AOL Jumps Into the Ring with Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google

mikkl666 writes "Even just since this morning, there's much to report in the ongoing fight between Microsoft and Yahoo!. After Yahoo! announced yesterday that they are testing Google AdSense, Microsoft reacted with a comment pointing out that 'any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google's hands.' Ironically, they complain that 'this would make the market far less competitive.' Both companies try to team up with strong partners, as well. Yahoo! and AOL are now closing in on a deal to combine their Internet operations. And of course, this morning's news was that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is apparently in talks for a joint bid for Yahoo!"

IMO: AOL+Yahoo is better than MS+Yahoo

[denis-The-menace]

At least with AOL+Yahoo you know that the email servers won't be swapped out just to use MS SW. And none of the Yahoo supported OSS software will be turf'd (ie. that Exchange server alternative)

Re:IMO: AOL+Yahoo is better than MS+Yahoo

[Frosty Piss]

And none of the Yahoo supported OSS software will be turf'd (ie. that Exchange server alternative)

There are huge swaths of Open Source beyond the Exchange Server Alturnative, such as a large number of Web services and various Webby 2.0-ish type projects. Check it out here: http://developer.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]. The code snips are extreamly valuble tutorials. All this material will either be flushed or monitized onder Microsoft...

Post your original submission here.

[Futurepower(R)]

mikkl666, are you saying that you submitted good English, but the Slashdot editors ruined your story?

microsoft afraid of moving away from the desktop

[BlackSnake112]

Microsoft is afraid of moving apps off the desktop. In a world where computers boot a simple OS, then open a web browser to get all work (email, documents, spreadsheets, everything else) done scares the hell out of microsoft. That is not the business model that microsoft has been using. I don't think microsoft could switch to that kind of business model any time soon.

Re:Post your original submission here.

[mikkl666]

Well, it was not exactly poetry, but it was better than the mess we're looking at. But judge for yourself [slashdot.org].

Re:Ironically?

[Em Adespoton]

I don't take issue with word meaning and grammar changing -- it happens all the time. I take issue with the word meaning NOT changing, but words being used in a cliche that is then misused, to the point where the word itself no longer has any actual meaning in the sentence, other than that someone thought it sounded good.

Another example is "a tough row to hoe" (talking about potato farming) turning into "a tough road to hoe" (which makes no sense). The word "road" has not changed meaning, neither has the word "row" -- but people misuse it in a way that makes the word use and the sentence use cease to have any meaningful contribution to the conversation other than to make the speaker/writer sound more knowledgeable to those who don't know what they are actually trying to say.

For an example of a word that has undergone a myriad of transformations over the years, look at the word "nice". For a simpler example in recent history, there's "gay". For a different kind of transformation where the activity referenced has stayed the same but the connotations have changed, look at the word "jazz".

Alta Vista

[falconwolf]

In the mean time, AltaVista is standing quietly in the corner nursing its drink, trying to muster up the courage to ask ChaCha for a dance. Awwwww :(

Do a search on Alta Vista some time, the results have Yahoo! stamped all over them. Whether that's because the results come from Yahoo! or Yahoo! provides any ads or something else I don't know.

Falcon

Re:Would *any* be an improvement?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

AOL+Yahoo doesn't strike me as being able to produce better services than Yahoo alone could. Or MS+Yahoo. Or any other combination.

It does me. You see right now in some markets there is competition, but MS is one of the players and they are breaking antitrust law to artificially gain more market share. When they manage to have enough market, they intentionally break compatibility to undermine competition (illegally). Then they try to use that to move into the next market and gain share not by offering something better, but by tying it to something you already have to use because MS has monopolized it.

Basically, anyone but MS, is a good company to merge with Yahoo. If it was AOL, at least we'd finally have broken the walled garden of instant messaging since AOL is committed to open protocols like Jabber/XMMP in open federation with anyone who wants to interoperate. It would pull all instant messaging except MS Messenger into using open protocols and would allow for limited interoperability with MSN.

Can you imagine a world where you could have a GTalk account or a Yahoo account or an AIM account or an ICQ account or just an account on your company's internal XMMP server and it would allow you to send chat messages directly to absolutely every other IM user on the planet... without having to register five different accounts? Can you imagine that then extending to voice and video chats via Jingle and the like? Can you imagine being able to run your own chat server at your own domain and having it be able to talk to anyone and be able to use end to end encryption? That alone makes me hope for a Google or AOL merger, rather than MS getting 50% of chat and keeping it locked into formats that intentionally won't talk to players using open protocols.

The bigger a company is, the more cultural inertia it has, the less willing it is to try something new. Would strapping AOL's "never change anything" mentality to any company make it better?

AOL is very schizophrenic, but I doubt they would break any of the Web services Yahoo has, especially since most were acquisitions in the first place. They might even save some of AOL's stagnant assets.

At least Microsoft has occasionally given one of its subdivisions such free-reign that it's been able to innovate (Microsoft mice, xbox360's networking features).

Sadly free reign does not exempt one from corporate oversight or reverse their culture of criminal abuses. Two of those three divisions you mention are undermining free trade via antitrust abuse.

Yahoo by itself is already producing tons of different services [wikipedia.org], on the off-chance that a handful will be successful.

Most of the popular ones were acquired. Slowly the home grown ones are merged with the acquisitions to capitalize upon their popularity. I'm not trying to dump on Yahoo here. I have friends there who are really bright guys. it is just that it looks like someone will acquire them and I can see benefit to either Google or AOL doing so (save the chat industry) whereas MS acquiring them would almost certainly lead to more leverage to undermine the free market.

Would that slowdown be offset by making some more likely to be successful? I doubt it.

I think Yahoo chat would be more successful if it could talk to everyone (including any new players) instead of limited ability to talk to MS Messenger users.