B A C K G R O U N D R E
P O R T S . . .
THE
BASICS:
Most
users know they need a laptop that's equipped with a wireless card to
connect to a WiFi network. Here are some other tips about how to get a
strong signal from a citywide system.
•
Look
for a node: Before you subscribe, look to see where the closest node is
to your building. If it's within eyesight, you're more likely to get a
strong signal.
• Work by
a window: If possible, use your computer near a window on the first or
second floor. You won't get a signal from the middle of a building with
no windows.
• Use a
CPE: To get a signal indoors, use a wireless router called a CPE, or
customer-premise equipment, that strengthens the signal. EarthLink
offers one at no charge to customers who sign up for a one-year
subscription and sells them to other customers for $69.95.
Source:
Chronicle research
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Microsoft and
Yahoo's shotgun marriage
Friday 1 February 2008 13:68 GMT |
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Is this Bill Gates' last big throw? Microsoft's proposal to buy internet veteran Yahoo for a whopping $44.6bn (£22.4bn) certainly grabs the attention. But does it make business sense? In a way this won't be the Microsoft founder's problem. This summer Mr Gates will leave the company to work full-time on fighting global poverty and diseases like Aids, Malaria and TB. But the Microsoft managers who have to make it work will be asked whether this is a case of one failing giant trying to prop up another. The Google factor Yahoo has been on the ropes for a long time. Once the top dog of the internet, the company has been haemorrhaging users and money. With advertising income not anywhere near where it should be, Yahoo's share price is stuck in the doldrums.
Last June Yahoo's board chucked out chief executive Terry Semel and brought back co-founder Jerry Yang to recapture the firm's dominance - to little avail. One word explains all of Yahoo's troubles: Google. While Yahoo invested in content to lure its audience, the search engine rival simply focused on delivering what users really wanted: good search results. Fighting over the mobile web Microsoft has watched Yahoo's struggle closely, and seen the writing on the wall. As Google has grown into a billion dollar business, it has increasingly strayed into Microsoft's territory, competing not just for advertising revenue but rivalling core Microsoft products like email and word processing. That alone would not be enough to persuade Microsoft to make this unsolicited offer.
Don't forget, despite its many challenges Microsoft is still in rude health. It has one of the world's largest research and development budgets, and key software products like Windows and Office are still licences to print money. But Microsoft also knows that its stronghold, the PC business, is getting less and less important. The future of today's IT industry is the rapidly growing mobile internet space, and Google has made no secret that it is prepared to spend a lot of money to conquer this market. Ultimately, Google and Microsoft pursue the same market, although they approach it from two different directions. Google wants to enable its customers to organise and find the whole of human knowledge, and is providing the tools to do so. Microsoft is a provider of tools that just happen to help users to process and use information. Now both firms are meeting in the middle and fight for market space. Shotgun marriage If Yahoo agrees to the deal with Microsoft, it will be a shotgun marriage, but it will be Google holding the shotgun. If Yahoo's management says "yes, I do", it will be an admission that its attempts to turn around the company have failed. Yahoo shareholders, in turn, will not be able to believe their luck. Microsoft was probably the only company with pockets deep enough to bail them out. For Microsoft, however, this is the deal that could break it. Making the offer is an admission that Microsoft's management has been scared by the success of Google. The bid is also an acknowledgement that its numerous attempts to become a dominant internet content provider have failed. But to make it pay, Microsoft will have to demonstrate that the combined company can offer a superior business model. The big bet Microsoft is promising that together with Yahoo it can offer "a competitive choice" that offers "more value... to advertisers, publishers and consumers". That holds true only if the combined Microsoft and Yahoo can do what they did not achieve as separate companies, namely develop search algorithms that rival those of Google. Anything short of that would result in one of the biggest destructions of shareholder value since the disastrous merger of AOL and Time Warner at the height of the dotcom boom. If Microsoft succeeds, it will be able to extend its hold on the PC world to all aspects of our lives. Bill Gates and his top managers are betting an awfully large part of the company in the hope of making it a success.
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If Yahoo agrees to the deal
with Microsoft, it will be a shotgun marriage, but it will be Google
holding the shotgun. 
