The MicroHoo! Ballyhoo
An interesting thing happened last Friday. It seems Microsoft is making a strong bid for Yahoo! While much is being made about how this new conglomeration of hugeness will present a worthy opponent to Google, what I’m more concerned about is how this will affect users of Yahoo’s services.
Let’s paint a hypothetical picture, 5 years down the road:
del.icio.us: Five years from now, the yahoo! acquired bookmarks service has been rebranded as Microsoft Windows Live Favorites and is tightly-integrated with IE9. Users have options to sync their bookmarks with the Live service and can view bookmarks in the Xbox 720′s Xplorer browser (for a low-per-use cost of only .05 points per visit). Microsoft Windows Live Favorites only provides legacy support for “alternative” browsers (outdated versions of Firefox, Safari, Opera) and users refusing to use a Windows Live Passport are unable to access their bookmarks. RSS reading has been dropped in favor of Microsoft’s Live Channels format.
flickr: Gone are the somewhat clumsy, but usable Flash components of flickr (rebranded as Microsoft Live Photo.net), replaced by all new Silverlight components. After the initial roll-out of Silverlight 1.0, the subsequent version 2.0 saw little support for Firefox, Safari and users of Mac and Linux, despite the best efforts to implement an open source version on those platforms. Feature parity is expected sometime around Q2 2014. New features include online photo editing with photopaint.net and the addition of home movies. Users also have access to their photo libraries on their Xbox 720 and Zune players and can upload photos directly from their Microsoft-powered smart-phones. Former users of flickr from before the acquisition have largely moved on after a considerable legal battle to force Microsoft to have their pictures removed after a number of people complained about seeing their photos show up in Microsoft ads on MSNBC. The new Microsoft Live Photo.NET EULA is 27 pages long and no longer provides CC-Licensing support as an option.
Yahoo/flickr Groups: Yahoo Groups and flickr have had vibrant user communities dating back over 10 years. Some suggested that these were the real reasons Microsoft put in its bid 5 years ago to purchase the Yahoo! machinery. Now, 5 years later, Yahoo and flickr groups have become tightly-integrated with MSN Messenger and members of groups can easily chat with one another online, share pictures, home movies and discuss topics of interest. Of course, most groups are also havens for spammers and automated bot systems that fire messages soliciting users to visit penis-enlargement sites, online casinos and adult match-making services. Then there are the viruses…
Zimbra: Just before MSFT acquired Yahoo!, Yahoo had acquired Zimbra. The little online mail and calendaring system that won the hearts of many and the inboxes of more than a few companies. Zimbra’s server tools, now rebranded as Outlook Online has been wedged into Exchange server. The web-front end has been remodeled using Silverlight and is now Windows only. Previous versions of the tools have been end-of-lifed. Windows Smartphone users can access Outlook Online services through Outlook Mobile. Other office apps have been integrated online as well and Yahoo/Microsoft have a subscription service for hosting all of your online office documents which can be shared with other Yahoo.net users and groups.
Yahoo! Maps are available directly on vehicles equipped with Microsoft’s SYNC (now known as Windows Auto) as well as on Zunes through the Windows Live Wifi services.
Alright, enough navel-gazing. Yahoo.NET is now People Ready. I get it. As a user of del.icio.us and flickr, I’m pretty concerned about my data and where it could end up. Currently it’s there and pretty easy to get at. Five years from now I can imagine it being much harder to extract. I don’t want Silverlight apps.
I should also say that Microsoft isn’t stupid. I have no doubt that the real reason they’re interested in Yahoo! is because of the users they already have. Driving them away en masse would be bad for business, and at the price they’re reportedly paying (upwards of $45b), they’re going to want Yahoo! to be a money-maker.
Finally, I’m just going to link to a funny blog post: What if Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
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