the best things in life aren't things
Posts tagged microsoft
Microsoft PhotoZoom
PhotoZoom makes it easy for anyone to create zooming albums from their uploaded photos. It is an experimental site, developed at Microsoft, that uses the Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight 2.
Not bad Microsoft, not bad.
Brand equity?!
Below you can see the results of Harris Interactive EquiTrend study which sets out to measure and rank brand equity across a range of product categories in the US. The brand with the number one equity score in 2008: Heinz Ketchup. (yeah, not Coca Cola)
However, some of the top winners there have intrigued me, leaving me wondering what the hell is brand equity all about?! According to the article, this study of brand equity supposedly measured familiarity, quality, purchase consideration, brand expectations, distinctiveness, and trust. Ok! Maybe so, but the results are pretty hard to take – Just look at the winner over financial services: VISA – they have no physical presence, no direct customer service and support and their products are always co-branded in one way or another. So they are telling us that VISA is having the highest brand equity in the industry?
What is also interesting is the brand equity winner over the software industry – MICROSOFT – when they conducted the survey, they systematically avoided Apple users? Let’s not forget Microsoft still needs to improve their brand equity, especially since people still regard them as the “evil empire”.
Bottom line is that this study proves that the whole concept of brand equity is far from being a measurable science. Maybe things will change..
Microsoft walks away from Yahoo
Microsoft Corp. has withdrawn its $42.3 billion bid to buy Yahoo Inc., scrapping an attempt to snap up the tarnished Internet icon in hopes of toppling online search and advertising leader Google Inc.
The decision to walk away from the deal came Saturday after last-ditch efforts to negotiate a mutually acceptable sale price proved unsuccessful.
The talks reached a breaking point after Jerry Yang and David Filo, the co-founders of Sunnyvale-based Yahoo, flew to Seattle in the morning to meet personally with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Kevin Johnson, who runs the software maker’s unprofitable online services division, according to someone familiar with the talks. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified.
“Clearly a deal is not to be,” Ballmer wrote to Yang in a letter sent late Saturday.
Microsoft was willing to pay $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, up from the bid’s current value of $29.40 per share, according to Ballmer’s letter.
But Yahoo’s board demanded at least $53 billion, or $37 per share, according to Ballmer. That would have been nearly double Yahoo’s stock price of $19.18 at the time Microsoft first made its bid a little over three months ago – seems to me that Jerry Yang really listened to Shpigler’s tips.
Official statement.