While the media has focussed on the Microsoft v Google implications of the Yahoo offer, others have picked up on the threat to Zimbra.

Whatever Microsoft’s agenda Microsoft for Yahoo, the significance of acquiring the only realistically competitive threat to its flagship Exchange product will certainly not have been lost on Steve Balmer.

It appears unless Microsoft lose an anti-trust action, Zimbra will be crushed underfoot. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learnt from a certain little Dutch Bank…

Lessons from ABN Amro, Barclays and Bank of America

Last year, I covered at length the takeover battle for troubled Dutch bank ABN Amro. Originally looking to be a straight-forward merger between Barclays and ABN, RBS jumped in and offered considerably more for the Bank.

Guessing that the real reason for the RBS counter bid was ABN’s US subsidiary LaSalle Bank, ABN set up the lightning-fast sale of LaSalle to Bank of America. ABN assumed that without LaSalle, RBS would simply pack up and go away.

ABN’s Poison Pill plan

In ABN’s case, the plan seen by many as simply a poison pill to discourage RBS failed. RBS simply pressed on with a renewed offer for ABN without LaSalle, winning the deal.

But most significantly for the point I’m making here, ABN were able to sell LaSalle to Bank of America. The rest they say, is history.

Spiriting Zimbra out Yahoo’s back door while Microsoft knocks on the front?

The seemingly unassailable offer of $44.6 Billion Microsoft has tabled for Yahoo is unlikely to be bettered by any other suitor, although Rupert Murdoch’s mighty News Corporation may be interested, it’s an outside possibility at best.

However, I can think of quite a few parties who might like to snatch Zimbra away from Microsoft’s murderous clutches. Apple or Oracle, perhaps. What about Sun, who recently acquired the Open Source database MySQL, a competitor to Microsoft’s SQL Server?

Such a strategy whilst serving to annoy Microsoft is unlikely to jeopardise the takeover, but would protect Zimbra and it’s growing list of corporate customers looking for a better deal than Microsoft’s dinosaur Exchange. And raise a cheer from the Internet community…