Charles Lau dot Com

As the battle continues between Google, Yahoo and Microsoft over the Internet search engine market, Microsoft is now using the usual tactic of acquiring companies for the sake of dominance.  Microsoft has been making public announcement towards their Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo. Google has been expressing their Google unhappiness towards Microsoft acquisition and even offer to help Yahoo avert a takeover and urged antitrust regulators to take a hard look at the proposed deal.  But in the end, Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer saying that they will not consider anything less than $40 per share.

Let’s have a quick thought if one day Microsoft really takes over Yahoo.  What’s really going to happen by then?  First of all, we should see some new strategies to be born by Google.  It should start to further define the meaning of Internet which Google has done over the past few years.

The idea of Microsoft being a dominant player can be good and bad.  It could be good in the sense of fulfilling their one login for all which I think was called Passport.  Since Yahoo has so many services online, Microsoft could immediately take advantage of the many Yahoo services to either rebrand as Microsoft, or to brand as Microsoft Yahoo.  As we can see from all the previous acquisition of Microsoft, all the products have always been rebranded with Microsoft as the front, and the product behind while they abandoned the actual name of the product.  And that is usually because those products have potential and yet they are not well-known yet.  And also because Yahoo is very well-known in the Internet, Microsoft shouldn’t be forgetting to put their name at the back and called it “Microsoft Yahoo”.

The bad thing about Microsoft being dominant is that we will start to see many opensource ideas on the Internet being endangered.  The real reason why I support more of Google is because of their support for the idea of “openness” and support for free programs and free ideas.  Google has defined the Internet to become a place of free play.  While it is always very hard to be impartial on the Internet since Google is doing a business here, Google has done their part to sit on the fence, defending nobody except for their embrace for a better search engine.

When I think of Microsoft, I will start to think of Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Windows and MSN.  If you have noticed, they all belonged to Microsoft solely!  But when I think of Google, I think of Firefox, Linux, Google Toolbar, Google Reader, Google Docs and even blogs and websites.  Not all the products belonged to Google, and yet Google supported them in one way or another.  But if you have noticed, the way Google supported them is almost directly in competition with Microsoft.  Of course, we can say that Google might be supporting anything that is against the dominating Microsoft.

It’s not that being dominating is very bad.  Everybody in the world is always looking for the best things in life.  And if the things are done only in one way, life will be so much more easier for all of us.  Just imagine there are so many versions of linux to choose from.  Just by taking one program, you have to determine if it is compatible with which version of linux.  When things get too much freedom, there are simply too much complication and only those of extreme interest will survive through.  Unfortunately, not everyone of us using the Internet is tech-savvy.  And I believe the majority are not tech-savvy actually.  They would rather support one company which can provide them with the widely accepted solutions, than to support the underdogs who can provide very flexibile solutions.

So, what’s life going to be like if Microsoft is going to acquire Yahoo?

I should start to see some of the likely integration of Microsoft software with the Internet usage.  It may come to a stage where Google might be out of the picture totally because Microsoft has been unable to deploy their portal websites successfully in the past.  With the huge market of Yahoo in the area of everything else except the search engine, Microsoft will be able to integrate things such as Yahoo emails, Yahoo Messenger and probably Yahoo games and Yahoo news and finances.  All these little things take up most of the market on the Internet.  It may come to a stage where Microsoft Yahoo is the most important Internet service to use for our business and personal usages.  Although Google will continue to reign in their search engine since they have probably the best engine in the world, Google might be left behind for all other things.  Just like most of our computers are being equipped with Microsoft Windows and we all naturally accepted the blue-screen-of-death and cannot do anything about it, the Internet might come to the same fate as well.  To ask Microsoft not to dominate, it is pretty hard since their business is built in such a way and that’s how they become really dominating.

Google might have to buck up even more, and I may not be surprised to see Google operating system coming out in the new computers since that’s the very start of how we are able to access the Internet.  In fact, the only reason why people are still sticking to Microsoft Windows is only because of the computer games support and office productivity support that everybody is working on since that is naturally the operating system which is most profitable to build for.

Probably, the new Internet applications might be built for Microsoft Windows…

All these things sound so familiar…

Microsoft versus Apple (operating system)
Microsfot versus Netscape (internet browser)
Microsoft versus Firefox (internet browser)
Microsoft versus Sony (game console)
Microsoft versus Google (Internet)

Is this earth going to become under Microsoft country pretty soon?