Microsoft puts a bid on Yahoo!

As you all probably know by now, Microsoft has put a bid of $44.6 billion for Yahoo!.

This reminds me of, back in the day, when AOL bought Time Warner, but in essence, if this goes through, it will have an even greater impact on Internet. Of course the deal is from closed, and I’m convinced many many people will object to it, institutions as well as the people in charge at Yahoo!.

But, as I’ve understood it, reading the reports of different business analysts, even if Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang and his crew will most likely be upset by the offer, business-wise and with the best interest of the stake holders, it seems like they should accept the offer.

A possible result

From a business perspective, I think Microsoft are definitely doing the right thing, in trying to to be able to compete with the Google dominance. They’re not strong enough when it comes to search engine usage, and especially in the advertisement are, an economical turnover which can’t be overlooked.

However, from an idealistic perspective, I’m afraid that Microsoft, with a history of proprietary solutions, will hurt the future and evolvement of the web. Google expresses their view in Yahoo! and the future of the Internet, something which has to be taken with a barrel of salt, them being the main competitor. They do have a point, though, Microsoft’s history isn’t that clean, and they certainly haven’t worked for an open web or cross-platform solutions.

As a Mac user, what I’m afraid of the next time I misspell a search, the suggestion wouldn’t be “Did you mean: robert nyman” but rather:

Optimize your search results by upgrading your operating system to Windows.

Yahoo! will lose a lot of talented people

Given the great skill set and being open mindset of a lot of Yahoo! web developers, it must really suck to one day work on amazing things like Yahoo! Maps and YUI, and the next day be owned by the company with the worst web browse in the market which effectively holds back the evolvement of the entire web.

If this deal indeed goes through, make sure to open your arms and accept fleeing web developers. After all, it’s just business as usual…

10 Comments

  • claus says:

    It's sad. Yahoo has contributed a lot of things to the standards movement, and I for one, don't see that happening under Microsoft.

    Look on the bright side, though. If Microsoft buys Yahoo, a lot of Yahoo's brightest employees will be cashing in their stock options and leaving to start (in effect) Microsoft funded competing startups.

    Here's hoping!

  • Yes yahoo has contributed a lot for the community. The latest yahoo user interface library is also such a hit with developers. I too am not sure whether it is good or bad when small companies merge to become bigger. BUt let's all hope for the best !

  • Stephen Hill says:

    I do fear that this will result in less innovations for Yahoo staff that we're experienced over the past few years.

    The other day I was reading the research Yahoo had done in improving webpage performance and load times, something Microsoft would never had done (maybe for IE only).

    I also hope that none of this possible merger effect Flickr. I wouldn't be able to cope if Flickr Uploadr started to use the IE engine instead of FF πŸ™

    Cheers

    Stephen

    PS: I just want to let you know that I'm having problems loading your compressed style sheet in Firefox. style.gz.css doesn't work but it I load style.css all is well πŸ™‚

  • Robert, funny how I've been thinking a lot of the same things.

    I am sure that big G could use a lot of the talented developers from Yahoo … and if that happens, MS have effectively paid an obscene amount, to lose most of the talen to Google (or new startups).

    And with the new ball and chain, they might be killing themselves even faster … I think MS needs new management…

  • Hey, this morning I heard in the radio that MS pulled their offer back off. Now I'm not 100% sure though…

    I believe that by buying Yahoo!, MS might have a chance to evolve into something better. Even though Yahoo! as it exists now will die πŸ™

  • Olly says:

    I think the "Optimize your search results by upgrading your operating system to Windows" reaction is a little bit over the top. Microsoft know they aren't the only game in town. They know they need to be able to operate across platforms and browsers.

    That's why their javascript libraries are cross-browser compatible. That's why their Silverlight plug-in works on a variety of browsers and operating systems (including Linux, if you count Mono/Moonlight).

    I don't think this deal is a particularly good thing, but it's certainly not the disaster everybody is making it out to be.

    Unless they mess up Flickr. Then it'd be an unmitigated disaster and should never have been allowed to happen πŸ˜‰

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Thanks for our comments.

    Olly,

    Yes, Microsoft has indeed made some work to ensure things work it cross-browser and cross-platform. But if you look at something like XAML, the idea is to give a richer experience to competent operating systems (Windows, from their point of view) and a down-scaöed one to others.

    Things might be ok, but given Microsoft's history of ruining good things still haunts me. πŸ™‚

  • Olle says:

    Yawn!

    It was ages ago you actually wrote anything that was remotely interesting. When i read blogs i want an "AHA" experience, none of your posts the latest 1.5 years have given me that feeling.

    I know that blogs by definition are subjective, however there are people out there who manage to write things in an objective perspective and you are, sorry to say, not one of them.

    You are now removed from my feed.

  • Robert Nyman says:

    Olle,

    If you feel that way, you definitely shouldn't subscribe to my feed.

  • […] I’m sure everyone knows, Microsoft put a bid on Yahoo!, and after that it was a circus with speculations and opinions. Currently, as far as I know, […]

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