http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/01/microsoft.news

The above url leads to an article that makes a case for the Microsoft-
Yahoo takeover (if it pans out) actually playing to Google's benefit.
The technologies employed by MS and Yahoo for their respective
internet services are orthogonal and cannot be easily integrates, if
at all.  Here is a snippet from the article:

"Crunching those two organisations together seamlessly would be like
trying to shuffle a 50ft-high pack of cards without dropping any. And
the problems start right at the bottom. Yahoo's servers, answering
billions of page requests every day, use a web system called PHP to
generate customised pages. Microsoft doesn't like PHP, which is free
and has a licence that obliges people to release any changes they make
to it back into the community.

Microsoft prefers its own web system, called ASP, to build web pages,
and that's what it uses on Windows Live, its online equivalent of
Yahoo.

Integrating Yahoo into Microsoft would mean either tearing out PHP and
replacing it with ASP, a huge project that would be enormously
expensive while bringing no visible benefit to users, or require
Microsoft to accept an open source product deep within its new
property. Neither is palatable; if Microsoft dogma is followed, it
will throw out PHP. Watch out for the reliability of Yahoo if it does.

Take the giant part of Yahoo, its mail servers. Those run on a free,
open source operating system called FreeBSD. Microsoft Live's mail
servers run on Windows, of course.

If Yahoo swapped from FreeBSD to Windows, the licensing costs would be
enormous. Obviously, Microsoft will find a way around that. But the
underlying problem is that this migration from one platform to another
is the sort of task that gives chief information officers sleepless
nights and ulcers. Interestingly, Microsoft did exactly this with
Hotmail in summer 2000. Can it repeat the trick in 2008-09? Again,
watch out for the reliability of your systems. And this would have to
be repeated again and again across Yahoo's sprawling mass of content
and pages; in many cases, it would be more sensible for Microsoft to
dump its own offerings (on, say, stocks, where Yahoo's finance pages
beat Microsoft's hands down).

Still, one company may benefit from Microsoft attempting to shoehorn
Yahoo into itself. Google will be able to offer a web-leading home to
top developers who like open source. Just remember this five years
from now: most mergers fail."

Thoughtful comments?  The author presents a number of concrete points
that Microsoft didn't address in its bear-hug announcement.

Morons like these analyst obviously have never heard of SOA and Web
Services, a mantra of product integration for the last 5 years.

What a bunch of idiots.

This argument is so baseless in all respects. Don't these idiots
remember that Microsoft bought and successfully integrated Hotmail
into their line of products? Back then they didn't have the luxury of
PHP or AJAX, or SILVERLIGHT and much less SOA, but they did it, and
today you wouldn't know it used to be a Unix/Java site, would you?

So, please, give me a break with these silly statements.

Would any intelligent person (not the self-described moron above) care
to present a defensible counter-argument?

Why would the systems be integrated? Integrating systems is not the
point of this purchase. The fist comment is off target.

For the most part, I agree with the article. Integration is one of the
biggest pitfalls of a merger and even if Microsoft can eventually
successfully integrate Yahoo, during the time of this integration,
Google can gain even more market share as advertisers would either
have to wait for the integration to be completed, or seek another
search giant, i.e. Google.

Why would they not be integrated? What is the point of the purchase
then? Because if they continue to exist as separate entities, they
would be competing with each other for market share, which is just
silly. If they integrate, then Microsoft can come out and say, we own
33% of the online search market or something along those lines.

erid...@gmail.com a écrit :

What will MSFT do, anyway, with Yahoo assets? How can they bring it
togheter? or are they just willing to cut costs and having more
scale ? Don t get the deal, how can they possible revert strong
Google's share advance in search ?

Haha, I just gave you the hotmail integration as a counter-argumetn,
but your little biased mind cannot take it. Whatever, it isn't my
money you are playing with.

If we were to use the argument of some that Microsoft has always
relied on the ideas and products of others to make their money, then
it only makes my point of how well they have managed to integrated all
those 'other' products, but then again, I think you are confused with
Oracle.

This is an interesting point. What I find curious is that Microsoft
and Yahoo have had a loose relationship about cooperation/
collaboration for the past two years, and in so doing had the
opportunity to see where their technologies might align.  Contrary to
what our tourettes syndrome infected java friend claims, the
integration of Yahoo into Microsoft would be a nontrivial challenge
with seemingly intractable problems, as highlighted by the "idiots" in
the Guardian article.  Integrating Hotmail was a manageable task
because it was only a small fraction of Yahoo's size, and specific to
one activity (email).  Yahoo's business encompasses much more and at
the scale of $45 billion will not be consolidated with ease.

Goran you say that integration is not the point of this purchase, yet
fail to mention what instead you believe to be is the purpose to this
*acquisition*.  Enlighten us.  Microsoft isn't a hedge fund buying
Yahoo to install its personnel, turn it around, and unlock its
shareholder value.  Both companies have ceded markets share to Google
in search and search-related advertising industry.  If integration/
consolidation isn't the point, then what is?

From today's Economist:
"Whatever Yahoo!'s management makes of the offer, the firm's
shareholders will be delighted at the news. Microsoft shareholders are
likely to be less enthusiastic: integrating the two companies would be
a mammoth task, and Microsoft has never made an acquisition on
anything approaching this scale before. Some sceptics say that this is
too much to pay for a troubled company, even if it is, by some
measures, the world's biggest internet firm. Microsoft says it is
confident that regulators will approve the deal, which could be
completed by the end of the year."

even if they find out a way to integrate whatsoever....what garantee
that people will stop using google search and switch to microhoo   ?

and let s figure out, the integration goes well, but even though
people continues to use Google more and more....there won t be nothing
else avaiable for Microhoo to acquire....

All you have to do is look at MSFT share price today to see what
investors think about this. Down 2 bucks - disaster. One failed online
business model (MSFT) buying a a failing online business model
(YHOO).  What is there to like. If I owned MSFT I would be royally
pissed

the last thing that msft had more than others (cash) is going out to
save yhoo shareholders...

They won't switch to Microsoft for search, Google is clearly better.

They do what Microsoft is best at doing, taking pieces and putting it
all together, Microsoft Office for example.
They would then take the current Install base, and push the product/
services onto them.

Microsoft rarely creates something new, they just buy existing
companies and improves on them for the most part.

They would run over companies just by their sheer size sorta like
WAL*MART :) but this time around it's a bit different this time they
won't be running over some small fry, some little company they can
squish like a bug, this time they're up against Google, who has lots
of $ in the bank with a lot of smart people working there.

Google has search.

Yahoo and Microsoft have better chat.

Google has YouTube (the only good thing about this is the copy right
infringement when they are forced to remove all that by law suits from
the copy right owners, YouTube will have very little appeal, no I'm
not interested in some old lady video taping her cat.)

Yahoo has the best finance which could easily be tied into MS money.

Google has maps

Yahoo and Microsoft have a bigger email base.

Google plans on creating android, Microsoft already has WinMobile.

Google has online apps, Microsoft has one in the works, and already
has a big Microsoft Office user base.

Google wanted this fight, they publically stated their disdain for
Microsoft for the longest time.  Not sure why Google didn't go after
Ebay, when Ebay openly snubbed Google and didn't allow Google Check
out to compete with Paypal.

Google wanted a fight, now they've got one.  This yahoo purchase is
most likely a Steve Balmer move, have you ever seen Balmer he's like a
mad man...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc

Definitely nothing like the quiet, or mild manner Bill Gates.

The clip appears a bit out of sync.
This version is better
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE

he is really crazy...but the craziest....is to pay 44,6 bn for
yahoo....

how dilutive will it be for MSFT ?

i think it's funny that you put in a link to a youtube video after the
comments you made about it above.  clearly it has value.  especially
since google has integrated the youtube clips in their search.  seems
to me the start of the next generation of video searches.  Kinda like
what vodium does, but with a lot more visibility.

but i think you have some great observations and laid out the
similarities/differences in a clear way.  I think microsoft knows what
they're doing and most of the people with posts here speculate on
strategy which, in turn, brings a lot of emotion the trading table.
We're just going to have to wait and see how this plays out.  in the
meantime, let's hope Google can climb back up - for those of us
invested anyway.

I think there's a misunderstanding here.

When changing the PHP source code there are almost no obligations;
most conditions only apply when the code together with the changes is
redistributed -- Yahoo most likely doesn't do that.

See license text below.

Quote from http://www.php.net/license/
_________________________________
Q. Why is PHP 4 not dual-licensed under the GNU General Public License
(GPL) like PHP 3 was?
A. GPL enforces many restrictions on what can and cannot be done with
the licensed code. The PHP developers decided to release PHP under a
much more loose license (Apache-style), to help PHP become as popular
as possible.
_________________________________

But even the GPL doesn't require much in the case that the software is
not redistributed.  See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Stephan

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When I said that integration was not the point, I referred only to
technical integration which article emphasized. The platform on which
Yahoo is running is not based on MS products. My point it it doesn't
have to be. The point of the purchase is market share and not
replacing Linux servers with Windows server. Who cares. They will
likely keep the existing infrastructure, search algorithms, and
advertising platform for a long time along with Yahoo development team
proficient in these tools. Some of the tools MS has developed over the
past few years in its race to catch up with Google will be added to
Yahoo properties but I just don't see complete overhaul of Yahoos
technology by MS after the purchase that was suggested in the article.