Posts tagged “business strategy”

The rumored Microsoft/News Corp deal to de-index from Google and go Bing-exclusive is dead on arrival. No single publisher has enough leverage to make users switch search engines, and News Corp especially doesn't. This would be a lose-lose-lose for everyone involved, News Corp most of all.

Microsoft's $6B acquisition of aQuantive is a desperate play to compete in the online ad space frenzy. I don't see it working. At best it keeps them treading water, at worst they end up an irrelevant OS supplier in a world that's moved on to server-side apps.

Based on conversations with my dad, a multinational executive, I argue globalization is self-limiting. As companies standardized products globally, they lost market share to local brands better suited to regional tastes. Past a certain point, uniformity hurts profits, meaning globalization stabilizes rather than endlessly expanding and homogenizing culture.