I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
I’ve been a bit busy to really think about this too much (if it goes ahead) but I thought Fake Steve Jobs had the best analysis so far.
It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.
And the real risk to the deal is colorfully described here …
According to our spies in Redmond the general consensus among the Borg rank-and-file is sheer and total dread. At best they see this as a giant pain in the ass, an enormous drain on resources, an unnecessary and pointless distraction with lots of nights and weekends spent slogging away on random useless bullshit and dealing will all sorts of annoying non-Microsoft people who don’t understand how Microsoft does things but can’t be blown off or pushed around like the “partners” the Borg is accustomed to dealing with.
Imagine a circus act in which two enormous, clumsy, awkward elephants that don’t really like each other are supposed to mate while riding on skateboards. Now imagine that it is your job, you lucky bastard, to be one of the little circus clowns standing alongside trying to make this extremely unnatural and unholy act take place. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people will have their lives completely ruined and flipped upside down for the next two years because of this deal. They’ll see even less of their kids. And those ski weekends? Forget about it. Ain’t gonna happen.
I love Fake Steve Jobs. Maybe I should create Fake Rod to say all those things I want to say but can’t.
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You can’t create Fake Rod Drury.
Someone else needs to create it - so they can say all the things we know you really want to say…
And here was me thinking you already had been playing at “fake Rod Drury” all of this time….
:)
I wonder what will happen with the “yahoo/xtra bubble”… will it go back to the xtramsn?
I reckon the “yahoo/xtra bubble” will become the “yahoo/xtra/micro bubbleâ€. That rolls off the tounge!
But I do think that the massive distraction of the deal will see both lose position. Do you think microsoft can sit back after buying Yahoo and just let it run? Nah - the Redmond crew will ‘play under the hood’ and I reckon the end scenario will be complexity and distraction.
It would be good to see a powerful foe emerge from the deal, but I feel it just won’t have the bang MS are after…
My concern is what if we end up with a media and online content duopoly controlling search hierarchy. Apart from the obvious commercial implications it makes you think about who gets to rewrite history and knowledge.
http://geniusnet.blogtown.co.nz/2008/02/11/what-if-google-ruled-the-world/
Interesting that Kiwi export Chris Lidell has been implicated as the architect behind the Yahoo deal.