Many people wrote about the possible acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft and I wanted to wait for the dust to settle before talking about it. I will be quite direct; I think this is a pathetic move from Microsoft in order to attempt to gain a little bit of space in the Internet playground.

Why pathetic? Well just like everything else they do. If you haven’t really noticed, Microsoft hasn’t been innovating lately. When I say lately, I say in the last 10 years or so. Microsoft buys its way. Look at most of their product and you’ll see that most, if not all nowadays, are acquisition. But is this bad? Not really, however giving a loaded weapon to a kid is not a good idea either. What will Microsoft do with Yahoo that they cannot do with their own (pathetic) products? If Microsoft can’t get people to jump in their bandwagon, will using the fading “Yahoo” brand really help them out? Because let’s face it: Yahoo isn’t the shining star it used to be. Their best products (Flickr and Delicious) are, you guessed it, acquisitions.

Warning, I will use the “S” word a lot until the end of the article so please be careful as some people are allergic to this word. Both Yahoo and Microsoft are struggling to get users. Will a synergy help? My feeling is that instead of being beneficial for the company, this might hurt them. I really doubt this synergy will increase the number of users. For example, who’s using Yahoo’s social network? Not a lot of people. Who’s using Microsoft’s social network? Not a lot of people either. So if you’re forced to move your Microsoft account to Yahoo’s, what will you do? Chances are you will quit and focus on Facebook or MySpace (especially if you’re in the younger generation).

Email will be even harder to “synergize” as people love their email. By that, I mean that people love Hotmail or people love Yahoo mail. They love the interface, not the fact that it’s Yahoo or Microsoft or Google. Especially older people who used the product for a while. Change is hard. I tried to convert many people to Gmail as *I* thought it was better but a lot of people don’t see it that way. They think Hotmail is better or that Yahoo mail is better. It’s all about user perception. Think of it the other way around. If Microsoft were to buy Google and you’d have to use Hotmail from now on, how would you feel?

One place where I see a potential synergy is IM. If I look at myself, I used ICQ back in the day. I switched to MSN when everyone else did and felt lonely on ICQ and now I’m on Goggle Talk. Where will I be in 2 years? Who knows. I think that Microsoft can easily migrate Yahoo’s users on MSN but then again, that might be a small number of people as many people have accounts on MSN and YIM. Is IM a great business to be in? I don’t know about you but I think it barely pays the hosting and bandwidth bills.

Microsoft is a dead dinosaur. They laugh at every innovation coming from Google but when they see that they missed the bandwagon, they shamelessly attempt to duplicate the products. Examples? Hotmail for businesses, Live Domain Apps, Microsoft AdCenter, Office live, and I think their online map could be included in this list but I’m not 100% sure as they had their StreetMap software in the past. I don’t mean to bash on Microsoft but their lack of innovation and the fact that Steve Balmer is laughing at anything that is truly innovative (while attempting to duplicate it “secretly”) makes Microsoft a dying dinosaur that actually started to rot.

As far as Yahoo, not much luck there. It seems like everything they do these days is a flop and they know it (Yahoo 360 anyone?). Even some hardcore flickr users left the site for other niche sites. They also had a big censoring backslash (especially in Germany). I don’t know about you but I haven’t used any of Yahoo’s products in a while. I don’t use their search tool, their email, their news site, nothing. I guess it’s like going to a bad restaurant. Chances are you will never return no matter how hard they advertise.

So, I forgot where I saw this (it was a startup blog) but very often, 1+1=0.5 (or DEADBEEF)