Lorem Ipsum

A week has past since a possible $50bln Yahoo! buyout offer from Microsoft created a small stir in the blogosphere. A million posts later, both camps are yet to confirm any buyout talks or partnership deals.

Of course, the single reason for this merger is to try and catch up with Google. And I can definitely see Microsoft’s motive in this but I’m not sure if I understand Yahoo’s desperation. Yahoo! still leads the pack in traffic. Not just that, it also has the most captive audience. Users spend more time on Yahoo! than any of the other sites. With Panama slowly gaining traction, why sellout to Microsoft now?

And I don’t think that they would. Apart from the temporary surge in Yahoo! stock (which lasted all but 1 day), I don’t think there is going to be any other development out of this.

Yahoo’s challenge lies in converting their traffic into ad-revenue. Even if this buyout finds an inventive way of merging the traffic from msn.com and yahoo.com, you still need to find a way to increase your ad-revenue. And that is it. Microsoft’s challenge lies in…well, just better computing for starters. With an obvious shift towards thin clients, they still insist on churning out software that bogs down your system. What can Microsoft possibly bring to Yahoo! except, maybe, turn their services into slow, process-heavy, sluggish sites? Ok, I will save my Office 2007 bashing for another post.

I, for one, am hoping that this metamorphosis never happens and this butterfly never comes to life.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 13th, 2007 @ 9:36 am on the category Tech Churn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.