Rubénerd Blog :)

I know you all love my pointless milestone posts, so here’s one celebrating a new achievement here on the Rubénerd Blog: the publishing of my 2222nd post! Not only is that number greater than 2221, but the same digit is repeated four times! The next time this will happen is 3333 which is 1111 posts away from now, wonder what it’ll be about? What am I talking about, it’ll probably be about the fact I reached 3333 posts, which not only would be an achievement because that number is greater than 3332, but the same digit is repeated four times!

Read this post >

The prophecy has come true! In a kind of half-arsed way. Too bad the shirts from February 2008 are no longer available.

So here’s the deal: Yahoo and Microsoft have formed a partnership of sorts where Yahoo uses Microsoft search technology and Microsoft leverages Yahoo’s media and eyeballs — I think. Our attention is naturally drawn to Google, the dominant search engine in the English speaking world and how much of an effect (if any) Microhoo will have on it.

As I mentioned here already, Dana Gardner and I briefly talked on Twitter about the possibility of Microsoft using it’s newly acquired clout to undercut Google on price and in effect kill off their only major source of revenue. It’s an interesting prospect; certainly history is ripe with examples of formerly big companies that Microsoft has taken down with such shrewd (and sometimes legally dubious) tactics. The word dubious is.

In the short term though I don’t see it happening. The assumption here is Microsoft and Yahoo can offer a lower priced product; in this case paid search advertising; and therefore take customers away from Google. As with GNU/Linux on netbooks though, price alone has been shown not to be enough to get people to change. The other simple fact is it’s not a level playing field. Google commands the lions share of the search market, if people want to do business online they go to Google.

When I first heard about Microhoo 2.0 I made this diagram to illustrate. To preempt any negative comments, yes it is very exaggerated but it makes my point!

Could this change in the medium to long term? With Microsoft’s previous MSN, then Windows Live, then Bing efforts I felt bad for them, but with Yahoo it’s a possibility. Adding two failing ventures doesn’t automatically create a successful one though; if they both largely continue business-as-usual nothing will change.

It’s a brilliant move on Microsoft’s part; they got to butcher Yahoo without having to spend much money at all. Not sure what’s really in it for Yahoo.

I tell you what though, I’m nervous about logging into my Flickr and Delicious accounts and seeing Bing logos everywhere. What about people with Yahoo email accounts?

It’s official, Yahoo now also obfuscates search result links with gibberish the same way Google does, but misleadingly shows you the original URL in the browser’s status bar. If you do a search for a site then right-click to copy the source URL, instead of getting the actual search result, you get a string of random characters, no doubt practical for their uses but extremely irritating for us.

For example, doing a search for Grilled Cheese Sandwich will show a Wikipedia page as the first result with the correct URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grilled_cheese_sandwich

But if you right-click and copy the source URL, you get this:

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGkjNjHRpKnS8BONhXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByZWgwN285BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA3NrMQR2dGlkAw--/SIG=1284b7r18/EXP=1243311843/**http%3a//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grilled_cheese_sandwich

Fortunately it’s easy to strip out most of the junk given the URL you actually searced for is merely appended to the end, but it’s still a waste of time. Google and Yahoo really, really, REALLY need to stop doing this!

It’s quite literally the end of an era; Yahoo is no longer allowing new registrations for GeoCities which essentially marks the end of the service.

The first website I ever made was in primary school computer class when we first moved to Singapore. Mr Napier taught us how to code basic HTML, insert images and use the GIF Construction Set to make animations. When it was done, our pages were uploaded to the school’s website which I hastily jotted the URL down for and told my family back in Australia about!

When that school year ended I moved the site to GeoCities which at the time organised you into neighbourhoods depending on the content you were hosting: I went with "SiliconValley". Later when Yahoo bought them out and they introduced URIs based on usernames I changed to http://www.geocities.com/rubenerd. After a few years I moved over to Tripod over at Lycos before getting a paid webhost and my GeoCities account was deleted due to a lack of activity. What I wouldn’t give to see that page again!

I guess it was inevitable that GeoCities would be discontinued eventually; it’s just a shame it wasn’t managed properly and was essentially left to languish. It was bigger than Jesus back in 1997.

RIP.

Did that heading grab your attention? Yes, on the same day I posted a comment about how I dislike misleading headlines, I am guilty of doing the same thing. Aren’t I a little stinker?

Yes the language translation service Altavista Babel Fish is no more. If you click on Babel Fish Translation in the footer of the AltaVista home page, you’re redirected to Yahoo Babel Fish.

One more nail in the coffin of what was once one of the web’s greatest search engines. I remember back when we first got internet access over 10 years ago, back when I was still a starry eyed child in primary school. AltaVista, HotBot, Looksmart, Infoseek (before it changed to Go), Lycos, Northern Light, GoTo (before Overture), Yahoo… they were sites you went to when you wanted to find things. I remember filling my bookmark toolbar in Netscape with links to these sites so whenever I needed to research an assignment, I’d try each engine one after the other. They all had different directories and different indexes (HotBot aside, but I preferred the style). Now we have Google, Yahoo, Ask… and… Google.

For what it’s worth, I much preferred AltaVista’s slick mountain logo. The new AltaVista is just a shell to Yahoo anyway.

If I believed in a God, omniscient deity or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I’d be thanking him, her or it right now because it seems Microsoft has backed out of their plan to purchase Yahoo! According to Yahoo News (I trust they have their facts straight about themselves!), the end of Steve Ballmer’s letter to Jerry Yang at Yahoo stated that:

"… clearly a deal is not to be."

After my initial overjoyed excitement died down though, I started thinking rationally again. Given Microsoft’s many, many shady and dubious dealings in the past and their general disregard for business ethics I can’t help but think they’re going to try something else. Perhaps they’re hoping Yahoo will continue to lose market share in search and buy them in a year or so when they’re valued for less. Perhaps they’ve started buying off board directors in the hopes that their nagging will eventually drive Jerry Yang insane and will force him to ask Microsoft if the offer can still be accepted.

Plus, what ever happed to this?

I am really pleased that my Flickr, del.icio.us and Yahoo OpenID accounts are all safe after all, though I’m still being cautiously optimistic. Then again coming from a pessimist when it comes to such business deals, that’s probably high praise from me!

If you’re like any reasonable person who’s genuinely scared of the idea of Microsoft purchasing Yahoo, show everyone your position by buying some Boohoo paraphernalia!

If I actually had some spare cash after buying a new motherboard which ended up being faulty anyway I’d grab myself a mug and a golf shirt. If I didn’t buy the golf shirt, I’d probably have enough money to play a round of golf. Hah, not in Singapore! And if I didn’t buy the mug, I’d probably have enough money for a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato. In Singapore. I just realised the photo I uploaded was the white shirt, not the polo shirt. Wait, golf shirt. Now I’m confused. Boohoo! Don’t you hate paragraphs full of disjointed sentences? I do. Boohoo!

Jeremy Zawodny, one of the tech bloggers I respect the most (and one of the first people I added to my Bloglines account all those years ago) has posted a list of possible scenarios and outcomes of a Microsoft Yahoo merger. I’ll try not to blatantly plagiarise his material, but suffice to say he says the following are possible:

1. Microsoft does buy Yahoo
2. Another suiter (or suitors) will make a bid, forcing the price up for Microsoft
3. Yahoo outsources it’s advertising and search business to Google
4. Yahoo gets in on the DoubleClick deal and dominates visual advertising
5. Yahoo rejects the offer outright, back to the status quo

I know what is good for their business probably doesn’t correlate with the outcomes I’d like to see, but if I were given the chance to choose the outcomes I’d prefer, I’d arrange them in this order:

1. Yahoo outsources it’s advertising and search business to Google
2. Yahoo rejects the offer outright, back to the status quo
3. Yahoo gets in on the DoubleClick deal and dominates visual advertising
4. Another suiter (or suitors) will make a bid, forcing the price up for Microsoft
5. Microsoft does buy Yahoo

Yahoo is in trouble and does need help with their core search and advertising businesses, but I look at their track record on acquisitions and how much respect I see they still have with most people, and I can’t help but think a merger with Microsoft would do them any good.

Microsoft desperately wants to whip Google and they see Yahoo as the easiest way to do it, given their failure rate and return on investment on all their online ventures, but what’s in it for Yahoo? A possible clash of business cultures? Disillusioned workers who don’t want to work for the evil empire? The dropping of services?

Personally I see Yahoo as more of a diversified internet services company, not a services company that’s dominated by search with other services on the side such as Google. This is why I’m very concerned with people who simply cite Yahoo’s slipping market share for search and conclude that they’re failing. Flickr for example is one of the most respected, if not the most respected, photo storage and sharing sites, and I don’t know of any nerd or heavy computer user who doesn’t at least have a del.icio.us account.

Mmm, Swedish meatballs.

Anyway with Jeremy’s list as a starting point I’ve compiled my own short list of possible outcomes:

Google and Yahoo enter a partnership

Either as a delay tactic against Microsoft, or using it as a "white horse defense" against a hostile takeover.

eBay and Yahoo merge

Skype and auctions somehow integrated with search and existing services such as Flickr could be quite interesting, and their business cultures are far more compatible. eBay does has far less cash though, it would have to be a merger not a takeover.

Yahoo is purchased by News Corporation

Replaces Google as the default search on MySpace. Shudder!

Yahoo is purchased by Time Warner

I’ve always said merging Time Warner with an IT company would be a brilliant idea, they really should do it one of these days. Heck, it’s not as if they’ve ever tried before.

Yahoo’s goes bust

Their share price and market share continues to slide, and they eventually go into Chapter 11 Microsoft and Google swirl like vultures to pick up the pieces

An angel investor

The Flying Spaghetti Monster swoops down with his noodley appendage and provides investment just in the nick of time.

You can read Jeremy Zawodny’s original post here.

Magnolia is a similar social bookmarking site to del.icio.us with one important difference: Magnolia isn’t being bought by Microsoft! I love del.icio.us and have been a loyal user ever since I heard about the service on The Gillmor Gang in 2004, but Microsoft’s threat to buy Yahoo means I need to say goodbye.

My del.icio.us bookmarks page

The first step is exporting your years of accumulated links from del.icio.us. From your home screen, click Settings, then under the Bookmarks heading click Export / Backup. You’ll be given the option to export all your data as HTML which you’ll save to your local drive.

The del.icio.us export page

Once you have this HTML file, you can register for a Magnolia account and import your data. From your Magnolia profile page, click Help and choose Import from del.icio.us from the popup menu. From there you browse for the exported del.icio.us file and Magnolia will begin importing. My links took just under 5 minutes to import.

The Magnolia import screen

After you’ve got all your links in, you’ll want to add the Mark in Magnolia bookmarklet to your browser bookmark bar. It works in the exact same way as the post to del.icio.us link you probably used. The Bookmarklets link is also in the Help menu.

And there you have it, not really that hard at all.

My Magnolia bookmarks page

It’s ironic that one of the features that drew me to del.icio.us in the first place (easy data export) was the one feature I was hoping I would never have to use. I’ll stick to using both for now, but it’s good to know I have a backup plan if Microsoft does end up getting their hands on it.