Important information about Docs.com end of service

Several weeks ago, docs.com had a search trawling issue which caused some concern.

Microsoft have now announced their decision to shut docs.com, with six months’ notice that all content will be deleted.

Microsoft’s Docs.com service to be discontinued

Microsoft is retiring the Docs.com service on Friday, December 15, 2017 and we are hereby advising all users to move their existing Docs.com content to other file storage and sharing platforms as soon as possible, as Docs.com will no longer be available after this date.

Martin Brinkmann has posted an article on ghacks.com:
Microsoft to shut down docs.com on December 15, 2017

Microsoft offers $8.5 B for What?

I’m still shaking my head.

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

AOL and Yahoo making Googlie eyes

As you read this, Yahoo’s stock may be soaring. Or maybe not. Wait ten minutes and check again.

Recent activity seems to reflect a Wall Street Journal report that AOL (remember the company that makes almost half of its US revenue by selling dial-up internet access?) and a bunch of high power venture vult… er, private equity firms “are exploring making an offer to buy Yahoo.”

Yahoo stock’s meteoric rise appears to have started before that report hit the stands, fueled no doubt by insider tea leaf reading and ESP. Or something else.

When I saw the headlines, I first remembered Microsoft’s failed attempt to take over Yahoo, back in December 2008. Microsoft offered more than $45 billion. Yahoo fought back, successfully shunned Microsoft’s advances and, under a new CEO, ultimately saw its market capitalization fall to less than $20 billion. As Kara Swisher reports in her BoomTown blog, three top Yahoo execs recently left for greener pastures, and CEO Carol Bartz is feeling the pressure.

To make things more interesting, AOL – remember, they’re the big fish swallowing $20 billion Yahoo – has a market cap of less than $3 billion.

Yahoo’s more than a dial-up internet portal, though, and its investments make a potential takeover a prickly proposition.

Start with business affiliations. The enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend camp at Microsoft has forged an alliance with Yahoo in which Microsoft’s Bing drives Yahoo’s search. As a unified force, under a ten-year contract, Yahoo and Microsoft are taking on Google for search engine market share. (Details in my post earlier today.)

AOL’s search engine, though, is tied to Google, with a five year contract that started just last month.

Here’s where it gets complicated.

Yahoo owns 35% or so of Yahoo Japan. The majority shareholder of Yahoo Japan is SoftBank. (If you’ve been in the business for a while, you may recall that Masayoshi Son, the founder of SoftBank, once owned all of US magazine publisher Ziff-Davis.) That’s a bit, uh, touchy because Yahoo Japan recently joined with Google to corner Japan’s search advertising market place. Microsoft’s suing Yahoo Japan over the snub.

Contrariwise, Yahoo owns 40% of China’s Alibaba, the pre-eminent Asian online business-to-business site. Yesterday, Microsoft and Alibaba announced a grand plan to take over China’s number-one search engine Baidu, launching a new “shopping search engine” called Etao. You may recall that Google and the Chinese government had something of a, shall we say, falling out, which left Baidu with more than 70% of the search engine market in the Middle Kingdom.

Alibaba tried to buy back its 40% stake, but Yahoo wouldn’t sell, and relationships between the two are said to be sour. That’s the polite way to put it.

So Google-affiliated AOL’s rumored to be going after nine-times-larger Microsoft-affiliated Yahoo, which owns 35% of a Japanese company being sued by Microsoft and 40% of a possibly-alienated Chinese company that just started a new venture with Microsoft.

To make it more complicated, many people believe that Yahoo’s most significant assets (some would say “only” significant long-term assets) are its stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba.

Keep that in mind as you follow the machinations of the stock market this week.

Microsoft plus Adobe: do the math

I have a fun post on Infoworld Tech Watch, for those of you gullible enough to fall for the Microsoft + Adobe rumors.

Microsoft plus Adobe: Do the math

Will Microsoft swallow Adobe? There are some efficiencies of scale.

Strap on your hip boots and mosey over to my Infoworld Tech Watch blog.

Yahoo gets Binged

As expected, Microsoft and Yahoo just issued a joint announcement that explains how Microsoft will provide the search engine and Yahoo will sell the ads in the brave new world of second place search.

Details here.

Microsoft too big to fail – asks for $20 Billion

OK. I couldn’t resist.

Check out the InfoWorld article, and be sure you make note of the filing date.