Yahoo rejects Microsoft's bid

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Microsoft is flailing about and I'm enjoying it.

The question is not what is good for Yahoo. Yahoo dies either way. Microsoft's bid is certain death and bad for all in Yahoo and all Yahoo users. Yahoo uses BSD so Microsoft gains nothing from the bid except to kill a competitor. People don't use Microsoft's services for a reason. Hotmail has since Microsoft took over become a symbol for what not to do with an email service. It often locks out Linux and Mac users. Frequently is down. Hacked accounts are the norm with Hotmail. The spam filters are useless since Microsoft sponsored spam fills the inbox anyway. Accounts are deleted after very short periods of inactivity. Bugs abound. The wonder is why anybody would use Hotmail given Yahoo's better and Google's FAR superior free email offerings. Few Yahoo email customers would remain if Microsoft took over. Most of them already use Hotmail extensively anyway.

In terms of IM killing Yahoo IM which is the most reliable and advanced free IM out there and probably the most widely used would just be a boon to Google and AIM. MSN again lacks critical features making it a poor choice compared to the alternates. Yahoo's software being BSD based won't translate well to Microsoft's business model unless they bite the bullet and go back to using BSD for services like email and IM.

So the reality is that Microsoft is attempting to gain market share by killing off a competing company. It will fail as Yahoo's customers are already migrating to Google. Microsoft's offerings are not competitive and people continue to turn away from them. Just yesterday again there was an announcement on slashdot that Microsoft had again intentionally blocked Linux users from it's Hotmail site. How do you gain market share when you turn customers away? You don't and that is a core failure of Microsoft that will eventually be fatal.

Yahoo has the chance to scoop up niche markets and play off those but it's failure to do so has led it to being vulnerable. Yahoo for a long time was the premiere free email service. Google has since quietly deposed Yahoo there. Yahoo IM which is still the most advanced and reliable IM out there has not been improved much the last few years. While it has stagnated Google has released a competing IM product which when it matures threatens to over take Yahoo and AIM in the IM market. Yahoo 360 is probably the best of the multitude of personal networking sites but again Yahoo has allowed it to stagnate and is now plans to phase it out. Yahoo answers which is wildly successful and easily better organized than any other competitor however is so poorly moderated that it is it's own worst enemy. Unfair and inconsistent moderation just alienates it's client base. Yahoo's policies are it's own worst enemy. For example I tried to sign up for a paid email account with them a few years back. I'd been with Yahoo since it's first days as a free email user. I made extensive efforts to give Yahoo my money but they refused to take it. They wanted information that was years out of date. I have no idea where I was living back when I signed up for my account. That had bee several years prior and I was doing a good bit of contracting. This had me moving constantly during that period. Same result with other Yahoo services I tried to pay for. Without giving up an identity I'd had for a decade or so and creating a new one they would not take my money. How do you make money turning customers away like that?

Yahoo has the technology to compete but they have an almost Microsoft like dislike of customers and that has been their downfall. The lack of even a place to send them comments shows just how much they ignore customer feedback. The least they could do is let you vent your frustrations to an unread email address LOL. There isn't even a pretense of customer feedback. If they listened they would thrive given the base they are starting with.

As for Microsoft, they are seeing the server market slip to Linux and have basically surrendered it. The lack of server releases and improvements is a huge white flag in that department. Open Office and Google office have created the question of why does ANYBODY actually buy Microsoft office? Open office is fast becoming the standard office suite in companies big and small. It's free, handles more formats, has more features, is more reliable and no more wondering if the next release will be compatable with the previous. There is no more having to upgrade computers just because the new Office release will not run on older machines and will not work and play well with older versions of Office. Simply slap Open office on there and no more worries. The disaster that Vista has become leaves Microsoft vulnerable in the desktop OS market as well. With the other markets crumbling Microsoft may be forced to survive on desktop OS sales, a market they still dominate. Also a low profit market for them and one that is in serious trouble. As the economy founders people are less and less able to go buy new hardware and software every couple years. This means fewer and fewer OS purchases. Microsoft knows this. As an Internet search engine MSN is by far the most biased and least reliable. I can't name a single person that uses it as a primary search engine. The core philosophy of Microsoft will prevent it from ever catching Google. In the way of online office suites, Microsoft's renowned intrusive nature will generate too much distrust to ever be successful in that market. It is an idea they are trying to play catch up on but lack the technical background, ideas and trust to ever accomplish. In all other Internet services Microsoft lags behind in quality, quanity and customer service/awareness. By throwing away Mac and Linux users that alone alienates %10 or more of the market. No company can tell %10 of it's customers, especially the most tech savvy of it's customers and expect to stay around.

Xbox while semi-successful is not THE gaming console Microsoft started out to design and I believe it still is not profitable. I think they still take a loss every time they sell one. The constant abandonment of programing language platforms and Microsoft's deliberate attempt to end client programming has gutted a market they once found pretty profitable. Today many companies just continue to use VB even though it's obsolete, has been ended and is no longer supported. It would be far cheaper to convert to Gambas than to .net and is often just cost prohibitive. People don't rush out to learn .net like they did VB and VC. Far fewer people make a living doing pure .net today. Instead .net is one of the qualifications they need to learn. SQL Server has peaked out and is seeing MySQL eat heavily into the lower and mid ranged market. Oracle continues to rule the high end. SQL Server instead of carving out a niche still attempts to be the end all for everybody. Yet it lacks a tenth the functionality and power of Oracle despite being priced along the same lines. It has nowhere near the up time, security or speed of MySQL so it's squeezed from the bottom.

So it is actually Microsoft that is looking vulnerable not Yahoo with this ploy. It shows how desperate Microsoft is becoming. While inertia will keep them in business for some time. It is a company though without direction, without new ideas, a company fast running out of markets it can easily stamp out competitors. A company that may take the SCO method of suicide soon. It's attempt to buy out Yahoo is in itself a distress call not a logical business move. It is a flailing attempt to knock off a competitor at a time Microsoft should be investing that cash into finding niches where it can continue to flourish. I am personally enjoying the spectacle though I'd hate to see Yahoo pay the price. While I've long since switched to Google for most things there are still Yahoo services I rely on. So I hope Yahoo tells Microsoft where to shove it and outlives Microsoft, maybe even eventually returning the favor and offering Microsoft a buy out bid one day.

Posted by: draciron@...   Posted on: 02/12/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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