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With respect to Mr. Gates, I disagree.
I fully admit I am not the money generator guy that Bill Gates have proven to be. He may in fact be the best pure businessman on the planet, but... I don't think I agree with him about having more people on the job automatically yielding faster developement in R&D.

This is something that has frustrated businessman for a very long time. It isn't like manufacturing or sales or anything where when you put X into the system you can caculate getting Y out the other end. I truely wish it worked that way but it doesn't. In fact studies tell us having too many people iun R&D has a negative impact because it creates layers of buracracy, management assigning what you should be interested in and how to go about researching it, politics, effort spent on trying to be noticed instead of team efforts, etc.

One thing I'd also point out is how often Mr. Gates used the term "engineer". To me this is a mind set of a person that believes ground altering technology shits come from engineering when in fact that is very, very rarely the case. True technology shifts tend to be the result of one person's insight, or even a "eurka" moment. If you look at all the current mainstream technologies in use you will find they were the result of a single great idea. To be sure engineers have cleaned them up, added bells and whistles, and in genral made the idea more user friendly, but the core idea came from one person and was in all probability not the result of large groups doing R&D.

Mr. Gates once said the thing that scared him most was two guys in a garage. I believe that is still true today but I also think Mr. Gates is convinced the way to compete with those two guys is to throw vast amounts of money at R&D. And if that doesn't do it, take even larger amounts of money and buy more "people" in the hopes that they will succeed.

It is my opinion that if Microsoft's goal in buying Yahoo is to add to the R&D pool of engineers under their control they have made a very serious assumption that will not pan out and will cost them (and Yahoo) dearly.
Posted by: No_Ax_to_Grind   Posted on: 02/20/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
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Gates explains why Microsoft needs Yahoo  Loverock Davidson | 02/20/08
i agree...mostly anyway  lostincosmos | 02/20/08
uhm...  Stuka | 02/21/08
yahoo  merc2dogs` | 02/21/08
So it shall be spoken by BillG...  Mike Cox | 02/20/08
How to destroy Yahoo  Knorthern Knight | 02/20/08
With respect to Mr. Gates, I disagree.  No_Ax_to_Grind | 02/20/08
RE:With respect to Mr. Gates, I disagree  thilina.pr@... | 02/21/08
No, has nothing to do with monopoly  No_Ax_to_Grind | 02/21/08
RE: Gates explains why Microsoft needs Yahoo  albeit | 02/20/08
RE: Gates explains why Microsoft needs Yahoo  thilina.pr@... | 02/21/08
Time will tell...  thilina.pr@... | 02/21/08
If you want to destroy Yahoo, let AOL help it  Boot_Agnostic | 02/21/08
Basic math  Yagotta B. Kidding | 02/21/08
Yeah, that's a good question  voska1 | 02/21/08
Because they want to rule the world  itguy08 | 02/21/08
The board has nothing to say in it.  No_Ax_to_Grind | 02/21/08
everyone should quit yahoo if M$ takes over  Linux Geek | 02/21/08
I knew a Mrs. Beverly for a time at the Grocery Store cinema :  rtirman37@... | 02/21/08
Maybe they are more scared than ever..  green alien | 02/21/08
Pants on fire!!!  techboy_z | 02/21/08
I thought having unlimited H1Bs would solve the engineer problem,  HypnoToad72 | 02/21/08
If you believe that load of ....  mikifinaz1@... | 02/21/08
A lot of talk and not a lot of substance  John Musbach | 02/21/08

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