If you’ve read any of my previous posts (all 12 of you, according to my stats), you know that I’m hip to the Open Source. you also know that i work inside a large company where the only open source is a recently installed MediaWiki, but everything else comes from Redmond.
In that context, I’ve had at least 6 people come up to me at work asking for my take on the Microsoft bid for Yahoo. In short: meh. Do I think Open Source is doomed at Yahoo? No. Do I think that Ballmer will make sweeping changes at Yahoo to have them tear out their BSD machines for IIS? No. Will Yahoo see talent drain out the backdoor? No more than is currently happening.
If anything, I see Yahoo infecting Microsoft much more than Microsoft dictating terms to Yahoo, much like Hong Kong is affecting the PRC after Beijing retook the colony. Just because MS is the one forking over the moolah, that doesn’t mean they want to dictate terms, it means they want to get something for their money: ad revenue, dynamic online channels, and perhaps (ZOMGWTFBBQ) some street cred with the online and open source market in that they might be able to show that even MS can own some datacenters with BSD and perl and php and apache and not muck things up. I’m willing to give them a shot.
Let’s remember what we all have been praying for: the end of the Windows Hegemony. It may actually be closer than we anticipated, and it may be a lot more peaceful than we thought (or ‘’hoped'’ in our bloodlust). At this point, MS is a big fat company that realizes they cannot develop the way they had for the last 15 years. Vista is the last hurrah. MS execs have said as much, and told us where they want to go. For once, I actually believe them. MS is a big fat wallet that needs to get the best ROI for investors– that’s what the stock market is all about. Yahoo may bring some new juice to the bar, and it will be up to MS to either do something good with it, leave it alone, or fuck it up. Either way, the knowledge transfer will be going from San Mateo to Redmond, not the other way.
In short, lighten up, Francis.
BONUS: The Economist thinks the deal is a steal for investors, and they use the Ballmer dance-monkey-dance video as their evidence.
Assuming of course that MS can come up with the scratch to get the yahoo investors on board. Don’t forget half their offer was stock, the value of which has fallen 10% since the announcement of the original buyout deal. Granted, Microsoft still is sitting on a 14 P/E ratio right now so they have significant more muscle they could leverage on the street, but the deal becomes more of a stretch as time goes on. Unless their influence campaigns or proxy fight end up yielding results I wouldn’t be surprised to see the whole deal fall through.
Granted a merged operation could fire up the eventual Google/MS showdown into a battle royale for a very large prize. The only logic behind this deal could be that Microsoft seeks to stop the rot in their MSN Search division by the rationale that Microsoft could manage yahoo’s tools better than yahoo can. And I think there is a case to be made there.