Comments on: MicroHoo: Welcome to Open Source, Microsoft

By: Lance

Lance — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:03:15 +0000

And so the exodus begins…
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/12/yahoo-exec-bails-bradley-horowitz-leaves-for-google/

By: Dimitrios Matsoulis

Dimitrios Matsoulis — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:02:49 +0000

Working for Yahoo at the moment must be tedious as it is hard to predict what will happen in the next months. I agree that Microsoft will eventually try to put its mark everywhere, but it will be a long process.
However, when buying a company, people are its most valuable asset. And it is certain that Microsoft is interested in the Yahoo talent. Therefore, the possibility of people leaving in great numbers is not a certainty in my opinion.
http://electronrun.wordpress.com/

By: Dan Oblak - MacBigot.com

Dan Oblak - MacBigot.com — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:15:48 +0000

Didn’t I remember Microsoft having this problem when they acquired Hotmail? I seem to recall that the Hotmail folks were using some form of *nix, and Microsoft’s determination to ‘eat their own dogfood’ resulted in some unexpected downtime — and they had to flip the switch back to the old non-MS systems for a while to beef up their own integrity and scalability. But the point is, Microsoft eventually did do just that — eradicate the need for non-Microsoft technology. ‘We are NOMAD…’

By: rhhfla

rhhfla — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:57:50 +0000

I do not think that Microsoft will embrace open source, regardless of how you view its importance at Yahoo. This just points one of many conflicts in the strategy of combining the two companies. Strategically, I think Microsoft is making a mistake. My further thoughts are at http://sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com/sophisticated_finance/2008/02/microsoft-yahoo.html

By: Lance

Lance — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:40:33 +0000

“many of Yahoo’s best and brightest eventually landing elsewhere”

Exactly right. Can we say Facebook, MySpace, or Google? Microhoo will suck.

By: Jeffrey McManus

Jeffrey McManus — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:30:06 +0000

Microsoft’s experience in doing APIs and third-party developer outreach crushes Yahoo’s like a grape (and as the guy who started Yahoo’s developer program, I should know).

It’s not the case that this notion of open source is foreign to Microsoft; they’ve been gradually embracing the concept over the past few years, and two of their licenses were certified as real open source licenses by OSI late last year.

By: mike

mike — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:05:29 +0000

hey now, i said "microhoo!" this morning. i call prior art! :P

By: David Bullock

David Bullock — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:45:09 +0000

I disagree — Neither.

And I believe you’re confusing open protocols with open source. Microsoft has plenty of experience with open protocols. There’s nothing new to see there.

Microsoft acquiring Yahoo! will be irrelevant to open source. While Yahoo! is a great open source based player, they’re not by any stretch one of the major drivers.

Much of what Yahoo offers is API access to their services. Other contributions they’ve made (like YUI a javascript/css library) stand on their own and will outlive the company. Products like Konfabulator are no different than Microsoft providing Visual Studio Express or Adobe providing AIR. Further Konfabulator has never really grown to reach it’s potential.

Nor is Microsoft going to change it’s spots and become more open source friendly. What will happen in the short term is the creation of a company divided, with Microsoft’s war chest diffused, many of Yahoo’s best and brightest eventually landing elsewhere and another service to be reimplemented with Microsoft technology and Microsoft philosophy.

And worse than being unable to change, Microsoft will force it’s culture into what’s left of Yahoo. The first to leave Yahoo will likely be the company’s most brightly shining lights as other companies seize the opportunity created by the uncertainty of the merger to capture talent. What’s left will be dominated by the hangers-on. As the thought leadership finds new opportunities, Microsoft WILL be looking to make the costly re-enginering effot to replace Yahoo’s backend infrastructure with Microsoft products in order to avoid the marketing embarrassment of their highest profile purchase being almost entirely free of their own products.

The result of combining the #2 player (Yahoo) and the #3 player (MSN) will simply result in an even weaker #2 player once Yahoo loses what vision and talent it had that made it better than Microsoft in the first place.

Dave