That's one way to make the news, huh?
This should be interesting. I predict that today will be one of our least productive days since 9/11 at work. Just guessing.
Discuss...
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Posted by jzawodn at February 01, 2008 07:27 AM
I really hope Yahoo doesn't get acquired by Microsoft. While it may be great for MS, I don't see how Yahoo could survive it unchanged. And as you've already noted yourself in last year's post, MS very clearly doesn't get the web.
The culture from outside seems to be so different, Yahoo! and M$!
One has been so open towards the community of the user (Hadoop, YUI to name a few) it serves and the other? Its difficult to digest the new connection.
Perhaps Microsoft realizes that it doesn't "get" the web right now, hence the huge offer. You don't just throw money around like that unless you know you are getting value for your money.
If Microsoft infuses Yahoo and Microsoft consolidate talent pools (and trim off the fat) on their web projects, I think big things can happen.
It will ultimately benefit the users also, right now this competition among big 3 (Yahoo, Microsoft, Google) in e-mail/portal/general web space is partitioning the users the way it shouldn't.
MSFT can't do worse to YHOO than YHOO, at least competiviely. They might make it a worse place to visit, but I don't understand how YHOO is not more competitive with GOOG - I spend about 45 minutes a day on Yahoo properties and maybe 5 minutes on Google properties, unless I am in gmail alot, which maybe increases that number to 15 minutes a day. On the My Yahoo page the only ad is often one for YHOO itself... how can they not be selling more ads on My Yahoo?
On top of that, the "new" My Yahoo is horrible... and they have made marginal improvements to the existing pages over the years. While GOOG continues to innovate in features and in advertising distribution and placement.
And gmail vs. Yahoo mail? Forget about it. YHOO's integration of Oddpost is an epic failure, and Yahoo mail is almost as bad as hotmail - it's basically not useable.
I, for one, look forward to seeing what the MSFT overlords do with YHOO. And if they make it worse (see MSN, hotmail), I can always start using Google as my homepage.
I wrote up some of my initial thoughts over there: http://martinjansen.com/text/25254686/
If MS still can't get a proper browser working according to standards I don't see how they pretend to own Yahoo, which has a good relationship with standards and open source.
I like Yahoo, I remember I used it to search the Web when I started using it in the early nineties, I love Flickr, Delicious and get my news from Yahoo News.
I don't like Microsoft and how they work, explaining why is not needed, there are a lot of reasons. And I'm sure lots of persons think as I do.
If Microsoft eats Yahoo it would be a very sad event for many of us.
Damn, Z, I guess MS really wants to hire you. Now they're making an offer you can't refuse.
The Yahoo board has to accept this deal. I doubt Google is/can sweep for monopolistic reasons, so a duopoly looks very likely.
My biggest concern is culture. Yahoo's always been open source friendly, *Nix friendly, etc. What happens to Hadoop support? Of course, I have no clue what Microsoft will do with del.icio.us or Flickr.
A lot of attrition is going to occur if this goes through, and you know who wins ... Google. They get to lap up some of these people.
This clarifies what everyone has already known. Microsoft's Live search is an absolute failure and they need something to even have not loose as much ground as they are loosing.
The integration between the two companies and cultures would be very interesting.
I predict that if M$ succeeds in buying Yahoo, they'll follow their usual post acquisition route and Yahoo will become a total M$ shop (ie no Oracle, MySQL, UNIX, Linux etc).
If M$ and Yahoo Merge, it would be one of the epic failures in history. Culture of yahoo and MS are diff and I am sure many from Yahoo would be more than happy to work at Google than working at M$. It would only make it easy for Google to acquire the best talent pool
An Israeli blogger suggested that the new name of flick will be:
"Microsoft Flickr PhotoSharing(TM) 2008"
and commenters added:
"Microsoft Photo Sharing Studio For Professionals 2008 Standard Express Edition"
and:
"Microsoft Photo Sharing Studio For Professionals 2008 Standard Express Ultimate Edition"
For the exact same reason that people are suggesting this would be a failure, which seems to be the cultural differences between the two companies, I think it's easy to argue that this could be a huge success, too. Timing is good, too, because Google is focussed on Facebook's gaining momentum. Right now Google doesn't need to do anything about MS and Yahoo, the two companies have been doing it to themselves.
It's hard to believe that a large company like Microsoft can grow as fast as a comparatively small company like Yahoo which is in the process of transforming itself already. Looks like a way for Yahoo shareholders to opt out of long term growth for a price no better than recent times, before the transformation has had time to deliver.
In other words, nice timing by Microsoft to try to exploit a temporary market downturn and get the potential the shareholders have already paid for with their patience, depriving the shareholders of the benefit of that patience.
Case for Yahoo option holders is similar: if an option holder gets Microsoft shares presumably they are swapping higher growth potential for lower growth potential and losing out if it's a one to one today's value swap.
For those customers who deliberately choose Yahoo as a competitor to Microsoft, this presumably pushes them towards Google.
Hard to see this as being as good for Microsoft as the S u n deal may be for S u n. That deal did get VC a way out without waiting for the next market cycle and left the purchased company with more chance of continuing to be disruptive than if it became listed and was taken over that way.
I've been where you are way too recently. :) Will be interesting to see how things turn out. :)
I really dont understand posts about "new" my yahoo, yahoo mail. I think it's great.. and has the best email rendering (i know it because sometimes I send newsletters, and of course before I test it on all mail agents, with yahoo I have no problems, every time looks good).
One thing i would improve in yahoo mail, is to preload main scripts and graphics on login page. You have 5-30 seconds time until user understand that he is on login page, enters his password and clicks login).
I have never checked it on very slow machines. Its very pity that Browsers do not give information about how fast client machine is.
Web 2.0 Browser should have options like:
graphics details: high / middle / low
effects: high / middle / low
video quality: high / middle /low
Microsoft has great understanding of how user interface should look like. How to make complicated things clear and understandable (even 3 years old child can use it and even work in internet without understanding tcp/ip, dns and so on). So if microsoft invest money in yahoo, exchange their ideas, share their expirience about realization of this ideas, it will be good for both. maybe...:)
@Alexis, its wrong to compare ie6 and firefox, how old last version of firefox and how old is ie6 which comes with XP? they have made only one mistake, they didn't include auto update, if they make it with windows, why not to make it with their browser?
Well lets see I like YahooMail and Flickr a lot and YahooFinance is my browser home page. I'll be out of all these and 100% over to Google the moment any Microsoft acquisition is a done deal.
I like the "What if Microsoft Bought Yahoo?" post. Funny, I hadn't seen that before.
Seems like Yahoo's been hemorrhaging brains for a while now -- I mean, I'm gone ;-)
Don't you think that would continue and even incease if MS became the overlord? Yahoos are not exactly known for their love of The Khaki Lord.
I'll be toasting to you with a good single malt tonight,
M2
I don't see how this purchase can work without Microsoft totally destroying Yahoo's corporate culture.
We saw what happened to Hotmail when Microsoft took it over. I just can't believe that services like Flickr and Yahoo Mail will continue to do well under MS control (and Flickr has already suffered somewhat under Yahoo control). If this happens, I expect that I will let my paid Flickr membership lapse.
Finally, I don't trust any search engine that Microsoft is in control of. Unlike Google and Yahoo, Microsoft has shown a willingness to break the law and doesn't seem to concern themselves with ethical behavior.
The only i am worried about with scenario number one is the fate of YDN and all the open source dev that has been goin on at Yahoo: Javascript, Ruby, PHP, Flex etc...
Will that survive MS buying Yahoo? I am not sure cause many of those techs are competitions for the likes of ASP.net, Jscript, Silverlight etc...
Do you think that MS will push its own technologies like silverlight and asp.net to oust flex and php and many others?
I hope this will not happen.
We are using YDN resources a lot and this is very useful.
