The Big Monopoly of Redmond has offered $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo.
If this is all about web search, as many reports of this story imply, then this will make no difference to me. Google works very well and I’ve actually been using Wikipedia more as my primary search tool.
The articles gives me a good overview and then provides many excellent links selected by human beings for their relevancy to the topic.
However, I may need to start looking for alternatives to flickr and delicious, both of which were absorbed by Yahoo.
Any recommendations?
I’m in the same boat. Very nervous about flickr and del.icio.us.
Maybe furl?
Flickr worries me more. I’ve looked at zoomr and 23hq but both don’t seem to be on par.
I haven’t looked at furl in a while and don’t even know if my account still works, but it’s a possible alternative.
I’m also worried more about an alternative to flickr. There are plenty of places for me to post my own pictures (including here). But there aren’t a whole lot of good choices for a photo sharing community.
I don’t think it’s about search. What could Yahoo have that would help Microsoft? To compete with Google on search, you need a new method / algorithm / etc…and if Yahoo had that, they would be using it, not sitting on it.
My guess is that this is about two other things:
1) online ads (see MS’s recent investment in Facebook to get at ad opportunities)
2) strong/exclusive IE8 compatibility or other attempts to bolster falling IE numbers (as IE falls, it weakens the idea that an IT department can be most productive as all-Microsoft, which could eventually drag down the whole company)