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Why not? Remember, having a monopoloy is not illegal, just using it to engage in anti-competitive behavior. I think that most people would call Yahoo and search service, where Google clearly rules the roost. And their other big services are Flickr and Yahoo Mail - neither of which is especially unique or has a large enough marketshare to prevent a deal like this.

Not that laws ever stopped large companies in this country before...

I just don't think a buyout would be accepted internationally. They would have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get such a thing signed through, least not the EU.

And what about Yahoo pride? The shareholders would say yes, their eyes lit up with money, but the staff would rather jump ship IMO than be a Microsoft property, especially if they were no longer allowed to run their ship how they saw fit.

staff would'nt need to jump, they would be pushed...

to many 'same' products to develop them both in the long run, which do you think will get the priority?

I just don't think a buyout would be accepted internationally... least not the EU.

If EU Allows Google+Doubleclick then why not MS+Yahoo! ?
Their combined market share would still be behind that of Google.

but the staff would rather jump ship IMO than be a Microsoft property, especially if they were no longer allowed to run their ship how they saw fit.

What?! On what basis do you say that? Leave that to Yahoo! employees, they live in REAL world and have families to feed and won't just cut off and abandon everything en masse because their new boss is Microsoft.

Edited 2008-02-01 14:46 UTC

I was just thinking the exact same thing. Let's hope this doesn't happen.

Yahoo are replacing much of their BSD stuff with Linux at the moment.

"Yahoo are replacing much of their BSD stuff with Linux at the moment."

Yeah, right (lol). Please post a link to that source

I can't provide a link to you that's not internal to Yahoo!, but their Everest database platform (which I'm working on in Bellevue, WA) is Red Hat linux.

Check netcraft for .yahoo.com.

I'm sure yahoo has Linux projects in the works, but much of their externally facing infrastructure is (and will be) FreeBSD.

And if MS does step in they will be slowing switching to windows. As I believe we saw when they acquired hotmail.

No really they are, RHEL for desktops at least. I've a friend who works as a developer there. I mean it'll take years, but they're doing it.

It is the other way around especially with mysql servers.

"Yahoo are replacing much of their BSD stuff with Linux at the moment."

Good lord -- why?!

Yah, basically look at it this way:

MSNSpaces vs. Blogger
Hotmail vs. GMail/Yahoo Mail
MSN Messenger vs. Yahoo Messenger
MSN Photos vs Flickr
MSN.com vs. Yahoo.com / Google
MSNSearch vs. Heck, even Altavista

MSN sucks at everything, and I mean /everything/ web-based. They cannot write web apps to save their life, and culturally, they're bland and soulless.

A Microsoft buyout would be a disaster on the scale of the last bubble. Could you imagine a .NET passport integrated version of Flickr??? Kill me now....

So does this mean that Microsoft admits "Live" is a failure?

"Terrible news for users of Flickr, Zimbra, PHP, FreeBSD, Yahoo Pipes, non-IE browsers, and any other technologies or services based on open source."

Ermm..how so? Yahoo has supported pretty much only windows for things over the last years. There is plenty of content on Yahoo that will not run in Firefox and where IE is required. I really do not understand this statement, unless they contributed to the other projects in some way I am not aware of.

Yahoo recently bought Zimbra one of the most promising open source competitors to Exchange.

Yahoo extensively uses and supports PHP.

Most of Yahoo's servers run FreeBSD

Flickr currently does work well with Firefox if MS gets Yahoo I don't know how long that will last.

"Yahoo recently bought Zimbra one of the most promising open source competitors to Exchange."

This I knew about, though besides funding I don't know what Yahoo has in it.

"Most of Yahoo's servers run FreeBSD"

That could be, but is that a contribution? Microsoft runs *nix as well on some of it's servers.

No idea at all about flickr, as I don't use photo sharing sites. Those are right up there with Facebook and Myspace as worthless to the net IMO.

Thanks for the response though. It looks like I was mistaken and they have a bigger hand in OSS then I originally thought.

I doubt MSFT runs any form of Unix on its internal servers. It does use akamai's linux network for its static external web content, but afaik, no unix internally.

Please.. They have always been super restrictive. The only reason you get more than 3mb without having to pay for the "premium" version mail box is because they had to compete with gmail. I wouldnt be supprised if they had completely dropped the free email by now if gmail hadn't started.

Well...it's a service that has pefectly suited my needs (especially in the context of having had pretty strict limits for most of those 10 years set by my parent institution regarding sending attachments - type and size).

In any case, by your own logic, Yahoo should remain in the game, since obviously competition brings benefits to the user.

Very interesting viewpoint. Buying Yahoo, if it were allowed, could very well be that point that future historians point back to as MS's fatal mistake. +1 for original thinking. That idea is worth further consideration.

I agree, Microsoft should stick to making Operating Systems and Office Suites. Well, I wouldn't even use their Operating Systems, and since I'm just a poor person who usually writes poetry or short stories and have no need for a full office suite, Abiword or Openoffice.org Writer work just fine. Why oh why can't MS just allow someone to buy Word, or Excel separately?

They should basically stay away from everything else. Microsoft has the biggest "Me too!" attitude of any corporation on the planet. "Hey, you're making some good money with xxx, I think I want that. Oh wait, you don't want to sell it to me? Well, I'll just make a product similar, not as good or refined, and just market the hell out of it. You'll just be a memory after that of course. You should have just sold us your product and we all would have been happy."

They don't give a crap about the customers or their rights.

I won't say that Microsoft is the only company that does this, but really all the smaller companies in this industry (or any industry for that matter) always get bought up by the large corporations, so that there is no competition and innovation anymore.

Let's just look at the splintered instant messenger history. ICQ was great in the day, bought by AOL. Yahoo Messenger is great (though their Linux support stinks), but if Microsoft buys them out, I bet it'll simply be discontinued, or merged into MSN Messenger, which I can't stand.

It's not like any of these protocols are really superior over another, at least as far as the users are concerned.

I'm actually kind of surprised that Microsoft hadn't bought up Cyrix, or AMD or Intel already. Sure I know AMD and Intel are both huge now, but back in the day when AMD were first making x86 compatible chips, Microsoft could have tried going the Apple route and making hardware and software. Perhaps Vista would have actually been worthwhile then It is a well known fact that is one of the reasons why Macs are so stable.

I really hope Yahoo doesn't sell out. There really are too few large companies that have any sort of dignity left. Not that this is anything new. Look toward Commodore or SCO for a good example of greed and self-serving scum.

If Yahoo were to be bought, I think someone who doesn't already have a stake in the search engine market should do it. Someone like IBM, Sun, Novell, etc. Unfortunately I don't think they have the cash.

Google and Yahoo are demonstrating that the OS is no longer as relevant as used to be.

Google releasing an OS would be like farting into the wind.

Google already have an online office suite, online mail, online web apps for almost everything an office user is going to do with their OS.

Google are already marginalising Windows, because companies cannot justify Vista in order to run a few internal webapps.

Is this close enough for you?

http://www.thinkgos.com/

Honestly this whole all apps on the web thing really stinks in my opinion. I can not for the life of me see what is supposed to be so beneficial about running all of your apps in a web browser, and saving all of your private documents, etc on some 3rd party server.

People complain about giving up freedom, then they so easily jump on the web app band wagon where you have absolutly 0 control over the application, or the files you create with it for that matter. (It may seem like you have control over the files you create with it, but I assure you, you dont Your a bit naive if you think that people who work at google dont have the ability to go through any of the files you save at any time)

I think I will stick with saving MY files on MY hard drive where I can control who does and doesnt see them, and control when I upgrade, and when I dont, and what OS I use.

(Also consider the fact that the operating system will never be meaningless considering that you cant run a web browser with magic).

Edited 2008-02-01 17:09 UTC

I think that is what Mozilla is working toward, but they seem to be missing the "presonal" part of it. The new offline features and APIs being added blur the line of desktop app versus web app. It would be very clever to bend the idea so that you can keep the app your way, and choose how much of the data goes upstream.... the issue being the less is upstream, the less portable it is, unless the offline web also works on memory stix.

Sun have already gone as far as opening up most of the source code of their most popular applications under the GPL. One of their last holdouts is Solaris, which is still licensed under the CDDL, but GPLv3 is a possibility in the future.

It's said that Microsoft is the world's largest startup and they indeed still seem to behave that way. Everything that is set to become a threat to their bottom line must either be acquired or eliminated, all for the sake of pushing Windows, Office and their less profitable software.

Really it's a case of "Microsoft all the way or the highway". They can't seem to adapt to the notion that modern problems are solved in a mix and match fashion.

This is done increasingly using FOSS operating systems and applications but if the task at hand requires a number of Microsoft solutions, those could be chosen as well. It all depends on customer satisfaction, not pushing your stuff to the point of aversion.

So another Distro and another fork of OO (MacOS, IBM) would be enough to competite with Microsoft? *rofl*

I said only maybe a Linux distro and OpenOffice, that is not the main point.
My point is that Google's reply to this Microsoft move should be challenging them in their own territory: operating systems and office suites, in order to preserve competition.
And I am almost 100% sure that they could do better than Microsoft.

Google is not magic. Both companies have a lot of talented engineers, and a lot of people fresh out of college like me, and some people in between. Building up Office took decades and a particular type of expertise, which Google does not necessarily have. Same thing with a consumer operating system. Nothing will cause Google to lose its lustre faster than entering into a market against Microsoft and flopping.

We've heard that MS were interested before, but now they've made an offer.

Yahoo! is also the face of Verizon email, user pages. etc. So now that would become Microsoft?

Whoa, bucko, it was just an offer. Don't go worrying about the re-branding of Yahoo mail just yet.

You could have switched to Google Apps for domains which is FREE also (6.8gb currently) for as many email accounts as youneed.. That's what I did with my hosted services, I offload all the email to google. My customers like it because it's familiar and comes with alot of other services. I like it because I don't have to worry about peoples email, if there is a server problem, and it takes a huge load off of the servers.

Do your clients mind it if Google spiders through their email?

If you're just doing data analysis and storage, why does the OS really matter that much?

Seconded.

In addition, Microsoft has been able to compete in lots of other arenas. Gaming, for example: XBox Live is often called the "right way" for such a gaming community to work, compared to the systems of the Wii (hobbled by privacy concerns, requiring you to exchange long passwords to even be able to receive messages) and PS3 (no software, no need).

Their other ventures haven't been as unassailable as their OS, but that's okay. An operating system business is an okay, although somewhat risky investment. An operating system, office suite, ERP, console games, PC games, and soon social networking business is an excellent, stable investment.

I sort of agree with the main thrust of your argument (I don't know anything about the specifics of the Yahoo deal). But I disagree that there's no value to be seen in tech. Maybe the web is overvalued, but I think that Microsoft and Apple are good valuable investments because they both produce tangible products that require long built-up expertise to make.

I'm not weighing into this, it's not my area but I enjoyed reading your post about what may or may not happen, fascinating.

There's only one thing that I dispute: that Yahoo! has been losing money for several years. The more accurate statement is that they've not been nearly as outrageously profitable and growing as fast as Google, while they've actually made money in this market, as opposed to Microsoft.

All your other points, great fodder, and I'm pondering the whole mess from inside the belly of the beast that's intended to become inside the belly of the beast This may truly shake out how portable stuff at Yahoo! really is, and whether or not Microsoft can figure out how to integrate everything that's so dissimilar in so many ways.

In this area (Redmond, Bellevue, Seattle area) it seems "All roads lead to Microsoft" and most of the people I'm currently working with have worked at Microsoft before, and it seems they're possibly boomeranging as well (one former Yahoo! manager that previously worked at Microsoft left Yahoo! to go back and work at Microsoft Research while I've worked under contract at Yahoo!) and this seems to be a recurring pattern in this area in the field. After all, they're the biggest single employer outside of Boeing (and if you're in that relevant field, almost all roads lead to Boeing Field or one of their plants).

A big thing is there's a HUGE difference in what I've seen between Microsoft's and Yahoo!'s culture. The one thing they've got in common is the dress code (if it doesn't get you arrested for indecent exposure, everything else is optional, including shoes) but Yahoo! (At least where I'm at) seems more team-oriented, and Microsoft is ultra-competitive, one against another, based on my observations from interviewing there in the past and knowing a lot of people that work there.