Topic: Microsoft wants more pie!

Microsoft is going for Yahoo! with a $44.6 Billion offer.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080201/microsoft_yahoo.html
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-01CorpNewsPR.mspx
http://news.google.com/news?q=microsoft+buy+yahoo

Is Microsoft one step closer to world domination or do I need to get my eyes checked?

Of course Microsoft are just vying for the second-best spot while getting rid of the competition of a third party. They know that all the rest of the money in internet advertisement combined doesn't equal Google's current share of the market. There's undeniably also some value in getting into the Yahoo! internet services, YUI!, Flickr etc.


What I find really surprising is that it seems everybody (most tech reporters, at least) thinks that the only thing keeping Google in the lead of their business is their search algorithms. And "maybe joining forces Microsoft and Yahoo! can compete with Google's search algorithms". Bullshit, the Yahoo! and MSN/Live search engines give results that are within the same range of usefulness as those Google produce. When DEC's AltaVista was the search leader, you were lucky if you could get one search with relevant results out of every five you did. With the current algorithms of either of the three, you have maybe one in ten searches actually not producing any relevant results. The improvement from switching AltaVista --> Google was vast. Even if MSNYahooLive! Search was to create better algorithms than Google, the difference would be minimal because search results from Google already have a pretty high relevancy. There's no radiant and shining improvement, so people don't change their search engine for that reason any longer. The areas where people might change their search solution are the cases where they change to MSNYahooLive! because they offer a noticeable improvement over the Google solution for other services, and wind up using the MSNYahooLive! search for practical reasons - it's already there on other services from MSNYahooLive!.

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var Liorean = {
abode: "http://codingforums.com/",
profile: "http://codingforums.com/member.php?u=5798"};

Turn your volume up a little: http://www.44billionlater.com/

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Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

Some more news:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/04/business/04google.php

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Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

Arggh the noise! What was that tune and what is a technology behemoth when it is at home?


Those who look for monsters should look to it that
they do not become monsters. For when you gaze
long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

We Didn't Start the Fire - Billy Joel

I knew I could count on you O Lordy
That tune has been going round and round my head, now I can relax.

(Edited by Tao on 02-05-2008 18:03)