuzu.

MSN is a weak brand, and maybe half the $45B was for the Yahoo brand. Messing with the brand is essentially throwing $20B away. But the “brand” is more than just the name; it’s the core of the product. It’s the willingness to point outwards; it’s the integration of the company’s properties; it’s the trust with the gigantic user base.

MSFT rebranding Yahoo would be like Ford rebranding Jaguar, or Coca Cola rebranding Minute Maid.

By: techcrunchreader

techcrunchreader — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:29:30 +0000

@14 福泉市

新年快乐.

呵呵呵

By: Rental Source

Rental Source — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:04:41 +0000

I’d replace MSN & Live with the Yahoo brand & products as well as using the Yahoo Mail interface for Hotmail accounts.

By: Kvan

Kvan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:03:56 +0000

Since there keeping the Yahoo brand

1 Rename it Yahoo MSN Live. Have MSN redirect to new Yahoo Live website Merge all the info on the two sites to the new Yahoo MSN Live site.

2 for email have something similar to mail.live.com when you login have a drop down list and select hotmail , live , msn or yahoo.com’s

3 Rename everything Live whatever, with Yahoo being renamed Yahoo MSN Live Then Yahoo Live then Live later on so it wont appear that different then over maybe a year or two slowly transfer the names to Live, Yahoo, Windows Live or whatever they choose.

4 Leave Digg and Flikr alone or just a name change and keep everything else the same Digg Live, Flikr Live etc.

5 Incorporate all Yahoo, MSN & Live features into One entity.

By: Listen to Ballmer's words

Listen to Ballmer's words — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:50:21 +0000

What Steve said: “Yahoo, the brand, will live.”

What Steve didn’t say: “Yahoo, the current operation and corporate structure and marketing and applications and all that, will live.”

Historically, the MS acquisition playbook involved snuffing out the acquiree’s brand. Most of the time, that’s true — it’s because MS usually has a brand about a billion times more valuable than the acquiree. Not so in this acquisition; Yahoo already has a substantial brand (bigger than MS’s in the web space). So, as Steve put it, “Yahoo, the brand, will live.”

I think Steve is speaking from a nuts-and-bolts, merger-and-acquisition point of view. To expect that retaining the Yahoo brand equates to retention of all things Yahoo is premature.

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:30:40 +0000

I prefer the Yahoo brand and identity over Microsofts on the web. I welcome this deal; but hope that it doesn’t affect my flickr account - I really enjoy that service in it’s current form.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:22:41 +0000

YES!! Yahoo will outlive MSN! Justice will be served.

After seeing that “live” stuff… i’m leaning towards the camp of “this is going to be good f or yahoo, the brand”. Everyone has been speculating, “who will save yahoo” .. the irony is, last friday Steve Balmer offered to do just that.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:16:31 +0000

Ballmer thinks of web portals like any other media property, like magazines or newspapers. Given that perspective, he probably thinks there is enough room in the market for an MSN and Yahoo with different audiences just like there is enough room in the market for the NYT and WP with different audiences.

Given this is MS, I’d expect them to focus more on consolidating the platforms supporting each portal to realize cost efficiencies.

By: Crispin

Crispin — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:01:57 +0000

I gotta wonder how this will play out in Canada, where the two biggest ISP’s (Bell/Sympatico and Rogers) currently have JSA’s in place with MSN and Yahoo! respectively (Sympatico’s email service is provided by MS, while Rogers’ is handled by Yahoo). Seems like a major headache in the making.

By: CanCar

CanCar — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:12:03 +0000

The mobile growth in Europe is appealing, but when you look at countries like Japan where mobile is the dominant point of internet access, and likewise in India and (for memory) China, the biggest growth in mobile internet will be Asia not Europe.

By: Terence

Terence — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:26:28 +0000

I don’t think they will ever drop the MSN, Live or Yahoo brands; as many people are so familiar to them that it would be a waste to merge. But I could see them reducing some services and letting them co-exist as either Live, MSN or Yahoo.

They wouldn’t dump the Yahoo brand because, as mentioned, Steve Ballmer doesn’t want that to happen.

They wouldn’t dump the Live brand since it holds Hotmail, Messenger and Spaces. From my location, Messenger is pretty popular and they would be upset if they were forced to switch to Yahoo Messenger. They will most likely co-exist with Yahoo’s equivalent service.

They wouldn’t dump the MSN brand since they have MSNBC and Fox Sports. The MSNBC website wouldn’t be right if it was on Yahoo. Microsoft owns 18% of the television network and 50% of the website.

As well, you didn’t mention the simple, yet problematic, problem that the merger of Yahoo and MSN would have affected Australia. It would be chaotic. If the MSN brand was to be dropped, ninemsn would be dead. If the Yahoo brand was to be dropped, Yahoo!7 would be dead.

ninemsn is a 50/50 partnership between PBL Media and Microsoft; while Yahoo!7 is a 50/50 partnership between Yahoo and the Seven Media Group. Seven and Nine (PBL) have been traditionally rivals.

By: Eros

Eros — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:48:40 +0000

I just don’t get it. Why they want to buy a brand, when they already have a same popular brand, MSN ? . It’ll be a disaster for Microsoft and will end up losing $45 billions. It won’t do any good to Microsoft. No one supporting it, not even their shareholders. Here what they can do in order to give google a hard competition;
1. Since it was a public bid for Yahoo!, now it’ll look stupid if they withdraw it. So call Jerry (Yahoo) to come to Redmond. Do a deal with him, something like; Invest $5/10 Billion in Yahoo!. In return get 5% of Yahoo! Stake and Microsoft will run search engine on Yahoo.com & all of its other sites. Google did similar deal with AOL and now trying to do with Yahoo!, why let them?
2. Buy some community based startups, in order to boost more users.
3. Rebrand all Windows Live or Live to MSN. Specially Hotmail, Messenger, Maps (Live Maps is way more great then google maps but no one knows about it because of its branding). they can keep Windows Live OneCare, Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Mail as Windows Live brand, also launch Windows Live Maps/Earth as a desktop program like google earth. MSN is a powerful brand like Yahoo! But they are just killing it. Making useless new new brands and making peoples confuse. They should put all of their online contents, tools, services under MSN.

4. Put digg search box in MSN.com & Yahoo.com (under that deal) also try to put in facebook.
5. Add more and more contents in MSN.com like yahoo did. It’s still most powerful brand so take advantage of it.
6. Give website owners/webmasters web tools, Similar services like google adsense/adword, web analytics, web sitemaps, etc. Let them use you search engine into their site (that’s how google is popular among them, I’m a webmaster, I know). Make it under MSN brands.

Google or Yahoo! is popular is because what they are doing, doing under their one single brand. Microsoft should do the same with MSN.

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:39:11 +0000

16
I’ve read those articles and I think we’ve mentioned it previously. I’m not sure though that the dissent is at anywhere near a level that might count yet, but I take your comment on board and we’ll keep watching and listening.

By: Duncan, Relax...

Duncan, Relax... — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:24:42 +0000

As awesome as the reporting on Techcrunch is (seriously), you might be missing an important angle on this story. Microsoft shareholders are not that happy with this deal going through — they’ve already punished the stock to the point that $40 billion in market cap has been erased…

That’s a pretty strong message that all is not well, and SteveB’s drive to do the deal may be more a danger to him and his board than to Yahoo’s board. Just a thought.

By: anon

anon — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 12:22:38 +0000

The Yahoo brand might live for a while, but it the end, it’ll gradually be phased out. A bit like….

Hotmail > MSN Hotmail > MSN Live Hotmail > Windows Live Hotmail

… let me guess…… Windows Live Email

By: 福泉市

福泉市 — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:50:35 +0000

老外也水产~~~呵呵。Yahoo不是问题，关键是，整合后如何整合，比尔后的新官上任三把火？

By: YDRIVE

YDRIVE — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:34:45 +0000

Am sure Microsoft can make it better and will make it better.