Microsoft wants Yahoo - what you should know
Its official - after about 3 years in the rumor mill Microsoft made public today that they wanna swallow yahoo for some whopping 44.6 billion USD - Yahoo will probably go along as it looks like as of today. That a lot of cash but what Macrosoft does not see yet is the user exodus this will likely cause. For me the rumor has come 3 years ago almost exactly on the day I wanted to start using Flickr. This rumor back then was enough to reconsider putting my time and energy into that service - and my intellectual property because I read the fine print for Flickr and I did not like it (using all pictures for their own purpose whenever they want wherever they want - don´t know if that changed over the years). Now Macrosoft will have the rights that Yahoo had and therefore the rights to Flickr. I don´t know if there are any similar services out there but I am sure if there is even one that offers similar functionality as Flick user will start swarming away.
But the bug ain´t stopping there. del.icio.us is also part of Yahoo. Now I have extensive amounts of links on del.icio.us. but during my research for the podcast I stumbled across Ma.gnolia.com and guess what? It imports your del.icio.us links fully intact looks more pretty has more functions is easier to use has more possiblities to sort - its just A LOT better then del.ico.us - I switched in a heartbeat and it was perfect timing as it seems - no one knows how long you are allowed to export your del.icio.us bookmarks ones M$ ownz it all - and mostly reads it all as well and stores it and judges them - any pornlinks, warezlinks and similar darknet links to be removed very soon so they are clean MSN search compliant.
Then there is Yahoo Groups - one of the biggest mailinglist services out there. Again its one of the bussinesses Yahoo bought in over the years (and merged it with their own unsuccessful version). My old University runs their official mailinglist on there (something I initiated way way way back when nobody even knew what a mailing was) - well since mailinglists are not used that much anymore this is not a big loss, but a lot of communities might still want to reconsider if they want to open up their communication to microsoft who likes to work with governments.
Oh and then there is yahoo mail - expect your email address if you have on there to end as "msn.com" soon - no its not gonna happen but then again how would you feel if Microsoft has direct access to all your mail? Googlemail just looks sooo much more attractive.
I think M$ partially wants the groups that yahoo has created - lots of groups with diverse interests, groups that make art, collect links and just talk about diverse things. They also want the 10% search market share that yahoo has left (has anyone really ever used Yahoo search? I have and it sucked) in general I think Microsoft does not do itself nor Yahoo nor the internet a favor if it goes ahead (that still an incredible amount of money even for Microsoft) but since when does M$ think ahead? Generally its a grand Soap Opera unfolding in front of the internet users eyes and I am pretty sure like 10 years down the road it might end in big crocodile tears for Microsoft....
A bit more on the topic on Saturday in the radioPrototypen podcast (will be in german so)...