With a major technology industry acquisition in the offing, the press is having a field day, as the tech titans again go to Washington to plead their case. The Washington Post reports lobbyists are tightly hugging their high-tech hub at Franklin Square, just a few blocks away from the White House. Residents of the building just south of the part include Microsoft, Dell, Sun Microsystems, eBay and IBM. Just a block away are Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, Oracle, Sony and, in brand new offices, Apple and Google.
Now that Microsoft seeks to pick off Yahoo, Google gets to return the favor. Last year Microsoft, actively sought (unsuccessfully) to scuttle Google's recent acquisition of the online advertising company DoubleClick. Microsoft - no stranger to antitrust complaints - had filed briefs against the Google-DoubleClick deal in the United States and abroad, testified against it in Congress, and worked with a public relations firm to generate opposition. Perhaps the most surprising new news about Microsoft's nearly $45 billion deal was this news: the software company doesn't have enough cash to buy Yahoo outright. "It's likely we're actually going to borrow for the first time," said Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell in an annual strategy meeting with analysts. "It's going to be a mixture of the cash we have on hand plus debt."
For more:
- Lobbyists Hug High-Tech Hub Article
- Microsoft to borrow money for Yahoo deal Article
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