Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Disney will buy Yahoo, Ballmer will keep his job and other tech predictions - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

Sounds like a fun panel discussion; see the full post for more details…

Bill Gates will be the country's first chief technology officer.  Google's stock will tumble to $275 per share. And Microsoft will buy Adobe.

Those were a few of the crystal ball gazes tonight at the WTIA's annual predictions dinner as Matt McIlwain of Madrona Venture Group, Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service, Ben Elowitz of Wetpaint and Kelly Smith of Curious Office Partners shared their insights on where they think the tech industry is headed in 2009.

My $.02:

  • Nobody will buy Yahoo!, at least not with its current management team intact
  • Steve Ballmer is very secure in his job
  • Bill Gates already has a couple rather demanding jobs, and I doubt he’d want to leave either in order to bootstrap a United States CTO role
  • Google’s stock price will definitely be challenged in 2009, for many reasons
  • Microsoft would not be allowed to acquire Adobe, for antitrust reasons, and even at its current ~$12.6B market cap, trading at ~50% of its 52-week high, ADBE would still be very expensive, with an acquisition premium; Microsoft will indeed likely continue to avail itself of acquisition opportunities, but there are more attractive options, e.g., JAVA with its market cap now below $3B…  Perhaps ORCL + ADBE would be a sensible scenario; otherwise, I think ADBE stays independent indefinitely.

Disney will buy Yahoo, Ballmer will keep his job and other tech predictions - TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News Source

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