A Better Idea for Microsoft's $45 Billion

So I'm browsing over my home page, a compilation of RSS feeds from various sources (I tend toward off-mainstream news sites in an attempt to 'de-slant' the corporate news sources) regarding world and local news, business and social/cultural over the past few days and I've come across a few articles that were interesting on their own, but viewed all together they gave me an idea. Let me start from the beginning:

The first article was Microsoft: $44.6B for Yahoo , not terribly interesting on it's own but the first thing I thought was, wow, that is way too much money. Until recently I used Yahoo services extensively for personal and social web pages, and a few of their other interactive type services, but did not use their search engine. I never have really. I put them to a side by side test once a few months ago with google when it occurred to me to be a bit more loyal, but yahoo search really doesn't compare for quality results. If the search engine is the main goal of the purchase, it doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not paid to know anything about any of that.


Next came Lawmaker Worried About Lack Of D-Block Bidding In FCC Sale which peaked my interest, but I couldn't tell you why. It was very much more interesting than you may think however, due to the mass exodus by television broadcasters from analog to digital signals next year. Interesting.


Then the final two, Chinese Begin to Protest Censorship of Internet informs us that while there is a horrible oppression taking place, there is also a huge potential customer base in need of an inventive internet provider. A quote from Pan Liang: "Many people don't know that 300 years after Emperor Kangxi ordered an end to construction of the Great Wall, our great republic has built an invisible great wall," he wrote. "Can blocking really work? Kangxi knew the Great Wall was a huge lie: Just think how many soldiers are needed to guard those thousands of miles."


And finally the kicker FCC Prods Cable companies in Tiff with Indie Programmers which outlines yet another huge market willing to pay for air time. Independent programming is more popular than ever!


If you haven't guessed yet, I think it would be MUCH more wise to spend that cash to secure the newly available, slow to sell Block D! Sure, there are issues with the whole idea as I found out while poking around for info on this blog:License White Space for Backhaul? Google says No but I think it would be a whole new ball game with that kind of cash behind the deal. It opens wide a shiny new frontier for developers while securing a huge multi-media customer base.