Microsoft courting Google for possible takeover

by Stacy Cowley
Be the first to comment | I like it!
More »
on this topic
October 31, 2003, 11:12 AM —  IDG News Service — 

Microsoft Corp. has reportedly approached Google Inc. about a potential buyout of the search technology company.

Mountain View, California-based Google, one of Silicon Valley's few business success stories in the post-dot-com era, has been meeting with investment bankers over the last several months and exploring its options for a public offering. During that process, Microsoft approached Google to discuss alliance options, including a takeover, according to an article in Friday's New York Times.

Google hasn't been rushing to take Microsoft up on the offer: Executives there seem to favor a public offering rather than an acquisition, the newspaper reported. Microsoft and Google declined to provide comment to the New York Times for its story. Calls placed to both companies by IDG News Service weren't immediately returned.

Microsoft has been eying the Web search market now largely dominated by five-year-old Google. While Microsoft has denied plans to enter the paid search industry, it has increased the staff on its search team to more than 200 and deemed MSN Search one of the company's key businesses.

» posted by abennett

IDG News Service

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Free books

Essential JavaFX
Get started building rich Web apps quickly with an introduction to the power of JavaFX key features -- scene node graphs, nodes as components, the coordinate system, layout options, colors and gradients, custom classes with inheritance, animation, binding, and event handlers.Enter now!

The Nomadic Developer
Consulting can be hugely rewarding, but it's easy to fail if you are unprepared. To succeed, you need a mentor who knows the lay of the land. Aaron Erickson is your mentor, and this is your guidebook. Enter now!

Featured Sponsor
Case Study: AISO grows its "green" business

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

Download this white paper »
Myth of the Million Dollar Database

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

Download this white paper »
Success Story: Weather.com handles whatever nature serves up

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Download this white paper »
Marketplace