A purchase of SAP would push Microsoft in a different direction than a purchase of Yahoo. So I think to compare the two would be apples and oranges. What is a fact is that Microsoft has thrown away millions of dollars to try and get into the internet search-engine advertising business with no success. If anyone has been around the internet since the mid-90's they would remember that MS bought Link Exchange to add on to their MSN family. Link Exchange was purchased at $250 million and no longer more than a fowarding URL for their Microsoft Live Office offering. Link Exchange used to provide the ability of one webmaster to find other webmasters to exchange links on their websites. Google and Yahoo now views Link Exchanges as spam and lowers a pages ranking that would have participated in an exchange, thus Microsoft's investment would be useless.

Does this deter Microsoft? No, they just made an $115 Million purchase on 4/21 for Farecast.com, a travel search startup that predicts airfare costs, this means more eyeballs for their internet advertising needs.

It may very well be that the year 2008 becomes a time where creative individuals will attempt to build a startup only for the purposes of selling to either Google or Microsoft as the two corporate giants attempt to battle it out for the search advertising market.

Not a bad idea. Microsoft is Business Software - even if the world uses it for fun...most businesses in this world are using MS products to communicate, document, archive, and present. Businesses today need a completely seamless "unified" if you will, offering. The ERP software we use shouldn't need middleware (software), middle hardware, Middleware (databases)... the costs are high and the complexity is higher. Come on Microsoft - jump in the real game and give us a SaaS offering that will change the way most backoffice business is done. We want to keep our Exchange and Sharepoint servers, we want to continue to use outlook and Word and Excel... we just want our ERP package to use them too. This could avoid a whole set of programs to help make all the interfaces half-a@& work.

Focus on doing one thing really well and take over the market..Our Y2K installations are aging and they need to be replaced with a SaaS offering to simplify everything. Oracle cannot make that happen without a customer purchasing 25 different products and over a million dollars to put it all together. Purchase after purchase by Oracle has only added to the ultimate complexity. Give us SMB customers (under $600MM) an out of the box SaaS solution that does manufacturing and distribution. MS currently does have some really low end offerings...SAP would be the Bow on the present that we SMB's really want for Christmas!

SAP - and to some extend Oracle - is not an ERP system (anymore). They offer a toolbox from which - with some expert knowledge - business processes can be modeled in computers (Interestingly ERP applications could be seen as THE virtual world with the most interfaces between "realitiy" and "virtuality"). They also come with a set of templates and there is an abundance of people there who have experience in creating scenarios.

SAP is not particularly "sexy" - it's more function over form - which at times gives them some problems. And it comes from an "engineering culture" - sometimes being over-engineered.

Microsoft is the dominant player in the consumer market for OS's, "office applications" and email - the "e-commodities". Their culture is is rather different - rather form over function. Things have to be sexy.

Do you remember what happened to Daimler-Chrysler? Want to repeat that? The minute MS buys SAP the clock will start ticking for the German girl - and the question will be whether a divorce will come early enough to save her life.

My 2 cs.

Wolf