Microsoft to Buy Yahoo?

Ken — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:51:51 +0000

So. Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

I can just imagine a conference room full of Microsoft executives, poring through PowerPoint slides about "synergies" and "leverage". At that level, you can see how Microsoft would be desperate to fight Google in the web search and advertising arenas.

But at so many other levels, this is an odd acquisition at best. Yahoo's Linux/PHP technologies won't fit with Microsoft's Windows-based technologies. The two companies have many products that are direct competitors (instant messaging, mail, search, maps); either they'd somehow have to be mashed together, or one would have to be killed off.

Culturally, Yahoo has embraced open source and open web standards. Is Microsoft looking for a way to move in that direction, or to quash it?

If Microsoft were to proceed with this, I think that five years down the road, most of what we know of Yahoo would be invisible or gone. Everything you see would be covered in garish "Windows Live" dressing... exactly the kind of poorly designed, ad-burdened, proprietary, heavy-handed mess that makes people eschew Microsoft for Google and Yahoo in the first place. Analysts will look back at this purchase as an act of desperation... and a colossal, $44.6 billion mistake.