Microsoft’s proposed $45 billion bid for Yahoo has received some well-deserved critical coverage. It’s pretty much accepted as a given that most big mergers don’t work out, particularly when they involve technology companies (AOL and Time Warner, H-P and Compaq immediately come to mind).
Most of the media analysis on the proposed deal to date has focused on the sizeable challenge of melding Microsoft’s lumbering culture with Yahoo’s more freewheeling ways. But Forbes‘ Victoria Barret raises another potential problem in the February 25th issue that could be far more ominous: a free software product out of Germany called Adblock Plus.
Microsoft covets Yahoo! because of its success selling display advertising. But with Adblock, a product created for users of the ever-popular Firefox browser, intrusive banner ads and annoying videos disappear, replaced with simple white space instead. According to Forbes, three million already have downloaded use Adblock Plus [including me] and every three months another million join us.
Microsoft has antagonized a lot of customers over the years with problem-riddled products that were prematurely brought to market. So the company could be at risk if all those disgruntled customers suddenly came to realize they could even the score by simply downloading some software that badly undermined the rationale for the deal.
It could be like one of those flash mob incidents except, instead of coming together at the rug department at Macy’s to accomplish their task, the masses would descend upon the Adblock servers to get the job done. You know what they say about paybacks.
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Note that the Forbes article is explicitly talking about users, not downloads - these are different things. See also http://adblockplus.org/blog/statistics-statistics-statistics