Microsoft Offers To Buy Yahoo: Why They Haven’t A Clue
In their bid to compete with online rival Google, Microsoft now thinks that Yahoo is the answer. Bad idea.
It is amazing, that with all of the resources available to Microsoft, they still don’t get the relationship between online ads, search engines, and those who search. This dynamic has a key ingredient that both Yahoo and Microsoft ignore, yet Google seems keenly aware of.
Simplicity.
This is not to mean your online presence has to be merely simple. It also has to NOT be many things. Obnoxious, for one. Here we are in 2008 already, and STILL we see advertisers serving up animated, blinking, misleading banner crap.
Not to imply that Google is the shining example of perfection. Far from it. It is merely the present benchmark. The fact that it is primarily a functional tool that happens to serve up some advertising is the main point.
An opposite example is the recent Microsoft Live effort with Live.com. Here is an example of a wasted opportunity that could blow Yahoo out of the water, as the class act of internet search. Instead, they integrated Hotmail with Live [thereby diluting the Live brand!], and made the interface clumsy and obtuse. Instead, Microsoft wants to spend nearly 45 BILLION [what’s with this “billion” number lately, anyway?] to merely buy market share from a shrinking, no-class player. After AOL, Yahoo is the next refuge of the unwashed internet masses. As the market trends have shown, Yahoo [and their shareholders] is on it’s way down the Internet Commode.
The larger question is, will Microsoft [and their shareholders] follow?
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