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Google And Microsoft Cross Swords Over Yahoo!
watzinaneihm writes "In a blog post Google has called Yahoo/Microsoft merger bad for the future of the internet. It is worried about the number of email and IM accounts this merged entity would control. Microsoft has countered with the argument that Google is actually the big bully in this instance, with most of the search market already tied up. The New York Times, in the meantime, has accused Google of a Microsoft fixation."
...I'm actually going to have to side with Microsoft on this one. On rather, I'm going to side with no one. The idea that this would make Microsoft a bigger "monopoly" is unfounded because neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! has anywhere close to the highest marketshare of online searches or advertising. If we're so concerned about monopolies, competition in the field can only be a good thing. And at the rate it was going, unless something like this happened, no one would ever be able to stop Google.
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
I love how Microsoft's take on the merger is that it will create more competition. Why is it that any time a big company swallows a smaller one, we're told that having fewer players in the field will increase competition? Do people actually buy that line of bull? Someone get these guys a dictionary.
MSFT countered the Google announcement that, "What Google is doing is throwing some FUD. Trying to scare people using monopoly, proprietary and other such terms. MSFT considers this tactic illegal, since we have innovated, invented and patented the FUD technique. We consider all forms of FUD dissemination to be an exclusive intellectual property right of MSFT and nobody else has any legitimate claim to it. We will add this to the tally to 293 patent violations against MSFT by Linux and its accomplice Google."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So Google voice a legitimate worry about Microsoft, a company convicted of abusing its monopoly status in one market to dominate other markets, buying a company that would give them a large portion of a market and they are the bad guys in this? Lets be honest what Google is saying is the first thing that came to the minds of everyone in IT who are not on the Microsoft payroll. We all know how Microsoft works and we can all hazard a guess at what their aims are in attempting to purchase Yahoo. It is doubtful the good of the internet and consumers are particularly high on their list of priorities.
Google has a Microsoft fixation? Ok, I'm not willing to argue that, but I think the fixation railroad runs both ways. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is more than a little pre-occupied with Google.
Microsoft would prefer a controlled^Wsecured Microsoft(r) Inter-Network, let's call it MSN for short
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
When it's Godzilla vs Godzilla, Tokyo gets trashed either way.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
It seems to me that innovation usually comes from the 'new kids on the block'. All these people are trying to predict the who's going to bring the newest idea. I don't think that's something you can predict. All the current players have done their trick and the 'newest innovation' will likely from someone new that we haven't heard of yet. My belief is the current players are all stuck in the same mindset they have always been in and that's hard to change. Granted that's my interpretation but there it is.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
in a few years Google is buying Microsoft anyway.
.sig: No such file or directory
See? See? The bad guy (Microsoft) kidnaps the princess (Yahoo!) and The valiant knight (Google) comes to the rescue! And there was much epic battling. Then the princess stabbed both in the back. The end.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
If it goes ahead it will be hugely disruptive of Microsoft as various in-house factions battle to increase their own influence and grab as much of the meat off the Yahoo bones as they can.
Both Google and Microsoft,if REALLY worried about who get to control what for what reasons need to follow this simple formulae.
Both parties contribute half the money for buyout.
Both parties agree that I will run the business favoring only my own interests.
Both parties agree I will keep 90% of all profits.
Both parties agree to do the same in future business squabbles.
Ol' uncle flyneye will keep the kids from fighting and set a good moral example for both.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
People can switch search-engines every day, but groups not so. How many groups or mailing lists do you belong to? How many of those are yahoo groups. I would be very surprised if anyone belonged to half a dozen groups or more without at least one being yahoo.
Moving a group is difficult, and it need the owner to want to. If you are a member you could set up a rival, but the chances are you would end up talking to yourself. Now suppose those groups switched to Silverlight (for a richer user experience) and required IE7 running on windows to access. This would be a big downer for any competitive desktops.
if anyone in the computing industry doesn't have a Microsoft fixation, you should probably stay away from them. You never know what MS will do next and given their market share that isn't exactly something you want to be oblivious to.
Google's entire annual revenue fits into Microsoft's profit margin alone. Google is small compared to Microsoft. A little hard to be the 'big bully'. And unlike Microsoft's more diversified revenue stream, Google pretty much relies on one comparatively fragile market, online advertising, a market Microsoft wasn't even interested in until long after Google dmeonstrated it could be so lucrative.
If MS wants to beat Google at online marketing, they should offer better deals to affiliate sites and advertisers.
(posted something similar earlier, but I'll repeat it anyway)
- Yahoo has more frequent visitors than any MS website
- Yahoo has more online properties of value (games.yahoo.com, flickr, groups, launch, many more)
- Yahoo has a waay larger employee headcount compared to MS's online business division
- Yahoo's branding strategy and customer loyalty is waay higher.
- The Yahoo! brand doesn't have an image problem (people like Yahoo or are more or less neutral about it)
On the other hand..- MS has a huge branding problem with it's online properties
- A lot of people aren't even aware of most of these properties
- Hotmail and MSN.com are probably MS's only sites that get as many clicks as any of Yahoo's sites -- but they can't be monetized.
So why would MS pay 44B for yahoo only to turn it into MSN?Google is right to object -- and to block by helping Yahoo -- because Microsoft is an intensively abusive monopoly by culture and history and conviction. They're the neighborhood predator, and everyone living there knows it.
Google has become successful by being very good at what it does and does it without abusing its power. Microsoft, well, if the Gentle Reader can't recite a litany of even the most recent abuses, it's useless for me to list them. Go, Google.
Just something that I have not seen noted anywhere yet, but google's dominance of the search market is earned and is also fragile. I remember using yahoo and thinking it was great, then I moved over to AltaVista, then onto google, my loyalty only exists as long as I do not find a better way of getting the answers I want.
Google is my preferred search engine and has been almost exclusively for quite some time now, but I am not tied to them in the same way I am with email and instant messaging. The potential merger between Yahoo and MicroSoft is not something I think would be good for anyone, will it improve searches? nope, MicroSoft spent a huge sum relaunching their search product, and I did try it but I still found google faster and returned the better information. As for advertising revenue, googles advertising model means they make the most money because most people use their service. Should they fail to be the best search engine, they will see drops in revenue to match. So I am not concerned by their advertising side.
I like Yahoo and use several of their services, I fear (which is unfounded except from MicroSoft's reputation and track record) that should they get control of Yahoo it will be a bad day for the internet. I fear it would not take very long before the feeling of being able to trust Yahoo is tarnished (whether fair or not) by Microsoft's reputation and actions.
Sadly with the premium that has been placed on Yahoo it may turn into a hostile take over by Microsoft as if they really want it who is really going to turn down the cash?
My hope is that Yahoo's board say no and Microsoft back off not wanting to add to their negative press and image. This could be good for Yahoo as it may show that Yahoo still has a high value suggesting time could be given to management to make the changes necessary to the business and have time for a return to be seen.
As for competition, 3 big companies trying to do the best search or 2, which gives the best environment for innovation?
Just my 7 pence
"No fixation, no envy -- just business as usual." We know what Steve Ballmer thinks of Google: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google".
....
Quotes:
At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."
Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay... Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards."
Maybe not fixation, maybe not envy, but SOME kind of mental illness.
Remember, what is a self-evident truth to you is not to everyone. The anti-Microsoft sentiment is almost exclusive to the geek crowd, which is a teeny tiny minority, and it's hardly universal among even us.
MS woke up late to the internet. Once they woke up, their attempts at gaining a foothold were more or less unsuccessful.
Indeed. However this move is possibly their most bone-headed reaction yet. I have no doubt it's straight from the brain of Steve I'm going to fucking kill Google Ballmer. Acquiring Yahoo is another attempt to tame the internet and tie it to Windows services, and it will fail as dismally as the last few attempts, because the internet (and Yahoo) is the antithesis of Microsoft.
Users on the web don't like being 'monetized' unless there's something in it for them, and they'll resist attempts by MS to change that balance of power. Those attempts by MS to exploit users are inevitable because it's just not in Ballmer's (or Microsoft's) DNA to let users get something for nothing.
For Microsoft as a company, swallowing Yahoo whole is going to create many more problems than it solves. It will drive the good engineers to Google (very few of Yahoo's people could thrive under the entirely different MS culture), it'll give Microsoft lots of new properties which directly compete with their own offerings, it'll make all the MS Live employees very nervous and trigger more internal turf wars, and finally, it will land MS with servicing lots of disgruntled users on services like Flickr who will desert in droves at the first attempt to corral them into an MS only internet (as MS is prone to do - see ActiveX, IE, Silverlight, etc). Their business model (lock in the users and milk them for profits) isn't under threat, it's past its sell by date; you can't continually abuse your users forever and expect them never to walk away, particularly not if you're trying to operate as a web services company, and I have my doubts that Ballmer et al will ever learn this lesson. They've done too well in the past by applying it to abandon it now.
Still, if you don't work at Yahoo, and you're not keen on Microsoft dominating yet another market, this foolish move is heartening news. Google must be celebrating the beginning of the end of the dark ages of the internet. This will tie up MS for years.
Is this a possible outcome?
There is nothing subjective about it at all - the technical facets of the architecture of different systems are facts held in stone, and can, broadly speaking, scientifically and reliably even be tested by various measures. You can reliably test speed of fundamental OS X system calls (e.g. slower than the corresponding Linux calls, as I recall one benchmark showed a while back), for example, or reliably see how Windows Memory Management behaves under certain conditions (point of fact, horrible under any normal circumstances). There is nothing mystical or non-deterministic in a computer's architecture, even though computers may seem unpredictable, they are highly predictable. I have 2GB RAM but Vista hardly touches the second GB, anything above the first and it starts dumping stuff to swap, this isn't a religious or subjective point, it's a fact, and it slows things down unnecessarily - that can be measured. Maybe a low-end user isn't affected by it and so doesn't realise anything is wrong and says "but it works great on my system" - whatever, it's still wrong.
... and it wouldn't make me religious, just ignorant, unless perhaps I refused to be proved wrong under any circumstances whatsoever (and that is something I've actually never really seen in computing in all my years).
Now computers are complex and have many facets, so the balance, or overall opinion, is the sum of all the various facets against how they affect the desired tasks required of a particular user.
The only time it ever truly becomes "subjective" though is when the user is uninformed and/or doesn't really know or understand what is going on, which just happens to be 95%+ of cases when it comes to computers. But then it still doesn't become "religious" --- that's just "ignorance". If one knows nothing about computers but decides "ah well Windows seems good enough" or "Linux rocks hardcore!!111!" or whatever, I wouldn't call that religion or even subjectivity, it's just forming an opinion based on ignorance. Not knowing any better.
An analogy would be if, say, I decided I thought Porsches were better than Ferraris, just because I felt like it. I know nothing about cars, but it might well be that Ferraris are far better engineered, and engineers would be able to tell you as a matter of fact, yes, this is stronger there, that horsepower is greater there, that material is more robust, blah blah --- I don't really know anything about that stuff. That wouldn't make my preference "subjective" or "religious" - just wrong.
At least, all this holds for grounds of technical merit --- aesthetic appeal is another matter altogether, and there I'll admit, subjectivity to a degree yes, religion, definitely no. One person might like the look of OS X, another some arb X Window Manager like Enlightenment. If a person says Windows looks the best however but has never really tried the others, well, that's just ignorance, like saying my favourite ice-cream flavour is chocolate when I've never tried any other flavour.
I guess some of this boils down to, there is a difference between saying "A is better than B" and "I like A more than B". If I like Porsches because I think they look better, that's fine, that is a "subjective" matter. But I can't claim "Porsche accelerates faster" or something if it just isn't true, the objective universe out there would be able to prove me wrong
There nonetheless still remains a big gap between "subjective", and "religious". I guess I dislike that term because it's commonly used around here to push a world-view that purports that all operating systems should ultimately be treated equally, like we try do with cultures/religions, and to thus push the idea that any preference is in itself ideological or zealous, which is utter crap, because all OSs are not created equal.