Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Apple to merge with Google?
Did you pickup on the reference in the Jobs keynote where the CEO of Google said something like: "as Steve says, you don't have to actually have a company merger to have a merger". I took this as if Google wanted to buy up Apple and Jobs talked them out of it. The Google CEO also said: "it is best for each company to do best what itself does the best". As if this was the justfication for why companies should remain independent and then just form partnerships. I agree with this philosophy in general. It seems many of these mega mergers don't go anywhere. Look at AOL-Time Warner. AOL is pretty much gone as a company. Hopefully Apple will never be gobbled up in a hostile takeover.
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I don't think that's going to happen with Jobs at the helm. He knows how the DNA of a company will be altered or even destroyed in a merger. Look at Nestscape! Netscape went from superstar to nonentity in nothing flat. But there were two forces at work in their demise - the merger contributed, but also the bundling by Microsoft of IE.
When AOL and Time Warner merged it was explained that AOL had the distribution channels and Time Warner had the content. But this supposed synergy did not seem to benefit AOL. AOL basically was the internet even before the internet existed for mass use. They provided all of the content on their closed system and people called in using slow dialup connections. But they did not change quick enough with the times. They hung on to the high priced (relative to cable speeds) dialup system with their own content. Now they have video.aol.com with video clips and movies which they should have been the pioneers in this field. YouTube leapfrogged them. And even though their new site is better than it was it still is very cluegy to use and it forces you to watch as much time in commercials as you do in content. I tried it, but I don't believe I will be going back. Not the breakthrough a company the size of AOL-TW should have.
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