Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 420 Editor's Choice: 45
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Missing the point
[Read the article: Will they call it Microhoo? Yahosoft? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, someone goes on and on about how the future belongs to those with the tightest integration between platform, software and hardware, like Apple and Google, a company whose entire model depends on completely isolating hardware from software and software from platform. Completely non-sensical.
And there doesn't seem to be much understanding of what Microsoft is actually buying, or the search market in general. What MS is buying is reach, not users. There are companies that literally can't spend all their internet ad dollars because there simply aren't enough clicks to go around - hence Target and Ebay attempting to give the impression that they sell absolutely everything on the planet - and those customers aren't going to go anywhere even if every Yahoo Mail user abandons ship at once. The synergy here isn't going to be technological in ther traditional sense, it's going to be a synergy between ad networks and MS is in some ways the technology leader there, particularly in demographic targeting - their's is great, Google's sucks. Facebook makes a ton more sense now, doesn't it?
Is Yahoo worth $44B? I don't know. But I do know that MS is the only major growing it's share of the search and online ad markets right now, at the expense of Google, and this might be the perfect time to go for a quick strike and head off any attempt Google might make to recover from their shrinking market share. And that this is nothing like the other aqcuisitions we have seen in the technology sector.
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Google is on the up and up, Anon
[Read the article: Will they call it Microhoo? Yahosoft? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If they indulged in click fraud in any meaningful way they would be caught very quickly. Companies spending $10,000 + per day with them don't do so without having their own measurements in place. Impression fraud would be harder to catch, but not impossible, and since the entire business is based on trust there wouldn't be much percentage in it.
But you are right about the software not being sticky. And they are not very good at marketing either. Mostly when you hear about them in the mainstream media its bad news. And I understand they have opened up GMail to anyone who wants it - if so, then what separates them from HotMail or Yahoo Mail? And aside from search, a decent mail product, a decent map product, and Picassa, what do they really have that's any good at all?
I actually did what you suggest very recently - I de-Microsofted myself by removing Windows from both of my personal laptops. One is now Ubuntu and the other is FreeBSD. The only thing that makes it difficult at all, and Ubuntu installs easier than Windows, is the lack of hardware support by the manufacturers. The lack of a 64 bit Flash player is an inconvenience, but I'd face the same thing if I installed 64 bit Vista. Everything else almost anybody else needs is available on *nix, as good if not better.
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@Thadeus
[Read the article: Will they call it Microhoo? Yahosoft? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Reach includes the network. Users is just the Yahoo! portal, or more specifically registered Yahoo! users. Lots of sites running Yahoo! ads on them, or using Yahoo! as their internal search, just like most of Google's reach is off-site. The "users" in that case are the people buying ads, who are are frankly desperate to get in front of consumers, not the people actually looking at the sites.
I can see Yahoo! combined with MS demographic targeting attracting an awful lot of interest, along with higher costs per click and impression. Whether it's a good deal or not, I don't know.
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But most businesses don't hate Microsoft
[Read the article: Will they call it Microhoo? Yahosoft? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Most businesses, in fact, love them. For good reason. MS has taken to making it as easy as possible to do business with them, and frankly a lot of the computerization of American business wouldn't be possible without them. No way would there be enough Unix administrators to go around, and Apple only released their first serious OS a few years ago. Overall, Microsoft has made computers a lot more affordable for business.
I don't see big business running away from Yahoo! because of this, especially when we're talking about a very scarce resource they need badly. Google is the most hated entity out there among small to mid-sized businesses, so they probably won't leave Yahoo! either.
Contracts with search and ad networks typically only last until the next invoice.
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I see where you are going with this
[Read the article: Will they call it Microhoo? Yahosoft? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And you're right in that context, but these types of advertising arrangements are much more casual than other relationships companies have with technology companies, or with advertising publishers. There really isn't anything there to be afraid of when all you are doing is buying search and content ads.
MS has, in my experience, also gotten a lot better about strongarming companies into playing ball. But of course my knowledge there is limited to businesses I've been a part of.