Why Yahoo! and Microsoft are both crap
Posted on February 10th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,911 views
It actually doesn’t matter if Microsoft buys Yahoo! or Yahoo! buys Microsoft or they give each other to the other in holy matrimony because at the end of the day they are both very crap companies.
The big difference between them is that Microsoft still makes huge annual profits (last year it was over $16 billion) while Yahoo! is on a sharp decline. It’s share price has halved in the past two years down to under $20 from $40.
Google’s profits last year are also less than expected.
The only company doing really well financially still is Microsoft. Financially, Microsoft is very stable due to its Windows and Office products. Vista sales are up. The financial future remains rosy for Microsoft.
So if this is the situation, why does Microsoft want Yahoo?
I believe it is out of fear of what Google might do to undermine Microsoft’s core business in the future.
Fact is, Google is already undermining Microsoft’s Office product with its online Google Documents service.
If you compare Google’s online web 2.0 services with Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s then Google’s are superior except in one instance – Yahoo’s flickr.com is better than Google’s Photos (Picassa Web Albums).
Yahoo’s 360 and MSN Spaces are both shit blogging platforms. Blogger rules them. In turn, Blogger is ruled by self-hosted WordPress blogs.
Google’s gmail rocks Yahoo mail and hotmail into the garbage tip.
Anyone I’ve ever introduced to gmail has ended up dumping both yahoo and hotmail for gmail. The only hottentots who refuse to get with the gmail program are those poor technically challenged neaderthals who still crave their daily Microsoft Outlook fix. I pity those poor bastards.
What else you got? Search? Hahahaha!!! Yahoo and MSN are both useless at search and since they still haven’t been able to engineer a new search service that puts Google’s in the shade in the 10 years that Google has dominated the field, we can safely assume that they will never achieve that Herculean feat. It is simply beyond them. They have no clue how to build a better search engine. Or they would have done it already.
Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live both have more chatters than GoogleTalk has. GoogleTalk only does text chat and voice whereas both the former offer video as well. Thing is, based on extensive use by myself over the past few years, I can quite confidently assure you that you will get no better VoIP voice quality than via GoogleTalk. Even the much venerated skype is shit. For vid conferencing I find Windows Live the best at the moment. Thing is, Google is so good at producing quality services that I expect that when they do release a Vid service on GoogleTalk that it will knock the socks off all competitors.
I believe that the best company to buy Yahoo! is in fact Google, because Google knows how to make web 2.0 services work and be financially viable. Microsoft is clueless and Yahoo is trailing Google in its core competencies.
If this Microsoft buys Yahoo! deal goes ahead, Yahoo! will be obliterated by a clueless, clumsy and outclassed Microsoft.
Microsoft is a bad company with a lot of cash and an installed base that feeds it – for now. However, at some point, I believe Microsoft and ALL its technologies will be wiped out by better Open Source Software products.
I strongly believe that young people should not invest their time learning Microsoft developer technology skills. They should invest themselves in the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform. Businesses building in-house software systems on the Microsoft platform will regret it.
Tags: Google, LAMP, Microsoft, web 2.0, yahoo
Filed under Google, Microsoft, web 2.0, yahoo | 12 Comments »
The Devil has come to town… do you party or run away?
Posted on October 29th, 2007 by Richard Catto 2,957 views
Well, the rumours have been floating around for some time now, but many scarcely could believe that FaceBook could possibly be valued at $15 billion, except perhaps for Vinny Lingham, who came close in August 2007 when he conservatively valued FaceBook at $10 billion. So Lingham was off by $5 billion.
Microsoft has just scooped up 1.6% of FaceBook for $240 million. It’s a phenomenal deal, one that could be compared to Mark Shuttleworth’s 1999 coup in which he sold his company, Thawte Consulting to Verisign for $575 million, when he was 26, except that Shuttleworth sold 100% of Thawte for that. Twenty-three year old, Mark Zuckerberg, who founded FaceBook in 2004 when he was 20, still has 98.4% left to sell.
Not all of FaceBook’s 50 million users have welcomed Microsoft’s entry into FaceBook, however, hence the title of this blog post.
One local blogger (and IT journalist), Ivo Vegter, was a member of the FaceBook group, "If Microsoft buy a stake in facebook, I will de-register", right up until Microsoft bought their stake.
The group still has 138 members, so obviously some of them were less dedicated to the cause than others – traitors!
Many of these disgruntled FaceBook denizens probably now wish that the unthinkable would have happened to Zuckerberg. Back in early 2005, Zuckerberg, fresh from a meeting in which he signed a Venture Capital contract securing $12.7 million to finance the then fledgling FaceBook, came very close to death. He had just pulled off the road to fill his tank, when a demented man came at him waving a gun and ranting. Zuckerberg beat a hasty retreat.
Ironically, The Register reports that those wishing to exit FaceBook will soon discover a rather unpalatable truth – you can’t. No matter what you do, you just can’t totally kill your FaceBook profile, and you can always reactivate it later. Shades of match.com or okcupid.com where I enjoyed the use of a zombie profile for some months before they were finally able to tranquilize it into submission. But you never know… some day… I may be back for more… brainzzzz. 
Tags: facebook, Ivo Vegter, Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft
Filed under Microsoft, facebook | 5 Comments »
