I’ve been following the whole Microsoft/Yahoo thing along with everyone and have really kept my opinions to myself - but when I saw this post over at Ajaxia - “Yahoo! BrowserPlus: The rumour is true“
Awhile back I heard a rumour that Yahoo! had a “Gears-like” project that was cancelled. I thought this was a shame, as having Yahoo! pushing the browser would be a great thing, and I wished that we could all join forces and push together.
I just thing it is time for Microsoft to buy Yahoo! - they need to do this before anyone figures out that Yahoo! is hot-hot-hot. I mean seriously - I hear is how great Google is because of Google gears and then Yahoo! pulls out a decent competitor.
Here’s a case where I think everyone else has got it wrong. The media seems to be positioning Microsoft’s hostile takeover of Yahoo as an admission on the part of Microsoft that they’ve lost their competitive edge. And Google, clearly worried, is making anti-trust noises, claiming that the proposed merger would destroy market competition. Both positions are utterly absurd, in my view.
He makes some great points why he feels this deal will fail - but makes it clear that many are not pointing to the things he is.
Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions — and consumers deserve satisfying answers.
It sure seems if Google thinks they could crush them they would encourage the transaction.
The Web giant has announced the launch of a new website, dubbed Yahoo! Real Estate, which, if one cannot divine is purpose from its title, is where big-name realtors and independent, for-sale-by-owner types alike can go to display their A-frames and McMansions to be considered as new homes for those with better credit and way less debt than their previous occupants.
I almost fell off my chair - there has been speculation about airlines offering WiFi on flights - but until JetBlue announced free Yahoo IM & Email…I figured this would be a serious premium product. Now granted - it’s only Yahoo services, and seriously - does anyone really use Yahoo for email anymore? But hey, it’s a start!
In a welcome first for domestic airlines, JetBlue will be rolling out free in-flight Yahoo IM and email services to passengers packing WiFi-equipped devices, starting aboard its new “BetaBlue” Airbus A320. Once this test-bed passenger jet reaches 10,000 feet, an in-plane network with three in-ceiling access points is activated, allowing most any wireless gadget with a Flash-enabled browser to view specialized versions of either Yahoo Messenger or Mail through a universal landing page.
Maybe there is hope for newspapers. These two deals are a good sign that they understand the need for change. I have written before that local newspapers should “own” the local search and classified market. The local newspapers have a trusted brand name, a long history with advertisers, and significant assets. They have let the online opportunity slip through their fingers. Maybe these two deals signal a change in thinking. Do you think your local paper will make a move online? Or, is it too late?
Isn’t the big winner here Zillow & HotJobs? They are all gain and no loss. In fact, but looking at some ofthe “terms”:
Such deals help Yahoo and Zillow extend their reach into local U.S. communities, while newspapers benefit by getting exposure for their ads on a national online ad platform.
Exactly how do newspapers benefit from getting exposure nationally? How many of newspaper’s classified ads need to be exposed nationally? Don Dodge himself said in May that “Newspapers need to go hyper-local to survive” - so now I’m really confused.
Which is it - national or local. I don’t see how what a given newspaper does on a national level really matters. In my opinion, newspapers should focus on local first - and if it ends up spreading national, then so be it.
I’m interested in hearing anyone thoughts on this.
Yahoo is still cool in my book. These guys are like the little nerd kid on the playground. You always see them getting the crap beat out of - but no matter what they do or say - you still love them.
It’s a love/hate relationship. These top (insert random number here) sites list can get out of control. Sometimes it looks like these websites are saying “Hey, look at me, we know what is cool. Let us prove it by tell you the coolest sites we know about.” Sometimes you want to say, if you know about it - it’s probably not cool anymore.
So - then there is the love part, I’m not sure if I’m trying to validate that I know what I’m talking about - or what. But this is an article from MSN/PC World that shows us the top 25. Highlights:
Yahoo Pipes
Like Popfly, Yahoo Pipes lets you create your own mashups or “pipes.” As with Popfly, you drag and drop prebuilt modules, and then create connections between them. But Yahoo Pipes is much harder to use than Popfly, and the way to go about building your own mashup isn’t always obvious. But if you’re willing to do some digging and learning, you can build very useful stuff, such as a mashup that uses Yahoo maps to show the locations of all apartments for rent in a certain neighborhood.
Pageflakes
The Web is just as chaotic as the world–but Pageflakes can organize both of them for you. This super-customizable version of a home page enables you to pick the news and information feeds you want to read, and to specify the “flakes,” or applets, you want to include. Flakes let you add all sorts of cool stuff to your page–movie times, to-do lists, a notepad, e-mail, a horoscope–even sudoku or a personal blog. If you’re looking for one-stop browsing, this is it.
PopURLs
If you’re an information hound, you probably spend lots of time jumping from Digg to Del.icio.us to YouTube to Fark to Google News to anything-dot-com. With PopURLs, you no longer need to waste time hopping around the Internet. An aggregator of all things informative, PopURLs features massive lists of headlines, videos, blogs, and content from all of those sites, as well as plenty of others. One nice bonus is that you can search some of the sites–Del.icio.us, Flickr, and Wikipedia, among others–straight from PopURLs. It’s also easy to tweak the way PopURLs looks and works, too, including customizing the layout of the feeds so you can put the ones you view most regularly on top. The scrapbook is a particularly useful feature; just click the ‘Add to Scrapbook’ button next to any headline, and PopURLs will save it (and up to 19 other favorite items).
So, what will be the NBT (Next Best Thing) after social networks? The article I found which addresses this first looks back and then ahead.
Age #0 - eCommerce - the most primitive way of making money online. It’s identical to the real world… Age #1 - Single Sign-on - Yahoo started out with a simple web directory, but their idea was to port traditional media business models to the online space. They weren’t focused on selling goods, but they brought great services together and glued them with a single sign-on mechanism. Age #1.5 - Geocities - Geocities was one of many sites that provided free web hosting and web site creation services. However GeoCities was different in some ways. It was more like the social networking sites of today; the self expression level was high and the weird naming scheme based on city names gave it a human touch. The Boom period (aka Dot Com) - The reason of the boom was the lack of calibration between the pace of internet applications and the internet infrastructure. Age #2 - Search - What Google did was to offer a better search service with absolutely no clutter. Their sparse but highly efficient service opened the doors to big deals and hugely profitable online advertising. Age #2.5 - On-demand Video Age #3 - Social - MySpace kept growing, but it couldn’t take the necessary steps to become a real big thing…Only one company figured out the way of putting social interactions to the center of the web and it was Facebook. Age #4 - Joost ??? - It’s hard to guess the 4th phase of the web because we don’t even have the 3rd one yet, fully. But what the past eras (see ages 1.5, 4 and 2.5) show is that we will end up with the rebirth of online TV.
So, what will be next? Who knows - I just know with the innovative things we are thinking, saying and doing - we will be right i the thick of it.
Image via Wikipedia
