On and off rumors about a Microsoft purchase of Yahoo have been floating on the web for at least the past two years and the most recent deal was killed weeks ago. However, today a new deal rumor has started to float around of yet another deal. First off, I do not want the Evil Empire to get it’s hand on Yahoo and have a monopoly on second rate search. Secondly, Yahoo is not in very good shape as you can see in the Tech Crunch Yahoo Executive Tracker 114 Executives have left Yahoo in the past year and a half meanwhile, they need to fight Google for control of the search market and now have a search deal and try to manage their products. Meanwhile, CEO, Jerry Yang, is hated by many shareholders for making the right decision of not selling, and many people want him ousted!
On the other side Microsoft will be loosing Bill Gates next Monday and since he has started to delegate responsibility to his lieutenants and the one product they turned out, Vista, is probably they worst operating system Microsoft has ever released! I truly believe that when Gates leaves the product quality will continue to decrease exponentially and Bill Gates will have to pull a Steve Jobs style second act and return and save the company. Microsoft is going down the tubes and even if Gates stayed they still have to make major changes to their attitudes to open source and Vista.
Honestly I believe that these two companies are both on their way out and by merging they will be taking the fast track to failure. Personally, I have not used any Yahoo services for many years and will not effect me but all the great services they bought like Flickr and del.icio.us can be destroyed by Microsoft. These services have so many users that will be forced to either find a new service or to deal with any changes Microsoft makes. As for Yahoo I think they wil dry up over time and the last one to leave will turn out the light. As far as I’m concerned Yahoo has been dead since the dawn of Web 2.0 because they did not change enough to compete.
