MicroHOO! update - Microsoft Very Quiet, but Something Is Happening

A superb article on Wired.com on the Microsoft -Yahoo merger. The industry has appropriately termed it the MicroHOO! affair. Well this article looks at the future scenarios that could pan out and methinks this is an excellent insightful review on the pains of M & A between two industry giants with such an acrimonious history. Surely, this is a business school case study in the making (hehehe)

The various case scenarious have been aptly analyzed - what if a higher offer is made or a hostile takeover is done or if Microsoft walwaks away altogether and finally if Microsoft sticks to its half cash, half stock bid. the winners, losers and what would happen next have neatly analyzed.

My two cents on this whole issue:

1. Its going to be very painful. 2 big monoliths have never merged successfully and there are going to be tonnes of integration problems not to mention the basic cultural issue - silicon valley start up (Almost) meeting seatle software big daddy. ouch, it feels painful

2. The big winner in all this is going to be Google. Ironically, the big G is the reason why Microsoft made the offer

3. M & A's are successful only when there is very little overlap between the businneses of overlapping companies. MicroHOO! has way too much overlap and this could also pose a lot of painful issues on what products need to be jettisoned, thus leading to alot of internal strife. I wouldn't want to be in on a meeting between the product heads of MSN and Yahoo Messenger. Actually I would.

4. Microsoft has no choice but to go ahead with this merger if it ever hopes to steal a march from google and Yahoo has been in a limbo due to various internal issues. The basic issue - both Microsoft and Yahoo need each other but really cannot stand each other. If they merged, it would make for an entertaining Marriage.

5. And oh, lets not forget Microsoft's Anti-trust issues. With both of MicroHOO!'s instant messaging systems, email services, web portals, I bet the Justice department is rubbing its palms in glee (being egged on oh so subtly by Google) oh what fun!

6. Like I said before, The only person gaining out of this hooplah is Google. They'll get all the great, creative Yahoo folks due to mass exodus and all they had to do was stand on the sidelines!
I read somewhere, that inorder to stir things up a bit and raise Microsoft's hackles, Eric schmidt gave yahoo a call on how..er..may be they could work together on things. lol

Another good article on what makes for good M & A's here. M & A's work, as the article says, when both companies have unique but complimentary products on offer. That way the integration can be smooth and there is greater consolidation

What's da Number?

Oh well, more dope on the new vodafone customer care AD. Well we all were surprised that the trademark pug came back. I was sure that after transitioning to Vodafone, the brand managers would use the pug sparingly inorder to reinforce the new brand into everybody's consciousness. But they've resorted to using it after just 7 months of the transition it seems

According to this article on agencyfaqs, The pug was used in a specific service based ad instead of a thematic brand AD, because according to Mr.Harit Nagpal, chief marketing officer, Vodafone India, "Customer care is the face of our brand, so in a sense, this aspect of Vodafone encompasses the entire brand.” Therefore, the pug

Ahhh, they were trying to remind everybody of what lousy service they offered when they were Hutch. Also did anyone notice that there was no number given? As in which number to call when somebody wants to avail their excellent service? I think thats a major flaw in execution because although everyone is now aware of their supposed service offerings, I'm sure Vodafone customers would have also like to know the service call numbers. And also this campaign would have inspired more trust had they given their numbers out.

I mean Airtel's 121 is pretty famous for customer care and this is one of the major features of why most people I know chose Airtel - their customer service. Service branding methinks is a word of mouth thing. You can make people aware that it exists but the consumer confidence only comes in after it is experienced and spoken about. This works only if more people experience customer service, and if its good, then recommend it to their friends. Its hard to sell a service, more so, customer care. I guess people will be skeptical till they actually try it. So vodafone lost a major opportunity, methinks, in converting a few people into believers and ergo into evangelists.
I can think of why they didn't advertize the number - inorder not to put more strain on the infrastructure I guess. But really it still puzzles me as to why they didn't put the number out there..

un-creepy crawlies

I ran a search for this blog and unfortunately it seems that Google hasn't indexed my blog yet :(
So in an effort to understand why the Googlebot didn't pick me, I trawled through some posts on the Official Google Blog and found that Google has a support tool to analyze why your site is not being indexed.

The Google Webmaster Tools analyzes a site and verifies whether a site has been indexed by the googlebot and also provides tonnes of stats and diagnostic tools. There are also links for the crisis ridden folks like us who are agonizing as to why the Googlebot is so ingnoring us. I really have to research SEO its fascinating!

I found this link very useful - How do I add my site to Google's search results? . One lesson to ensure that the site has multiple outgoing links and incoming links. You can already see that I'm employing that strategy already. this post has 3 links to it :)

But it's also very annoying that Google search algorithm is so hush hush and they don't really tell you why you're not featuring in searches. I read on Wired sometime back that companies who paid google for Adwords also saw their natural search results getting featured higher hmmm