Microhoo! or Yahsoft?

[buksida]

Unless you've been asleep all week, you'll already know the big tech story and may be considering the implications of Microsoft's US$44.6 billion bid for Internet stalwart Yahoo!, which has been around since the beginning of the commercial web. The root cause of this bid, according to a number of analysts, is Google, which is certainly not taking this news lying down.

The magic figure offered by Microsoft is based on $31 per share, which was 62% more than the stock's most recent closing price. This makes any attempt by Yahoo to inflate the price or fight for its independence a tough move to make. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the buyout could be completed by the end of the year. He rejected suggestions that the takeover would be anti-competitive and continued to state that the creation of a more powerful "number two" to Google on the Internet would be good for consumers.

The scale of the proposed deal has analysts aflutter as they reach for their hype boxes. "If it goes ahead, the Microsoft and Yahoo merger would be one of the major events in the history of the Internet," stated Alex Burmaster from Nielsen Online, an Internet media and market research firm. Tech blogs have been hot with speculation on a possible amalgamation of 250 million Hotmail users and 300 million Yahoo users and whether Microsoft will simply consume its latest acquisition or focus on the overlapping services, clean out the redundancies and concentrate on what each company currently does best.

Full Story: Asia Times Online

Thoughts: Anything that offers an alternative to Google has to be good in my books though not sure if Microsoft are the right ones to do it!
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I've got a bad feeling about this

[nevets]

I am no expert in the Internet and all its goings on , my field is engineering machine robotics, but i do like Google best its a bit more user friendly.

[huahindolly]

I'm a fan of Google, too. They've created a lot of online tools (word processing, spreadsheets, calendar) that have changed the way people work. Google Labs has produced some real winners - Google Earth, for example.

Microsoft's tactic is interesting, but it's so obvious they want to kill Google, and I don't think they'll succeed.

HHD

[klikster]

[buksida]

Google do offer some good products but their search and advertising monopoly needs to be challenged in my view. Websites these days are being written to comply with Google and not readers, if there were more search options then I believe more quality, reader friendly websites would be out there - how many of the top spot websites are simply spam these days or huge megasites with a billion pages and no real info?

Used to use a great little program called Copernic which actually searched about ten different engines at the same time and came up with some interesting results.
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I've got a bad feeling about this

[huahindolly]

dogpile.com is another search aggregator that I use occasionally. I must be doing some pretty esoteric searches, because my top spots typically aren't the billion-page websites you refer do, rather small, special-interest sites that address very specific problems. Google does a good job for me.

Anyway, it looks like Yahoo! wants more money and has spurned Microsoft's offer - wonder what the shareholders are saying now?

HHD

[buksida]

This one is getting interesting:

Microsoft's courtship of struggling Yahoo has prompted numerous wallflowers to show a belated interest in the one-time sweetheart of the Internet world. Google has signed up for a brief tango, while septuagenarian Rupert Murdoch reckons he can still win hearts if the dowry price takes note of the wrinkles.

Full Story: Asia Times Online
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I've got a bad feeling about this