01.14.09

Gemini version available ♊︎

Yahoo: The Biggest Threat Comes from the Inside

Posted in Mail, Microsoft at 9:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A lesson learned from the security sector

Little dragon

ARE WE SEEING YAHOO ‘taken over’ from the inside? A little more than before maybe? It’s hard to say with sufficient certainty, but it does not look encouraging. A couple of days ago we wrote about the inheritance of Jerry Yang's chair. Sue Decker fought away a hostile takeover. She staved off the bids from Microsoft along with Jerry Yang and she competed for the role of CEO against Carol Bartz.

Bartz worked for a Microsoft partner, Autodesk, which is a promoter of lock-in and even software patents (they cross-licensed with Microsoft not so long ago). She will soon become the CEO of Yahoo and this is problematic because:

Autodesk, known for its computer-assisted design software, happens to be a longtime Microsoft partner, so the choice may stir new speculation about a possible Yahoo-Microsoft search deal.

Microsoft’s principal mouthpiece in CNET is already yapping about a Microsoft-Yahoo transaction.

“It depends on their offer,” said a source familiar with the board’s thinking. “If they were to come to (Yahoo) with an offer of $33 a share, (the company) would be stupid if to say ‘no’ now.”

For Microsoft to touch Yahoo would be difficult because it’s a thing that may pose a dilemma; for starters, Microsoft would enter deeper debt [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], but more importantly, Microsoft would take Yahoo’s business to the cleaners, just like it always does. As the following post demonstrated a few days ago, “Microsoft is not a web company.”

I want to talk about Microsoft’s web strategy. But Microsoft is a huge company, with a lot of parallel activities in this space, and there are so many angles from which you can approach the subject. So I’ve decided to focus on a single, instructive example: the front page of Microsoft.com.

Disclaimer: this is a cheap shot. I know it is. A single HTML page does not embody the entirety of Microsoft’s strategic direction and corporate culture. I’m also subjecting it to rigorous scrutiny of the kind few web pages get. Nevertheless, Microsoft.com is one of the most popular destinations on the Internet and they are trying to make a name for themselves in the web space and they do have a gigantic budget which they could expend on their front page.

Here’s where my journey began, and what started my investigation that led to this post. This is the front page of Microsoft.com, rendered in Firefox (v3.0.5, Windows XP). This and all subsequent screenshots are cropped; click for the full capture.

Microsoft never designed software with the Internet in mind. The Internet scared it because it threatened its dominant position. In 1993, Bill Gates said: “The Internet? We are not interested in it.” In fact, several years ago, a senior Windows executive said: “Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”

One reader tells us that “the transition from the outgoing US administration is an utter catastrophe in regards to e-mail. Everything from astronomical volumes of files to lost material to multiple, conflicting versions of what should have been the same document.”

“So while VBA, Access and Windows on the “voting machines” helped get us into this mess, Microsoft Exchange will help prevent getting it sorted.”

Can Microsoft ever be trusted with any of Yahoo’s Web properties, given the mess which is MSN or Hotmail, for example?

“You don’t need to buy the company, just destroy them and then take their business.”

Duncan ‘Dragons Den’ Bannatyne

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

8 Comments

  1. aeshna23 said,

    January 14, 2009 at 10:37 am

    Gravatar

    What is so tragic about this is that if Yahoo becomes Microsoft, it will drive tragic to Google. And Google needs competition so it doesn’t become evil like Microsoft.

  2. Bob said,

    January 14, 2009 at 11:58 am

    Gravatar

    @aeshna23: I don’t disagree that Google like every business needs competition but you cannot put them in the same category as Microsoft. Gates was a psychopath in the beginning as now. The founders of Google set out to “do no evil” unlike MS who set out to steal every line of code they could and to claim ownership of it all regardless of origin. OTOH if MS do take over Yahoo it will bring closer to their necessary day of reckoning after which they just might end up being run by humans.

  3. Diamond Wakizashi said,

    January 14, 2009 at 11:58 am

    Gravatar

    Microshit is desperate to increase their search market share.

    http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyimages/1109.gif

  4. Roy Schestowitz said,

    January 14, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    Gravatar

    Bob raises an important point. Microsoft was a dumpster diver from day one (literally, re: dumpster-diving). It also stole and deceived to get its way.

    There is no knight and no white horse.

  5. Needs Sunlight said,

    January 14, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    Gravatar

    Yahoo is a major contributor to development of PHP and FreeBSD. The noise about search engines is mostly just that. The real valuable target are these two. Juniper (now 0wn3d by M$) and Cisco (often dancing with M$) are two big networking companies that use FreeBSD.

    There are other tools when these are gone, but would stupid to stand by and let MS take these out. Losing these will allow MS to concentrate that much harder on Java, Perl, Python and Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD.

  6. Roy Schestowitz said,

    January 14, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    Gravatar

    Cisco started dancing with Microsoft (again) today:

    Cisco and Intel Fund Learning-assessment Project

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/157027/microsoft_cisco_and_intel_fund_learningassessment_project.html?tk=rss_new

  7. Needs Sunlight said,

    January 14, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    Gravatar

    Gates has always had a reputation for disregard for the law and, in business, especially for stealing. Larry Ellison, Gary Kildall and others have had a lot to say.

    If you can find some early biographies, they talk about how he stole computing time (a valuable resource then) from the computing center for early business scams.

  8. Roy Schestowitz said,

    January 14, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    Gravatar

    That’s well documented.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 07/06/2023: Reddit Layoffs and OpenGL 3.1 in Asahi Linux

    Links for the day



  2. Gemini Links 07/06/2023: Jukka Charting Geminispace

    Links for the day



  3. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 06, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, June 06, 2023



  4. NOW LIVE: Working for the Public — Universities, Software and Freedom - a Talk by Richard Stallman at Università di Pisa (Italy)

    As noted a few hours ago, Richard Stallman is delivering a talk at Università di Pisa this morning



  5. Richard Stallman's Talk is in Two Hours and There's a BigBlueButton Livestream

    Dr. Stallman is in Italy to give talks at universities this week; he will soon give a live talk, accessible in his site or directly at the source



  6. Links 06/06/2023: Angie 1.2.0, New EasyOS and EndeavourOS Released

    Links for the day



  7. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: OpenKuBSD, GrapheneOS, and More

    Links for the day



  8. Links 06/06/2023: OpenSUSE Plans for Leap

    Links for the day



  9. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Bubble 4.0, Neutral News, and Older Bits

    Links for the day



  10. IBM's War on Open (Look at the Pattern of Layoffs at Red Hat)

    By abandoning OpenSource.com and OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice IBM sends out a clear signal that it doesn’t understand or simply does not care about the community of Free software users; its siege against the FSF and other institutions never ended and today we look at who’s being laid off or shown the door (the work environment is intentionally being made worse)



  11. Links 06/06/2023: IceWM 3.4.0 and Liveslak 1.7.0

    Links for the day



  12. Gemini Links 06/06/2023: Apple Might Kill VR, Tea Tea Deluxe 1.2.7 and Tea Land

    Links for the day



  13. IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 05, 2023

    IRC logs for Monday, June 05, 2023



  14. Links 05/06/2023: Debian 12 Almost Ready, Hong Kong 'Cannot' Remember Tiananmen Massacre

    Links for the day



  15. Gemini Links 05/06/2023: New Ship in Cosmic Voyage, Stack Overflow Moderator Strike

    Links for the day



  16. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 04, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, June 04, 2023



  17. Links 04/06/2023: Unifont 15.0.05 and PCLinuxOS Stuff

    Links for the day



  18. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Wayland and the Old Computer Challenge

    Links for the day



  19. StatCounter: GNU/Linux (Including ChromeOS) Grows to 8% Market Share Worldwide

    This month’s numbers from StatCounter are good for GNU/Linux (including ChromeOS, which technically has both GNU and Linux); the firm assesses logs from 3 million sites and shows Windows down to 66% in desktops/laptops (a decade ago it was above 90%) with modest growth for GNU/Linux, which is at an all-time high, even if one does not count ChromeOS that isn’t freedom- or privacy-respecting



  20. Journalism Cannot and Quite Likely Won't Survive on the World Wide Web

    We’re reaching the point where the overwhelming majority of new pages on the Web (the World Wide Web) are basically junk, sometimes crafted not by humans; how to cope with this rapid deterioration is still an unknown — an enigma that demands hard answers or technical workarounds



  21. Do Not Assume Pensions Are Safe, Especially When Managed by Mr. EPOTIF Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos

    With the "hoax" that is the financial assessment by António Campinos (who is deliriously celebrating the inauguration of illegal and unconstitutional kangaroo courts) we urge EPO workers to check carefully the integrity of their pensions, seeing that pension promises have been broken for years already



  22. Links 04/06/2023: Why Flatpak and Wealth of Devices With GNU/Linux

    Links for the day



  23. Gemini Links 04/06/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.3 and NearlyFreeSpeech.NET

    Links for the day



  24. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 03, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, June 03, 2023



  25. Links 04/06/2023: Azure Outage Again (So Many!) and Tiananmen Massacre Censored

    Links for the day



  26. Links 03/06/2023: Qubes OS 4.2.0 RC1 and elementaryOS Updates for May

    Links for the day



  27. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Hidden Communities and Exam Prep is Not Education

    Links for the day



  28. Links 03/06/2023: IBM Betraying LibreOffice Some More (After Laying off LibreOffice Developers)

    Links for the day



  29. Gemini Links 03/06/2023: Bubble Woes and Zond Updates

    Links for the day



  30. Links 03/06/2023: Apache NetBeans 18 and ArcaOS 5.0.8

    Links for the day


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts