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This Week in Lumps
#36 [29/01 - 04/02]

· Last week, whilst with a friend slouching in a dark, quiet yet comfortable pub, I made a passing comment I would later regret 2 hours later. After chatting about Cloverfield (which we managed to see a secret pre-release viewing of) and also talking about the decline of MySpace (two articles that I covered last week) I sat thinking aloud about what what kind of stories would go into this week. “Yahoo have been a bit quiet lately” I uttered, not realising later that evening I would arrive home to see dozens of topics all covering the recent news that Microsoft may well be putting in a bid for them. The dozens of stories turned into hundreds of stories over the next 48 hours, I now I find myself sitting here contemplating which angle to cover.

Should I pick the stories that focus on the whopping price tag that Microsoft has said it’s willing to pay? The unconfirmed amount of roughly $44.6 billion (consisting of cash and Microsoft stock) certainly is more than a few days pocket money for most. The bid values Yahoo shares at a ‘higher than you’d thought’ $31 a share. Maybe I should focus on exactly why Microsoft has made their move? Alone, neither Yahoo nor Microsoft can compete with Google in terms of quality, efficiency and focus on consumers requirements. Back in week 20, Yahoo’s search function struggled to keep the pace, only just scraping level with Ask.com, whilst the rumours of Microsoft forming a partnership started all the way back in week 5, where News Corp (owners of MySpace) were also mentioned. Maybe the focus should be put on how Microsoft just seem to be bitter about how they were so late at arriving to the Internet boom, and have never really caught up. BBC’s dot.life raises some interesting points around this, including the fact that even though $44.6 billion is a lot of money, Facebook was only recently valued at $15 billion. In sorts, it is trying to buy it’s way into the 21st century.

Maybe the focus should be on what it means to us, the buyers, the users, and investors in technology? That is, after all, the obvious question to ask. Read Write Web thinks the potential acquisition could be very good news:

“Yahoo! is great at content and online innovation… That’s what Microsoft needs right now. Google is posing a threat to Microsoft not just because it is winning in advertising, where Microsoft is a relative beginner, but because Google is shifting the software world to online. [The acquisition] …is going to mean a whole lot more energy put behind services like Flickr and Del.icio.us and innovative content sites like Yahoo! Sports and Finance. All of that will be good for Microsoft and it will be good for those of us who find those sites and services inspiring.”

What about the ‘big mess’, as Long Zheng of istartedsomething.com mildly puts it, of Microsoft’s merging history? Microsoft has a history of making acquisitions, and few comes to mind of anywhere close to a success.

None of these points can really be classed as the bottom line in the matter. Well, you may be wondering what is. The answer ironically enough can be found on msnbc.msn.com… a Microsoft controlled network. In it, it focuses on the challenges faced between the two companies if this were to go ahead. Titled “Why Google will remain the king of search”, it sums up everything that needs to be be talked about regarding this deal:

“…Indeed, even a merged Microsoft and Yahoo would still be dwarfed by Google. The web giant holds nearly 60 percent of the Internet search market share, compared to what would be a 33 percent stake for the combined Microsoft-Yahoo.”

Stats and figures say more than any prediction or assumption could. If I were still down the pub, int in hand, and someone had whispered this news to me in my ear, I too would jump straight to the pessimistic side of the argument, and I would start to talk about how it just won’t happen. Days after it was announced, and days after reading lots of different opinions, I’m still struggling to see how they could beat Google at a game they made their own years ago. The bid is, in essence, a lump-in-the-throat confession of failure. Despite the company’s dominance in the office based software programs like Word and Excel, and also its huge financial resources, Microsoft has failed to build up an effective stance on its own in vital 21st century areas such as searching, online advertising and other services that Google can claim to have done. The final word comes from the Machinist:

“How will Microhoo be any better than either Microsoft or Yahoo were in fighting this relentless culture of creation? On the conference call, Microsoft execs were juiced about the “synergies” of the combined firms. It’s hard not to hear that word as a euphemism for nothing else left to try.”

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· One of the best known opening chord to a song has to be the ‘mighty power chord’, performed by George Harrison on the Beatles classic Hard Days Night. A song that launched the movie as well, every Beatles fan knows the song before the lyrics even start. George Martin said:

“We knew it would open both the film and the soundtrack LP, so we wanted a particularly strong and effective beginning. The strident guitar chord was the perfect launch.”

Now the song has been put behind another perfect launch, a new Liverpool hotel which opened on the 1st of February (ten years and more than £20 million after its owners first had the idea) – the Hard Days’ Night Hotel, a Beatles-themed palace at the end of a long and winding road. Based next door to the Cavern Club where the group first rose to fame, the 110-room boutique hotel is filled with old Beatles memorabilia including exclusive artwork. The hotel includes both luxury and deluxe rooms and guests can tinkle the ivories of a white grand piano in the £650-a-night Lennon penthouse suite, which boasts panoramic views of the city.

A Reuters slide-show is available here, whilst a rather negative-but-worthwhile review from The Times can be found here.

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· British electronic indie pop band Hot Chip return to our headphones this week with their third album ‘Made in the Dark‘, following on from ‘Coming on Strong’ from 2004, and 2006’s The Warning. Made in the Dark, featuring 13 tracks including “Wrestlers”, “Out at the Pictures”, and ‘Shake a Fist’ Other song titles include the title track, “Bendable Poseable”, “We’re Looking for a Lot of Love”, “Ready for the Floor”, “In the Privacy of Our Love”, and “One Pure Thought”.

Since we last heard from them, the band have made (fake) collaborations with Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel, (real) remixes for Alicia Keys and Rilo Kile, and have been branded liars by The Sun about the rumours (they spread themselves) about writing a song for Kylie Minogue. When asked by the paper what had happened to the story of a collaboration with the wee Aussie pop queen, guitarist Al Doyle confessed:

“Basically nothing. But we’ve been telling lots of lies and rumours about it because we found it quite funny. But then Alexis mentioned in an interview that we’d written Ready For The Floor for her. We hadn’t really.”“

Before naming the album, there were strong rumours also that the band were considering calling their 3rd LP ‘IV’, in some kind of weird yet hilarious piss take. The band admit there are moments highlighting a heavy metal influence, as well as being a little bit more of everything that was good from the previous albums. And it seems to be working, their latest tours saw them constantly playing to crowds of four to five-thousand people at a time, even filling out the Electric Ballroom in Camden. It seems the young lads from Putney are ready to become a household name.

Weirdest comment of the day has to go to the Guardian:

“Hot Chip have got as close to being the new Chemical Brothers as they’re ever going to get.”

The album hit stores yesterday. Hot Chip will also on tour in the UK and US soon.

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That was the week in lumps, a week in which: Radiohead and Jay Z will be 2 of the headliners at Glastonbury, Rivers Cuomo talks about his new album of demos, the French have much different in flight entertainment than I’m used to, Motorola may stop making mobile phones, and Jason Bateman confirmed that an Arrested Development Movie may be started soon.

and that, as they say, is that, at least for another week. Only time left for me to say Thank God! As news hits that ‘the worst actor in Hollywood’ Nicolas Cage is “growing tired” of the movie industry and is ready to quit. Just look at some of the films he’s been involved in: National Treasure, Next, Ghost Rider, Gone in Sixty Seconds, 8MM, Snake Eyes, Con Air, Leaving Las Vegas… these are the movie where either horrible, or he could have been replaced and the film would have been so much better. With less people like him cluttering up Hollywood’s streets, the more room for people with actual talent.

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