Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably already heard about the
MS offer to acquire Yahoo.
While it is Microsoft who is poised to acquire Yahoo (Microhoo) it
seems that it is part of the greater move of Microsoft towards moving
into Internet based service - all the "live" initiatives along with the
"Software + Services" moniker.
I tend to agree with
Nicholas Carr who recently published an article in the
Financial Times
where he talks about how Gates leaving MS marks the end of the desktop
era. In fact looking for the above mentioned reference I saw another
article Carr wrote for
Forbes where he says it even more bluntly
"One important message is this: Software is becoming a media business.
The Net is not only a universal medium, a distribution channel for
words, sounds and images. It is also turning into a universal
computer--the machine we use to run software and store data."
You
might also want to check out a presentation a few of my colleagues
and myself has prepared about half a year ago where we talk about the
same phenomena - Called the
"Future of Home Computing" (5.5Mb).
In this sense the Microsoft - Yahoo merger (if it will follow through)
will result in Yahoosoft a company which is focused more on the
internet aspects rather than the more traditional (some would say
legacy) desktop aspects of Microsoft.
It is also interesting to note in this sense that while winning the web
search (and the related ad-revenue) is something Microsoft is very
interested in. The eyes of Microsoft (and Google for that matter) are
on the next battlefield - mobile search. While there are something like
305 Million broadband subscribers worldwide the number of mobile phones sold
just in the last quarter of 2007 was larger (
334 Millions)
and the total of mobile phones worldwide is in the billions... An added
bonus here is that Google is yet to take over this market (thought it
of course moving in that direction with things like the android
platform and location based search and services)