Microhoo ("Micro-WHO?!?")

Microhoo (R)

Regarding to-day's Valleywag:

Google reported serious profits last quarter.

For a while now Microsoft has been called a big old giant getting left in the dust trying to reawaken (lots of $ in the bank left, just not enough to buy Google). Apps are moving off the desktop (they traditionally rule) onto the 'Net so they need to be able to evolve with that, if it's going to really be the future.

Yahoo posted unfortunate numbers from last quarter. There was a time when Yahoo could've bought Google, but Yahoo's CEO at the time particularly - a veteran not of Silicon Valley but of Hollywood - reportedly balked at Google's asking price. That move that may go down in infamy on par with the legend of the disinterest HP showed in Steve Wozniak's early prototypes for what (after he left HP to start Apple with Steve Jobs) eventually became the first Macintosh computer.

Google's eaten both of their lunches in search and has other strategic developments well underway:

  • Google Apps (like MS Office only from Google, and web-based instead of desktop-based)
  • Projects like Google Base raising eyebrows with everyone from commerce companies like eBay and Amazon, to media companies (e.g. Viacom) and others.
  • Petascale datacenters being built around the world to scale with the rapid growth of the Web and the world's information, which is a pretty serious concern (geek flashback: in the early decades of computing, machines big enough to fill much of our 3rd floor had less power than what currently lives in a modern cell phone).
  • Increased business development in China and other parts of Asia
  • A cozy-up with Apple around the pending iPhone (supports Google Maps as unveiled at Macworld)
  • And of course, recent acquisitions of YouTube and Doubleclick to expand their lifeblood advertising empire...
  • ...and who knows what other acquisitions of tiny startups or other companies they occasionally make without announcing it.

The idea of Microsoft and Yahoo in potential merger talks again hardly sounds illogical. Bring it, I say!

Predictions, anyone? Remember if you place any serious bets on it, there's always the option to do it in Second Life instead of meatspace... because it's also not so illogical that this could be bullshit (with one or more agendas behind it). 😉


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