MSFT to YHOO?

Happy Fajitas!

How many people would stop using Yahoo just because MS bought it?

I would not stop using Yahoo if MS bought it. I would love it even more. Especially with this new Silverlight stuff.

I just hope MS stock continues up!!!!

Billg: Ya know there a lot of people out there who don’t work in the tech industry or spend there days debating the evil of msft or which company is more innovative. A LOT more people. I’m amazed how technophiles feel THEY are the public.

Robert, why do you do so many events for free? Is it PodTech policy that you can’t take speaking fees? Just curious.

I agree with you. You’re much smarter than Gates. If he only listened to you he’d be much more successful. Too bad for him.

Now we’ll be able to go to msn.com or live.com or yahoo.com or alltheweb.com or altavista.com for search.
There could be a master search page for the Microhoo search properties.

Munir: Scoble works because he does things which are against the norm. When his stuff starts becoming the norm, he moves on to newer ones. But when something doesn’t become the norm, he latches on to it (like his gates story).

Uh… I don’t think MS is interested in purchasing Flickr and Del.icio.us for the reported pricetag. They’re interested in purchasing Yahoo! And I’m very skeptical that the reason they are interested involves Flickr or Del.icio.us in any way.

Anyone else thinking of dropping flickr the day MSFT buys it?

Well it will certainly save me a lot of trouble instead of venting my spleen on the companies individually I can just pick on Yahsoft, or will it me Microhoo?

Both are companies that got too comfortable with their leadership positions and forgot (I think permanently) how to look at their products from a customer perspective. It is for this reason primarily that companies seek to merge rather than split into smaller pieces (which is better for everyone except the pieces that aren’t doing well in the marketplace). A merger will give both companies excuses to have sub-par results for several years while keeping stockholders mesmerized waiting for synergies to develop. Since I don’t own stock in either company I say Go for It!, Shoot the Moon!, Jump the Shark!, etc.

I’m sure Yahoo! wouldn’t lose too many customers if MS bought it. There is no way I would drop my Flickr account. It’s far far too good

I’m even wondering if MS could buy Yahoo! Would there not be a good chance it would be an Anti-Trust issue?

@5:

I dropped flickr when Yahoo got it and introduced limits designed to force people into an annual fee. Yahoo is like cable TV, first they introduce ads to pay for the service, then they ask you to pay for the service to get rid of the ads, then they introduce the ads to the paid service, and the service never gets better unless someone comes along to challenge them (like Google). Google photo gives me a gig to use as I please, no upload limits, no funny name changing gimmicks, and more and more hooks into other services. Why would I want to use Flicker? (Former user of Yahooo-just about everything).

How long are you in Atlanta? I’d be happy to buy you and Maryam lunch/dinner and talk baby stuff since my wife is expecting on the 22nd of this month.

This is ironic.

I’d been trying for ages to ditch my yahoo email for hotmail so that I can put my passport.net services under one umbrella. But once you get a hotmail account, you can’t *then* transfer your passport credentials. Something they don’t tell you when you sign up for hotmail.

In the meantime, I’ve been using the yahoo mail beta, and discovered that it’s better than hotmail. Way better.

10 years ago I pinged up through the management chain that MS should buy ICQ. This was two years before AOL picked them up. I am not saying I was right (I don’t hear much about ICQ any more) but you can’t deny that momentum they had at the time and the development saving that could have been realized over developing Messenger and all of it’s iterations. Not to mention the very well established user base ICQ had at the time.

Chris

“UPDATE: it’s funny that Microsoft could end up paying a LOT more for Flickr and Del.icio.us than it would have paid if they had bought those when I told Gates to buy those. Sigh.”

Flickr and Del.icio.us only became big because they were bought by any larger company. Microsoft could have purchased any competing service and boosted it that last mile. It could have been digg or any other photo site. Sites like that never go all the way until they make that final aquisition.

In that sense del.icio.us and flickr are common and generic.

As for the merger or aquisition. I have one word.
ANTITRUST, and one url http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm

I hope the new Democratic govt can finally finish them off this time should a Democrat be elected in the Executive branch.

I hope they get crippled and done in for good the way it should have went down 10 long years ago with Janet Reno. Yahoo+MSFT may push it over the edge.

I am not looking forward to seeing Microsoft spent the next half-decade trying to port the software from their new acquisitions to .Net when they should be trying to make money from them – NIH writ large.

I would stop using Yahoo if MSFT bought it. Which is a shame. I still prefer my.yahoo.com to the personalized Google. But this deal, in terms of my usage, would instantly help GOOG.

Somebody said that Yahoo would benefit from such an effort and were a good stock buy again… Who said that?

Yahoo?!? Are they still around?

@13, to stop using Yahoo if MSFT bought it would be a strange decision but understandable nonetheless. But to go away from Microsoft in favor of Google on principle… Insanity comes to mind. Google is to this generation of computing to what Microsoft was to the previous generation of computing. They are moral equivalents.

23 should read @20 not @13

“when I told Gates to buy those”

Get over YOURSELF. In what dillusional place do you live? I’m sure Gates has parrots saying “buy this” and “buy that” for dozens of companies EVERYDAY. Why would the recommendation of a simple blogger stand out?

Perhaps you failed and didnt SELL the idea well enough?

>Robert, why do you do so many events for free?

Because I like meeting people and it brings me great joy to do it. PodTech does have a policy against taking speaking fees unless management approves first, though.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be in Atlanta or when I’ll be free yet. I’m only there a short time (about 24 hours). I’ll blog next week when I figure that out.

teknologist: actually no one else had proposed the strategy I had proposed. I got lengthy replies from several executives. So, yeah, I’m an arrogggaannntttt bbbbbaaahhhhssssttttaaaarrrrrdddd, but where was your plan back in 2003?

Obviously no one did a good enough sales job to Gates and Co, have they? So, I failed swinging at the bat. Not many other people even took a swing.