Microsoft-Yahoo: An Upset In The Making?
February 3rd, 2008Following Yahoo’s recent release of information regarding its earnings, and the anticipation of massive lay-offs, Microsoft extended a nearly $45 billion deal to “help” Yahoo. Some interesting coverage and debate on this development can be found here, here, and here.
Whether you’re a fellow geek, an avid Internet user, or a technology / Internet investor, this proposal warrants close observation. It seems reasonable to assume significant changes will occur to many of today’s most commonly used Internet services, should Yahoo choose to accept this offer. Unfortunately, I tend to side with the notion that Microsoft will likely try to convert all Yahoo properties it retains to proprietary Microsoft software and systems. They didn’t get where they are today by keeping in mind the best interests of the Open Source community, or necessarily the best interests of the end users.
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing the news. This would be an interesting merger to say the least if it were to come to fruition.
The added web presence Yahoo! would give Microsoft would certainly be very valuable to them. It’s hard to say how valuable, though. There would have to be a tremendous amount of duplication between Yahoo! and MSN, wouldn’t there? Where do all the extra resources go?
Evidently, the real Super Bowl is between Microsoft and Google. But we probably knew that already, didn’t we?
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
There is some commentary in one of articles regarding Microsoft statements about fiscal savings via elimination of redundancy.
My guess is that Yahoo 360 would be axed. Yahoo Groups… maybe. Yahoo Groups arguably runs more smoothly that Microsoft’s counterpart. FlickR would likely be retained, as I can’t think of any currently existing Microsoft counterpart. The instant messenger would be folded in to Live Messenger, I guess, since there is already a degree of cooperative play between the two. I don’t even want to think about the Microsoft “throw mud at the wall and see what sticks” approach of patent application / litigation vs. the Open Source libraries, etc.
Honestly, as ubiquitous as Google is these days, I still do not wish to see such direct competition against them from Microsoft. Not because I have any fear that Microsoft would ultimately prevail, but rather because this is yet another good example of why their business tactics raise eyebrows.