After a very exciting week, with just about everyone having something to say about Microsoft’s $44.6 billion unsolicited bid for Yahoo. The first ever SphinnCon Israel or anywhere else was very inspiring and provided interesting tips and ideas. (see my previous post).

Some nice articles I found about the Microsoft/Yahoo “Merger”

MercuryNews has some good information. Such a takeover might not be good for Yahoo as discussed in the Washington Post Would Merger Demote Yahoo to a Microsoft Front End? News.com gives some reasons why. Not to be left behind, search giant Google Google Slams Microsoft Bid For Yahoo! Is this an attempt by Google to “help” Yahoo stay independent or is Google trying to retain search advertising market, in which Google is the undisputed leader with about 75% of search-ad revenues worldwide. Does Yahoo have what Microsoft wants Forbes.

A few of my own comments

First a little history, I have worked in the software industry for close to 30 years, many of you will not remember the early days.

The story of how Bill Gates came to acquire an operating system is well known. In the early 80’s Gary Kildall’s Digital Research provided the operating system for most of the PC’s and was established as the industry standard. IBM had approached Microsoft a very small company in the Seattle area, to supply an OS for the IBM PC. Bill Gates didn’t have one at the time so he quickly bought DOS for a reported $50,000.

Over the years Microsoft edged out Borland the compiler company, Lotus 123 (the first killer application for the IBM PC), and WordPerfect to name just a few applications. The one area where Microsoft has not been successful is the web. Netscape was the earlier leader in the browser game until Microsoft offered free copies of Internet Explorer with PC’s. Google have raced ahead with their search engine leaving Microsoft with less than 10% of the market and even lost money last year.

Microsoft would love to be king in search and push out Google. However, that is going to be very difficult. Both Yahoo and Microsoft are loosing market share to Google. Integrating the two companies to form a joint search engine good enough to challenge Google will be very difficult.

Even if the integration problems are overcome, how are they going to stop Google dominance of Search and advertising in general. Google are branching out with gPhone and Google Docs. Google Docs is not yet a threat to Microsoft desktop software, but in the future a free application supported by Google may begin to capture a large section of the market. Microsoft have the additional “dotcom” problem of how to compete on the Web while maintaining their current products.

For the rest of us having a dominate company with little competition is not good. Yet it is very difficult to see how the Google juggernaut can be slowed to allow more completion.

There is still a lot of interest in the gPhone Gearing Up For Google with rumors Google and Dell are planning to launch a new phone.

Meanwhile Apple are moving forward penetrating the European market with rumors from Intomobile indicating Spain, Italy and Switzerland will be getting the iPhone soon.

Google Powered Mobile Phones

The iPhone will not be the only cool product to watch during 2008. There have been several reports that Google will be launching the gPhone at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, in mid-February. Google has reserved two large booths fueling speculation of a spectacular launch of the gPhone.

What is the gPhone? There is a lot of speculation, but very little concrete information. Presumably the gPhone will have cool futures dedicated to helping user’s surfing the Web, helping to increase Google’s share of search engine traffic. An interesting article in the New York Times suggests “the gPhone is a platform, known as Android, that will allow phone makers to put inexpensive software on their handsets”. If the gPhone is an operating system designed to make surfing the Web on mobile phones easier, Google will be able to direct a lot more traffic to Google applications like their search engine, gMail and Docs.

Google is clearly interested in attracting more traffic by encouraging people browsing the internet to use their applications and services. If the DoubleClick merger is approved, Thestreet.com reports that Google will further tighten their grip in the on-line advertising world.