Ok, so the news that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo has been popping up for months … maybe years. It looks like Microsoft actually made an offer today. For much of what Yahoo offers this doesn’t really bother me. I haven’t really been that interested in most things Yahoo since the late 90’s. What scares me is what happens to all of the aquisitions that we in higher-ed love and that Yahoo has been smart enough to leave untouched, like Flickr and del.icio.us. Microsoft says:

” … it can shave at least $1 billion from operating expenses in a merged company. “

I fear these amazing, culturally un-microsoft, web services may be the first to go. I just hope I’m wrong. It’d be great if this is the thing about Yahoo that they are hoping to bring to Microsoft, but more likely they just want the ad and search engine market. And Microsoft, if you do let flickr and del.icio.us continue on please, please, please, don’t re-brand them as “live”, I’d rather see them die peacefully.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 5:56 pm and is filed under The rest of the web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.