2008.10.05 – 22.18 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Did that heading grab your attention? Yes, on the same day I posted a comment about how I dislike misleading headlines, I am guilty of doing the same thing. Aren’t I a little stinker?
Yes the language translation service Altavista Babel Fish is no more. If you click on Babel Fish Translation in the footer of the AltaVista home page, you’re redirected to Yahoo Babel Fish.
One more nail in the coffin of what was once one of the web’s greatest search engines. I remember back when we first got internet access over 10 years ago, back when I was still a starry eyed child in primary school. AltaVista, HotBot, Looksmart, Infoseek (before it changed to Go), Lycos, Northern Light, GoTo (before Overture), Yahoo… they were sites you went to when you wanted to find things. I remember filling my bookmark toolbar in Netscape with links to these sites so whenever I needed to research an assignment, I’d try each engine one after the other. They all had different directories and different indexes (HotBot aside, but I preferred the style). Now we have Google, Yahoo, Ask… and… Google.
For what it’s worth, I much preferred AltaVista’s slick mountain logo. The new AltaVista is just a shell to Yahoo anyway.
2008.05.04 – 09.21 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
If I believed in a God, omniscient deity or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I’d be thanking him, her or it right now because it seems Microsoft has backed out of their plan to purchase Yahoo! According to Yahoo News (I trust they have their facts straight about themselves!), the end of Steve Ballmer’s letter to Jerry Yang at Yahoo stated that:
"… clearly a deal is not to be."
After my initial overjoyed excitement died down though, I started thinking rationally again. Given Microsoft’s many, many shady and dubious dealings in the past and their general disregard for business ethics I can’t help but think they’re going to try something else. Perhaps they’re hoping Yahoo will continue to lose market share in search and buy them in a year or so when they’re valued for less. Perhaps they’ve started buying off board directors in the hopes that their nagging will eventually drive Jerry Yang insane and will force him to ask Microsoft if the offer can still be accepted.
Plus, what ever happed to this?
I am really pleased that my Flickr, del.icio.us and Yahoo OpenID accounts are all safe after all, though I’m still being cautiously optimistic. Then again coming from a pessimist when it comes to such business deals, that’s probably high praise from me!
2008.02.26 – 18.12 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
If you’re like any reasonable person who’s genuinely scared of the idea of Microsoft purchasing Yahoo, show everyone your position by buying some Boohoo paraphernalia!
If I actually had some spare cash after buying a new motherboard which ended up being faulty anyway I’d grab myself a mug and a golf shirt. If I didn’t buy the golf shirt, I’d probably have enough money to play a round of golf. Hah, not in Singapore! And if I didn’t buy the mug, I’d probably have enough money for a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato. In Singapore. I just realised the photo I uploaded was the white shirt, not the polo shirt. Wait, golf shirt. Now I’m confused. Boohoo! Don’t you hate paragraphs full of disjointed sentences? I do. Boohoo!
2008.02.04 – 20.42 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Jeremy Zawodny, one of the tech bloggers I respect the most (and one of the first people I added to my Bloglines account all those years ago) has posted a list of possible scenarios and outcomes of a Microsoft Yahoo merger. I’ll try not to blatantly plagiarise his material, but suffice to say he says the following are possible:
- Microsoft does buy Yahoo
- Another suiter (or suitors) will make a bid, forcing the price up for Microsoft
- Yahoo outsources it’s advertising and search business to Google
- Yahoo gets in on the DoubleClick deal and dominates visual advertising
- Yahoo rejects the offer outright, back to the status quo
I know what is good for their business probably doesn’t correlate with the outcomes I’d like to see, but if I were given the chance to choose the outcomes I’d prefer, I’d arrange them in this order:
- Yahoo outsources it’s advertising and search business to Google
- Yahoo rejects the offer outright, back to the status quo
- Yahoo gets in on the DoubleClick deal and dominates visual advertising
- Another suiter (or suitors) will make a bid, forcing the price up for Microsoft
- Microsoft does buy Yahoo
Yahoo is in trouble and does need help with their core search and advertising businesses, but I look at their track record on acquisitions and how much respect I see they still have with most people, and I can’t help but think a merger with Microsoft would do them any good.
Microsoft desperately wants to whip Google and they see Yahoo as the easiest way to do it, given their failure rate and return on investment on all their online ventures, but what’s in it for Yahoo? A possible clash of business cultures? Disillusioned workers who don’t want to work for the evil empire? The dropping of services?
Personally I see Yahoo as more of a diversified internet services company, not a services company that’s dominated by search with other services on the side such as Google. This is why I’m very concerned with people who simply cite Yahoo’s slipping market share for search and conclude that they’re failing. Flickr for example is one of the most respected, if not the most respected, photo storage and sharing sites, and I don’t know of any nerd or heavy computer user who doesn’t at least have a del.icio.us account.
Mmm, Swedish meatballs.
Anyway with Jeremy’s list as a starting point I’ve compiled my own short list of possible outcomes:
- Google and Yahoo enter a partnership
- Either as a delay tactic against Microsoft, or using it as a "white horse defense" against a hostile takeover.
- eBay and Yahoo merge
- Skype and auctions somehow integrated with search and existing services such as Flickr could be quite interesting, and their business cultures are far more compatible. eBay does has far less cash though, it would have to be a merger not a takeover.
- Yahoo is purchased by News Corporation
- Replaces Google as the default search on MySpace. Shudder!
- Yahoo is purchased by Time Warner
- I’ve always said merging Time Warner with an IT company would be a brilliant idea, they really should do it one of these days. Heck, it’s not as if they’ve ever tried before.
- Yahoo’s goes bust
- Their share price and market share continues to slide, and they eventually go into Chapter 11 Microsoft and Google swirl like vultures to pick up the pieces
- An angel investor
- The Flying Spaghetti Monster swoops down with his noodley appendage and provides investment just in the nick of time.
You can read Jeremy Zawodny’s original post here.
2008.02.03 – 22.14 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Magnolia is a similar social bookmarking site to del.icio.us with one important difference: Magnolia isn’t being bought by Microsoft! I love del.icio.us and have been a loyal user ever since I heard about the service on The Gillmor Gang in 2004, but Microsoft’s threat to buy Yahoo means I need to say goodbye.
My del.icio.us bookmarks page
The first step is exporting your years of accumulated links from del.icio.us. From your home screen, click Settings, then under the Bookmarks heading click Export / Backup. You’ll be given the option to export all your data as HTML which you’ll save to your local drive.
The del.icio.us export page
Once you have this HTML file, you can register for a Magnolia account and import your data. From your Magnolia profile page, click Help and choose Import from del.icio.us from the popup menu. From there you browse for the exported del.icio.us file and Magnolia will begin importing. My links took just under 5 minutes to import.
The Magnolia import screen
After you’ve got all your links in, you’ll want to add the Mark in Magnolia bookmarklet to your browser bookmark bar. It works in the exact same way as the post to del.icio.us link you probably used. The Bookmarklets link is also in the Help menu.
And there you have it, not really that hard at all.
My Magnolia bookmarks page
It’s ironic that one of the features that drew me to del.icio.us in the first place (easy data export) was the one feature I was hoping I would never have to use. I’ll stick to using both for now, but it’s good to know I have a backup plan if Microsoft does end up getting their hands on it.
2008.02.01 – 22.51 UTC+08 (Singapore Time)
Since time began we’ve been told that Microsoft was considering buying Yahoo (or maybe it just seems like it!). We all shrugged it off time and time again and laughed about it. Now it seems for the first time that it might actually happen! From Microsoft:
Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share
Transaction valued at approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock; provides 62 percent premium to current trading price for Yahoo! shareholders; combined entity to create a more competitive company, providing superior value to shareholders, better choice and innovation for customers and partners
So the next step is to research alternatives and CLOSE ALL MY YAHOO ACCOUNTS!
del.icio.us is easily replaced by Ma.gnolia. If you use the backup/export feature in del.icio.us and import that file into Ma.gnolia all your bookmarks and their tags are preserved!
Flickr is more of a problem. It doesn’t have an easy export function, and transferring images and their tags one by one could take a VERY long time! Zooomr is probably the closest equivalent, but the last time I tried to use it I ended up going back because of reliability problems… plus the thought of all the material I already had on Flickr kept me in my place!
Guess I’ll be researching mass Flickr exporters or backing up tools. I have copies of all the photos, but thinking about all those tags and albums… I don’t want to replace del.icio.us and Flickr, I really like using them and have so for a long time!
Let’s just hope that Microsoft doesn’t buy IAC Search and Media (aka Ask.com), I just couldn’t bring myself to replace my Bloglines account!
Post to del.icio.us
