The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Murdoch could save Yahoo! from Microsoft!

Nicholas McGee

That old Yahoo! gag... 

Alert

...it'll never get tired(!)

alain williams

Lesser of 2 evils 

Although I dislike Murdoch, I dislike him less than I do Microsoft. Also Murdoch does not have quite the 'net presence that MS does and so competition is kept a bit more alive.

Les

Frying pan, fire, etc 

Pirate

Cool! Saved from the Evil Empire by the Really Evil Empire!

marc

I'd cancel straight away 

Gates Halo

I currently pay for Yahoo Mail Plus. I'd cancel straight away if I though Murdoch was getting his evil, grubby little hands on my money.

Mycho

Bad, bad, bad 

Gates Horns

Not much choice really is there?

madra

equal of two evils 

Paris Hilton

@ marc: "...I currently pay for Yahoo Mail Plus. I'd cancel straight away if I though Murdoch was getting his evil, grubby little hands on my money..."

i feel similarly about my 'flickr pro' account.

still, look on the bright side - maybe, as part of the deal yahoo will inherit that crack team of programmers and interface designers, responsible for the tasteful smooth, error-free browsing experience that is myspazz

----

paris - because we're talking about self-made millionaires, who've dragged themselves up by their bootstraps by dint of old-fashioned bloody hard graft

Eponymous Cowherd

Rock vs Hard Place 

Thumb Down

Just about says it all....

Red Bren

Like watching two school bullies fight 

Linux

Two equally evil corporations, both with form for anti-competitive practices squaring up to each other at last. You don't really want either of them to win but you do hope they will give each other a good kicking.

Dave Jones

Today's slogan 

Pirate

Go! Home! Dirty! Digger!

amanfromMars

And the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced? ... Andrew Carnegie* 

Paris Hilton

"paris - because we're talking about self-made millionaires, who've dragged themselves up by their bootstraps by dint of old-fashioned bloody hard graft" ....... Men, .... whenever they do it for all the right reasons. Aint that Right, Ladies?

*http://www.cmu.edu/news/blog/2007/Fall/the-man-who-dies-thus-rich-dies-disgraced.shtml

When you are super rich, imagine how many you could help in order not to die owning a cent. What a Wild Journey/Helter Skelter Ride that would be.

Although the Danger is that IT will make an Absolute Fortune. :-)

Oh Well, Two outta Three aint Bad.

And Paris because of Spring Time.

Gav

Better battered than charcoal 

Flame

Yahoo says goodbye to the frying pan...

... and hello to the fire.

Christopher E. Stith

How many of my email accounts must MS have? 

Pirate

Okay, so I had an MSN email, then they bought Hotmail, which I'd had for years. Now they want to buy Yahoo. So MS feels a need to go around buying up other email and content providers for what purpose? Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft nor the two together are what Google and DoubleClick together are. Microsoft has news (MSNBC and MSN), they have email (MSN and Hotmail), they have search (MSN), they have ads (everywhere) and Office even shows ads.

The only bonuses I see for MS owning Yahoo is that they can foist Silverlight upon one of the biggest and most respected content networks in the world and they can write up some BS case study about how MS's IT department is more comfortable with Windows than BSD and Linux and they get their licenses of their own software for free, so Windows Server 2008 runs Yahoo cheaper for them than Yahoo's existing network. The parts about them not having to pay for the software and that their personnel are generally clueless about the competition will, of course, be left out.

So, as a loyal Yahoo user since 1995, I'd have to say that Microsoft would succeed in driving me closer to Google if the purchase goes through. I don't need a third search and news site and a third email address all served by MS.

As for Murdoch, if he gets MySpace and Yahoo together, maybe Myspace's awful user interface. Maybe they should negotiate getting special placement of the Fox News and other News Corp holdings stories on Yahoo's news section, too. I'd hate to see Yahoo become solely an outlet for News Corp, but listing them first wouldn't bother me a bit.

Mike

Why Not an ISP 

I'm surprised it hasn't come up for Verizon or Comcast to buy Yahoo.

Surely an ISP would be able to slant the table a bit toward their own portal. They already try to make their home pages look like portals, and try to get their customers to use specific search engines by installing sofware during service installation. And if that portal is a credible GOOG competitor, its got a chance of sticking.

Its a good vertical play, I'd think. One buys lots of bandwidth, one provides lots of bandwidth. One gets paid for eyeballs, the other gets the eyeballs to pay.

Paul

News Corp even worse than Microsoft 

Gates Halo

Wow. I never thought I'd ever, EVER say this, but YAY! MICROSOFT!!

Seriously, I really don't like Microsoft, their business practices are reprehensible and I don't use their products except under duress, but they are by far the lesser of two evils, having "merely" contributed to the dumbing-down of computing, and acceptance of shoddy software by most computer users.

Whereas Murdoch's News Corp has actively contributed to the dumbing down of all society, the acceptance of shoddy journalism by nearly everyone, AND has had a nasty effect on open political discussion here in the US with it's "fair and balanced" ("fairly unbalanced", more like) Faux News channel and asshats like Limbaugh/Hannity etc. telling lies daily on the radio.

The world *really* doesn't need those fuckers getting any more influence than they already have, so for once, I'm rootin' for Redmond!

jcipale

In this case 

Coat

I would rather the lesser evil empire (M$) win out. Of course, yahell will fit right in with murdick's anti-democracy stadning. I mean they DID censor Yahoo China...

Anonymous Coward

Rupe 

Paris Hilton

Ol' Rupert isn't such a bad stick. He just likes to own loads of stuff. Oh and run the odd bit of crap news, etc. In the end he is just a man on a mission, a mission to lower the collective IQ. And that's gotta be a good thing, right?

Paris is already at an IQ level that Rupert wants for us all.