This doesn't seem to make any sense as far as technologies go. Yahoo is a web app company. They have a bunch of different web application: search, email, finance, groups, photos (flickr), and auctions.

Microsoft is trying to do these same things, and if they gave their engineers enough time and integrate it enough with windows, they'll get there no problem. With 70K employees, it doesn't make sense to me why they would go and jsut buy out a currently better version of their stuff, especially since it will totally fuck with the "eat yoru own dogfood" mantra that all software companies should live by.

Flickr is written in PHP, i think a lot of yahoo uses PHP as well, and the YUI for the client side. This DOES NOT mesh with ASP.NET. I guess they could make PHP an official language of ASP.NET, maybe that is their intent?

So from a software standpoint this seems retarded to me.

From a business standpoint, we can already see the true genius of it. Look at GOOGLE today, down ANOTHER 8%. They are fast aproaching 500. ABout 2 months ago they hit 700. That was insane. It made them the 3rd largest market cap in the world, or something like that. For a company with a few wharehouses storing some computers that doesn't make any sense. They should not be worth that, cause they aren't. Look they've only been here for a few years, and their technologies of search & advertising are so fucking disruptable that it just doesn't make sense that they are worht that much.

I mean who's to say that a better search engine tehcnology doesn't come out tomorrow? I mean look it took 10 years of webpages being built before google realized that they should atually use the structure of HTML documents to help rank results.

So i'm very glad that MS did this business based move to stick it to google. I think it's a great strategy. Google just anounced shitty results for the 4th quarter, and they've dropped 150 pts in a month. Now they're going to drop again because people are dumb and think MSFT-YHOO merger will hurt them. I'm sorry, but no it's not making a big difference to them in the end.

What i don't like is how MSFT missed other oppurtunities, specifically Amazon. That S3 servce with the EC2 app running on it is just an awesome idea, and it doesn't compete with anybody. It's basically a monopoly. I'd suggest buying monopolies, and not upgrades. Plus the model of the storefront has really proved to work. And if MS is so interested in damn upgrades, why don't they upgrade their zune service to amazon's tunes service. Oh and the ebook reader. Also, did i mention Amazon is 10 BILLION cheaper than yahoo. They also have some good search technology themselves. When i look for something on amazon, i find it. can't that be applied to the web. Also, at one point Amazon had auctions, i'm not sure they still do, but i think it would work. You have plenty of resellers on there trying to move product. I can shop victoriously just as well on amazon as i can on ebay.

The auction thing is interesting as i've read that in japan, yahoo is KILLING ebay in online auctions. That could be a huge win for MSFT in this whole thing. If they could build on that and be the main online auctioneer to billions of asians, that's just untold profit potential.

So it's an OK move, but i'd never spend 40+ Billion to upgrade some of my apps to a codebase i don't support on servers i don't support (last i hear yahoo was pure linux servers) and miss the entire oppurtunity to force reinvestment in my core languages and technologies to make my apps better. I mean, are they going to spend time on the YUI that could be spent on the next version of silverlight?

Updated: Mini's title alone is pure genius: Microsoft + Yahoo! = Microsoft - $44,600,000,000 ?