Yahoo only has to blame itself

Google. Microsoft. Yahoo! Big friggin' deal. It is literally, of course, but after nearly a week of reading about their bizarre love triangle, I've also decided that I really don't care. Odds are, regardless of whether the buyout goes through, a year from now I'll still be using the same applications and search engines that I use now.

For the record, I use Google. It's my homepage, I download Google applications, and I'm probably more likely to buy the G-phone - if or when it appears - then I am a phone powered by Microsoft.

I'm not the only one. Thanks to its ability to put out usable web applications, Google is ubiquitous, and it will continue to have the attention of many technophiles even if Yahoo-soft becomes a reality.

At best, the union of Microsoft and Yahoo would give Google some much-needed competition. Google's complaints about Microsoft's anti-competitive tactics are rubbish. Microsoft's been involved with the internet longer than Google, and if it could have used its money and influence to dominate the web by now, it would have. The fact is that Microsoft's online web services suck canal water, hence its desire to buy.

I don't feel sorry for Yahoo, either. Jerry Yang and the rest of the yahoos at Yahoo don't want to get swallowed up by the Redmond Monster, but Yang has been saying for 18 months that he plans to revamp Yahoo to make it more competitive.

Cash is king

Actually, the company has been saying that for almost eight years. Many people who lived through Silicon Valley's dot.com boom still associate Yahoo share price breaking the $100 mark as the start of the dot.com bust. The stock was down to nearly $4 a share by the end of 2000, and Yahoo has been trying to recover lost ground ever since.

Microsoft will at least give Yahoo something that it has been begging for: money. Microsoft may not be able to bring web dominance to the table, but it has plenty of money. Yang's been saying the company needs it to revamp; Microsoft has it.

Redmond also has something that Yahoo may be able to use to its advantage: software. Microsoft's Silverlight could look very good running under a Yahoo banner, but the software, which allows such things as HD movies to be downloaded at lo-res speeds, still needs fine tuning, according to a number of developers.

With the i0nternet's number two site pushing cutting edge Web 2.0 software, Yahoo could finally give Google some solid competition. Can you image what Google could do if they were really pushed?

Well, me neither, but that's the point. Google has been very good at integrating things we never knew existed into our online routine. If Yahoo and Microsoft had that ability, nobody would be reading about a buyout.