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Yahoo!/Microsoft Execs Meet For Round Two
psychosmyth writes "Microsoft's deal to Yahoo! is apparently back on the table. Yahoo execs met again with Microsoft early this past week to re-discuss the deal that fell through earlier. 'The gathering, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, gave Microsoft its first chance to sell Yahoo on the rationale for the proposed marriage since the software maker unveiled its plans six weeks ago. Since then, Yang has been exploring different ways to ward off Microsoft. The alternatives have included possible alliances with Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc., News Corp.'s MySpace.com and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.' Microsoft is apparently still keeping all of its options open; a hostile take-over is not out of the question."
Funny thing is I've been using Yahoo! much more since this all started but it's just the beginning of the end for old Yahoo!. It is destined to slink back into the vast dark recesses of the tubes much like Excite, Lycos, Hotbot, Web Crawler, etc., etc.. All have before it. I certainly think Microsoft will help see to that in a much quicker fashion than Yahoo! could of done on it's own.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Oh not again...
...Balmer threw his toys (i.e. chair) out of the cot?
I'd wear full motocross protective gear if I was Yang.
The Mothership
i hope this costs microsoft a freight train full of money, so much that it hurts microsoft and weakens them to the point that they can not buy anything else for a long long time...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"Teh caek is a lie!"
Yahoo to Microsoft: "Put a one and two zeros in front of that or we walk!"
stuff |
I already deactivated my Flickr account. MS has enough of my money.
-- Cheers!
That won't work. People will just deinstall the plugin and keep using FF.
-- Cheers!
first of all who uses foxytunes, I don't think i've ever see a firefox install with it in use.
secondly if MS wanted to cripple firefox they could do so far more easilly through say windows update.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Steve wants the bang: Micro!Soft!
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Ah, but you're missing the grand scheme, sir. The rule of the internet is only one prong of the strategy. The primary goal is the eventual take over of the World by Microsoft. This is just one small step on the corporate level. On the social level is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. See, they're in Africa, helping those people who are becoming indebted to MS. They will buy their products and one day, fight in her armies. Yes, that is correct. We are seeing beginnings of the corporate armies and corporate rule of the World as predicted in Robert Heinlein's "Friday". Who's to stop MS? IBM, Apple, Google, and possibly SUN and Oracle (ellsion's son is already making military propaganda films See Flyboys [actually a good movie!]...).
I could go on, but I'm running out of space and the lights on my router are blinking ....they're on to me again...got to run!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
There is very little that Microsoft has bought that didn't turn to crap and die. (Yes, I acknowledge there are some things that have done rather well, but they were already doing well before Microsoft got them and even then somehow the majority of those surviving have gotten a bit worse.)
Yahoo will always be second or third place to Google. Microsoft made their attempt with MSN. It's crap and never caught on. Yahoo and all of its things, while many are still vibrant, are generally too spammy to be useful any longer. (I can't tell you how many groups I had joined only to become flooded with unending spam even after leaving those groups!)
I simply cannot imagine with Microsoft's history of misunderstanding the internet (primarily they somehow don't get that they can't control or guide the internet in any successful way) and Yahoo's failure to maintain its dominance or communities that they can somehow put something together that will compete with Google.
Microsoft is just wasting money.
I have this feeling that one of the terms of this deal will require Yahoo! to dump all its FreeBSD-based technology and migrate their entire system to Microsoft's newest Windows Server. This deal will undoubtedly create the same sort of chaos that ensued when Microsoft switched Hotmail's systems in the same manner, since there is this rule that goes something like, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Making such a large-scale migration is sure to create nothing but chaos until after completed and after all the bugs have been ironed out, and the only benefit is that Microsoft can later brag about how Yahoo!'s entire system runs on Windows. There can be no other benefit since the system evidently works fine under FreeBSD.
Before the merger:
Joe R. Hacker of the Many Eyes: Firefox is crippled under Vista, also under XP with mandatory update KB66642 installed.
Fred Quux of the Firefox Bug Dispatchers: Does this occur in safe mode? If it does not, can you pinpoint the add-on that is causing the crippling?
JRH: Thanks. The crippling is in FoxyTunes.
FQ: I really can't do anything about that. You have to get the FoxyTunes maintainers to fix it.
JRH: That's okay, it's Yahoo!. I'll file a bug.
Y!: After some debugging, it looks like both Vista and KB66642 have an API bug that leads to a buffer overflow in our extension. We're fixing this and making some fuss about it with MS, because it may break some other extension and we would hate that.
After the merger:
JRH: Firefox is crippled under Vista, also under XP with mandatory update KB66642 installed.
FQ: Does this occur in safe mode? If it does not, can you pinpoint the add-on that is causing the crippling?
JRH: Thanks. The crippling is in FoxyTunes.
FQ: I really can't do anything about that. You have to get the FoxyTunes maintainers to fix it.
JRH: That's okay, it's Microsoft. I'll file a... Oh, wait...
<GP_level_paranoia>
MS: We're aware of this problem but we can't fix it. It is due to a flaw in the Firefox platform.
JRH: Are you kidding me? FoxyTunes worked fine when Yahoo! was making it!
MS: Maybe. However, the latest release of FoxyTunes has to interface with the TPM and DRM/DBD layers of XP and Vista, and unfortunately it triggers a buffer overflow in the pitiful Firefox add-on APIs. We can't fix it.
JRH: You know what? I'm having an RMS/ESR moment. Please stay in line as I reach for my katana and my Uzi.
MS: Just for the record, ExplorerTunes under IE8 is outstanding. It has so many more features, it's pretty, and it just works!
JRH: Screw you. I'm forking FoxyTunes.
MS: Please do that. Our patent lawyers are hungry.
</GP_level_paranoia>
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
MS to Yahoo!: "All we want to do is eat your brains, we're not trying to be unreasonable and eat your eyes..." :P
-Aegis Runestone-
"We get it! We'll take it with the lubrication, now!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
TFA doesn't say whether he's tried such approaches as garlic, holy water, etc. What is the appropriate ward against Microsoft, anyhow? Come to think of it, I suspect it might be the GPL: their attitude towards GPL'd software is a lot like a vampire's reaction to a cross. So if Yahoo really wants to ward off Microsoft, they should spin off some of their software into a GPL project run by a separate non-profit entity, something like the Mozilla Foundation. Microsoft will recoil in horror. (Not that Yahoo has any software the rest of us would care to see, so far as I'm aware -- but that's beside the point.)
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Please GOD, if anyone at Yahoo! is reading this:
SELL OFF FLICKR FIRST!
It's one of the few sites I kinda like.
I'm not an MS fan, but what does Yahoo really have that MS would get through the deal. Just the mere purchase of Yahoo by MS will turn off alot of Yahoo advertisers. MS already has all the elements that Yahoo has via their "live" brand which seems to be more modern than Yahoo's search.
So what does MS really expect to gain?
It seems to me that essentially Microsoft is trying to buy their way out of what is a fundamental problem with their corporate culture. The *reason* their products are crap is they don't understand how to inspire their troops to excellence and resort to browbeating them instead. Buying out Yahoo isn't going to fix that, it'll just drag Yahoo down to their level.
I said this before but here it goes again: I hope I continue to have access to delicious bookmarks for the long run. I would be disappointed should that fall apart. Then I'd have to find another bookmark service like that. I love accessing my bookmarks from anywhere :-)