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Microsoft Prepares to Eat Yahoo
by George Ziemann -- July 29, 2009
This morning, Microsoft and Yahoo announced
that they had "agreed to collaborate on Internet search
and advertising, in a bid to challenge Google." Microsoft
really hates Google for some reason. Or wants Yahoo.
We can be pretty sure that M$ hating
Google is accurate. After all, they named their search engine
BING, which stands for "But It's Not Google." Or maybe
"Because It's Not Google." One of the two.
As someone who has been using Macs since
1986, this is exactly the kind of attitude that makes me use
"Because It's Not Microsoft" as a criteria when purchasing
software of any kind.
Having said that, I've also seen Microsoft
create partnerships with companies and screw them over royally
in the process. Sun comes to mind, the software company that
created the Java programming language. Java designed to be a
cross-platform extension of functionality for web browsers. Sun
let Microsoft add it to Windows and suddenly there were two
versions of Java -- the original and the M$ version, which were,
of course, not entirely compatible, negating the intent of Java
in the first place.
From what I've seen over the years, Microsoft's
big problem is that they never seem to create anything new. Their
process always seems to begin when either a) someone else
brings a new idea to market, as in the case of Java, or b) Someone
comes along and dominates a field that Microsoft has dabbled
in, which is the situation with search engines.
Microsoft covets ubiquity. They can't
stand it when they are an also-ran at anything. But then Google
went a step further and started offering office software online
(which I'm really not clear on because it's only peripheral information
for me), so now it directly competes with one of Microsoft's
core product lines.
I guess the first question is whether
Microsoft needs to dominate yet another facet of using a computer
for everyday functions?
Even though I'm using an older browser
on my primary computer, Yahoo and Google work equally well for
me. I primarily use Google, though, if I'm looking for information.
And so does most everyone else, judging by the fact that "Google"
is now a verb as well as a noun with two meanings.*
Microsoft has been around a lot longer,
but I don't think they even want to be a verb. You can tell someone
you're going to google them and they'll smile. Try telling someone
you're going to Microsoft them...
I think that Yahoo has a lot more to
fear from this arrangement than Google does. We'll see how it
works out.
* In mathematics, a google
is a 1 with a thousand zeros after it. Or maybe 999 zeros and
the digit 1 is the one-thousandth place. Either way, it's pretty
damned big.
