Besides the casual use of expletives, the most interesting part of the brief conversation BusinessWeek conducted with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz is their take on how the two teams will work together.
In recent months, Microsoft poached several former Yahoo! staffers, including Qi Lu, who had been executive vice president of engineering for the search and advertising technology group at Yahoo!, and is now president of the online services group at Microsoft -- a strategy both executives are boasting about now.
The cross-pollination will help with execution of the agreement, say Bartz and Ballmer:
Ballmer: Our job in the partnership is to build the search platform and the paid search offer. We're not changing our organization to go do that. Qi runs our online business Satya Nadella, at Microsoft 17-18 years, runs engineering. People are all in place, this just becomes an important priority.
Bartz: A good share of the people here worked for Qi, so it's not like they're unknown. That actually was comforting to me, even though I've never met Qi. I hear nothing but good remarks about him. The other thing that's kind of fascinating is that Joanne Bradford runs our advertising markets and she was...
Ballmer: ... sales and programming for Microsoft.
Bartz: So there's a lot of transfer of personal knowledge back and forth. While all deals are chance because somebody wants something and somebody wants something else, people have really come together in the right spirit. That doesn't mean there won't be issues. But Steve and I have a good relationship and we have to start with that. That will reflect down to the organization, because I don't think either one of us will take any bulls--t from anybody. If either side starts playing (games), we just place a call to each other and the bulls--t meter comes on, right?
Ballmer: At the end of the day, we're not two companies that have high market share. We can't afford to have bulls--t.
Bartz: We also never been companies that have had big fights. Forget about last year, that isn't the point. Sometimes when companies get together that have hated each other for years, that's hard. This is not the case here. That makes a big difference.
The Deal Pipeline subscribers may read more about the deal, including the regulatory hurdles it faces here. - Mary Kathleen Flynn
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