Everyone is missing the point about Yahvole!

4 Mar 2008 | 07:07 GMT

By Charlie Demerjian

WHY DOES NO one get it, MS doesn't give a rodentia rectum about Yahoo ads, technology, or people, they want it to enforce the next round of net lockins, and they are desperate. Yahoo offers them a way to convert a large number of people over to the next round of servitude, Silverlight.

Yup, you read that right, Yahoo, $44 Billion or so worth can wither and rot after about a year of MS ownership, and they won't care. Heck, they'll probably encourage it because it gets them what they want, long term dominance. Everything they have done for the past year is a prelude to this, and if it takes the GDP of a mid-size country for the next step, it is money well spent.

Before you think I am going mad, think about this, MS has all it's illegal monopoly power slipping away faster than they can say "Gee Whispering Steve, arm twisting doesn't seem to do the trick any more". Their power was derived from absolute control, over OEMs through illegal licensing, file formats through DOC/XLS, the net with IE, and a bunch of others.

Now, those have all crumbled. OOXML's hamifisted, bribe-laced bid for acceptance as a standard has fallen flatter than a CD of Ballmer singing and ODF is taking hold just about everywhere. Office 2008's better way is only slightly more toxic among IT folk than Vista, just think about your reaction when someone sends you a file in that format. The Office lock is pretty much gone.

The OS lock is gone as well, Vista is about as welcome as a genital rash that you can't explain, and the only reason sales have broken the double digits is that MS is making it very hard to get XP any more. Some people say that Apple's meteoric growth over the past year has something to do with quality or good products, but that is far from the case.

Most of the fruity gains are from Vista. When was the last time MS lost 5% overall OS marketshare in a year again? Last say, oh, never? When was the last time OEMs openly sold Linux, and commented about how well it is doing? This is nothing more than a reaction to MS pushing a broken, malware ridden, DRM infested resource hog that even they know is unusably broken.

The last lock is the most important one, IE and the net. IE held a massive marketshare advantage over everything. The embrace, extend, extinguish strategy worked for a bit. Now, it is also slipping fast. Firefox has about a 20% marketshare worlwide and is growing fast. Apple is pushing Safari, so count another 10% and climbing gone, and Linux is a blip, but a growing one, IE doesn't play there either.

MS has flat out blown every attempt to pull their usual bull in a china shop routine here. Pulling IE from the Mac basically was an attempt to lock them out of future Web x.0 wares, and it backfired, badly. WGA malware locked people out of IE7, and as a result, they went elsewhere. All the numbers I have seen show Firefox marketshare equaling IE7 almost point for point. The desperation in their explanation of the backpedaling on IE7, basically they decided to care about your security, is laughable. Security has about zero to do with it, unless you are talking MS monopoly profit security.

In the end, they lost this one too. IE7 was broken, didn't follow standards, and told people they were filthy pirates when they tried to get it. Well done MS, Apple, Firefox and Linux users salute your creativity and marketing savy.

Getting back to the original point of all this, MS has only one tool in it's arsenal, a hammer. They hit you with it until you do what they say. People however have an aversion to having their fingers crushed, just ask anyone not testifying in front of Congress. When MS had a lock on everything, they merrily whacked anyone who didn't tithe and pledge fealty. Whack. Where you gonna go? Whack.

MS essentially stuck themselves and their partners in a time warp, and those not caught moved on without them. A solid ecosystem formed, and suddenly, or at least very creepingly slowly, people did have an alternative. In their usual style, basically blinding realization three years too late, MS got the clue that they are on the verge of irrelevancy. When they pulled out the hammer and asked people to hold out their fingers, they were shown one instead.

And that is why they NEED Yahoo. Yahvole must happen or MS will fade to irrelevancy faster than anyone dares to believe. MS has amassed a hatred among IT folk that is deep, broad and longstanding. Giving them the occasional tidbit no longer works, when you show up with the plague, people shut their doors, and MS is quite plague ridden now. Look at corporate Vista adoption numbers if you don't believe me.

So they are doing what they do best, pulling out another hammer, this time it is aimed at Yahoo users. They are trying to buy Yahoo for a simple reason, they will convert it to Silverlight yesterday, forcing people to be embraced or change emails.

If you think it will take a lot of time to do this conversion, think again, all they need to do is put a simple Silverlight wrapper around all the Yahoo services that says "If Silverlight is installed, don't crash. If Silverlight is not installed, offer them the option to do so. If they say no, lock them out." Basically, if they buy Yahoo, they are going to use your email and data as a hostage to force you to buy into their proprietary tech.

If you don't think they are going to cram it down your throat, go try and get a download from MS now, the .NET 2.0 redistributable is a good candidate. See what you need to do to use the 'new look' of MS? Yup, Silverlight. Wanna bet t hat it won't be as optional in 6 months? If you want your updates, there is a guy in the back room with a hammer. Whack.

Yahoo will be the same. MS is spending billions to buy their way into heaven, with heaven defined as taking hundreds of millions of email accounts to use as hostages. It is a small price to pay actually, the money they will reap squeezing monopoly profits out of web 2.0, 3.0 and onwards will make up for that pittance in a quarter or two.

If it fails however, MS is quite dead, or at least quite irrelevant. Actually, I don't think it really matters, nothing they can do will stop that. Every new technology they have attempted to inflict on the general public lately has gone down in flames, quite spectacularly.

If they make the beast with two backs called Yahvole, well they will net users for Silverlight in the short term, but it will backfire. People resent MS on a level not ever openly seen before. People get, and resent the old behaviors, they are no longer afraid to publicly say that being hit with hammers hurts. Where the US government was bought out, the EU paid off with a pittance and stonewalled on all relevant documentation, the mouth breathing public has acted.

MS will buy Yahoo, and Yahvole will be formed. They will get a huge spike in Silverlight adoption while people figure out how to move to Gmail, download Ubuntu or look up the closest Apple store on Google maps. Silverlight enabled Windows Live (or whatever it is branded this week) will be rolled out at a cost of millions, possibly billions, and require all the shiny things MS has forced on people.

All six of the regular Live services users will be duly impressed. The rest will be lost for good. In the eyes of MS execs, the $44 Billion deal is a must to survive, and they are right. MS is culturally incapable of putting out a good product, so this is their last best hope. It won't do much more than put a finger or two in the dike, but it will be enormously fun to watch them try.

If I can offer advice to the Yahoo owners, bid up the price, cash out, and don't look back. Use your money to start a new venture to pick up the pieces when MS goes thud, the most fertile ground is found after a forest fire. To Google, I would say let it happen. Put the boot in and force the bid up, but only put up token resistance. Spend the real time and effort to develop one click tools to bring people off of Yahoo when they realize there is a gun at their temple. Then you win.

To MS, I am tempted to say buy Yahoo ASAP at any cost, but that would only hasten your implosion, and that would deprive me of the fun to be had watching you thrash your way down the drain slowly. Vista has proven to be a goldmine of literary targets, and from all the Windows 7 presentations I have seen, there are many more to come, you haven't learned a thing.

I would offer real advice, but the internal emails that are hemorrhaging out show there is enough common sense among the bright people in Redmond to do the right thing, but they are roundly shouted down. The clue proof coating is on far too thick among the people signing at the dotted line. Buy Yahoo, form Yahvole, and die quickly, I will find entertainment elsewhere, I am more than capable. µ

© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007