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AOL Jumps Into the Ring with Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google
mikkl666 writes "Even just since this morning, there's much to report in the ongoing fight between Microsoft and Yahoo!. After Yahoo! announced yesterday that they are testing Google AdSense, Microsoft reacted with a comment pointing out that 'any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google's hands.' Ironically, they complain that 'this would make the market far less competitive.' Both companies try to team up with strong partners, as well. Yahoo! and AOL are now closing in on a deal to combine their Internet operations. And of course, this morning's news was that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is apparently in talks for a joint bid for Yahoo!"
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At least with AOL+Yahoo you know that the email servers won't be swapped out just to use MS SW. And none of the Yahoo supported OSS software will be turf'd (ie. that Exchange server alternative)
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It's like the bouncing yappy dog that won't go away. :)
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News Corp reaches out and tags Microsoft. Microsoft picks up a chair (signature move) and BAM smacks YAHOO across the back!
Yahoo stumbles over and tags AOL, who does a Flying forearm smash to the face...
Starting to feel like we need a claymation Deathmatch for this.
Fsck both of those words. I would say that the word is "Karmically".
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Combining their efforts, aye? Can't get much crappier than that...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
If News Corp outbids Microsoft for Yahoo!, will I still be able to search for information about Democrats using their site, or will it be a fair and balanced search engine?
AOL+Yahoo doesn't strike me as being able to produce better services than Yahoo alone could. Or MS+Yahoo. Or any other combination.
The bigger a company is, the more cultural inertia it has, the less willing it is to try something new. Would strapping AOL's "never change anything" mentality to any company make it better? At least Microsoft has occasionally given one of its subdivisions such free-reign that it's been able to innovate (Microsoft mice, xbox360's networking features). Still, MS is mostly extra baggage.
Yahoo by itself is already producing tons of different services, on the off-chance that a handful will be successful. Combining with someone larger will certainly slow that down. Would that slowdown be offset by making some more likely to be successful? I doubt it.
This news image over on engadget has got to be one of the creepiest things I've seen in a while.
An entire sentence from the Slashdot story, on 2008-04-10 at 12:53 PDT:
Microsoft.
The parent comment: "The great slashdot editors apparently thought that Microsoft deserved an entire sentence all to itself."
LOL. It amazes me how little Slashdot editors have learned over the years. Let that be a lesson to anyone who spends time playing video games. You need all your time learning how the world works. There is no time to spend being an angry button-presser.
Or, theory 2, maybe stories about Microsoft only need one proper noun. Articles, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs are understood. No need to repeat words like "evil", "Ballmer", "chair", "monopoly", "Chief of Grief", or "Software's Dr. Death".
That's an idea for a story submission. The entire Slashdot story could be just one word, "Microsoft". I'm sure there would be hundreds of comments. I know I'd post my usual comment: "The problem with Vista is that buyers are becoming technically knowledgeable enough that they don't want to be beta testers of a very unfinished product that requires them to buy more powerful hardware. Remember that Windows XP Service Pack 2 was released only 3 years ago. Before that was 3 years during which every Windows XP customer was a beta tester of a very unfinished product that didn't even handle USB very well."
I would welcome an AOL-Yahoo merger, way over an MS-Yahoo destructo-fest.
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Well, it was not exactly poetry, but it was better than the mess we're looking at. But judge for yourself.
I don't take issue with word meaning and grammar changing -- it happens all the time. I take issue with the word meaning NOT changing, but words being used in a cliche that is then misused, to the point where the word itself no longer has any actual meaning in the sentence, other than that someone thought it sounded good.
Another example is "a tough row to hoe" (talking about potato farming) turning into "a tough road to hoe" (which makes no sense). The word "road" has not changed meaning, neither has the word "row" -- but people misuse it in a way that makes the word use and the sentence use cease to have any meaningful contribution to the conversation other than to make the speaker/writer sound more knowledgeable to those who don't know what they are actually trying to say.
For an example of a word that has undergone a myriad of transformations over the years, look at the word "nice". For a simpler example in recent history, there's "gay". For a different kind of transformation where the activity referenced has stayed the same but the connotations have changed, look at the word "jazz".
Yahoo + AOL = Good
Yahoo + AOL + Microsoft = Bad
Yahoo + AOL + News Corp = Ugly
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'm inclined to agree with techdirt's analysis... this is an indication that the big players are taking their eyes off the ball. The more mergers/reshuffling/synergistic-focus-shifting that goes on among these companies, the more opportunity there is for an small, innovative and efficient company to step into the void.
Yup, Yahoo! is now officially dead and the buzzards are just fighting to see who gets to rip off the more choice hunks of meat from the bones.
Wow, $4 billions in profits is dead?
FalconShould there be a Law?
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