Yahoo to be Acquired?

Tech news outlets (and my twitter stream) have been aflutter about the possible Microsoft Yahoo acquisition. Some are wondering what Microsoft plans to do with the search and webapp company and others are making predictions about the downfall of Yahoo's industry changing services.

This isn't really *new* news - Microsoft has been attempting to envelope Yahoo since 2005 [source: wikipedia] and hasn't been able to break in. So I guess we'll see.

Implications of a Microsoft Acquisition

I won't say that I am the *biggest* fan of Microsoft products. They certainly have revolutionized modern software practices, but innovation seems to be on the slow (and safe) side. Vista helped them to catch up to where Apple had taken OSX, will quite a few things missing, the Zune was their answer to the iPod in a bigger, clunkier (and more cheesily buzz-worded - "squirting"? "squircle"?) package, although jumping into the gaming industry seemed to be a good move for them. Their web presence, however, has suffered and seems to continue to do so. I don't know much of anyone who uses any of their web services - Hotmail, even if it is "Live!", seems to be dated and clunky; it seems to be the Geocities (which, ironically, is a Yahoo-owned service) of times past - it had it going on at one point in time, but it's past it's prime and time to give in. Their hold on the search market is pretty slim and IE has become synonymous with a headache to designers/developers and there are some mixed feelings about the version targeting announcement that recently hit.

Google - possible competition?

Google's net worth is high and seems to only be growing by the hour. With their [so far] biggest purchase of YouTube, they all but killed off their own video service. Google's plan of attack seems to be to try and duplicate the flavor of the week and if they can't hit it, head over to the competition with their checkbook at hand. Gmail took a direct hit at Yahoo mail and Hotmail and, as far as my tech circle is concerned, Gmail easily won. That being said, what would be in it for Google? Are they ready to assimilate Yahoo's popular service into their Borg Collective?

What they have to gain and what we have to lose

If one of these deals does go through, you can pretty much expect the competition to disappear. Both Microsoft and Google have a lot to gain from the deal - their fledgling competing services can disappear and they can keep the stronger name that Yahoo has built.

Yahoo Search

Google buyout: Yahoo search disappears and Google gains their marketshare
Microsoft buyout: MSN Search disappears (does anyone use that, anyway?)

Flickr

Google buyout: Picasa's uploader replaces Flickr's currently broken one (don't even get me started on that thing), Flickr's newly added Piknik disappears and is replaced by Picasa (which is the better of the two, anyhow), we can have uniformly tagged photos both locally and on the web (cross-platform, too!), plus we still get to keep the social aspect of Flickr. The interface will probably be mucked up with Google Ads.
Microsoft buyout: I wouldn't doubt that the idea of creative commons on Flickr would disappear.

YahooMail

Google buyout: YahooMail dies a flaming death and the 15 people that use it shed a tear of joy when they realize how amazing Gmail is.
Microsoft buyout: Hotmail can be buried for good.

Upcoming

Google buyout: Upcoming gets laced into GoogleCalendar (from your calendar you will be able to add things to Upcoming and vice versa) and Gmail. See all of your Upcoming events on a GoogleMap
Microsoft buyout: Microsoft has an epiphany: someone might want to use the internet to bring people together!

Delicious

Google buyout: GoogleBookmarks dies, "add to delicious" links popup in GoogleReader, and "X number of users have delicious'd this" show up in search results - with the ability to sort results based on common tags & number of users that have it bookmarked.
Microsoft buyout: IE's bookmarks sync with your Delicious account automatically, a "add to delicious" button becomes a permanent part of the IE interface.

Yahoo IM

Google buyout: Google enable yahoo chat via Gtalk (just like AIM).
Microsoft buyout: MSNMessenger is never heard of again. No more MSN connectivity issues!

Yahoo Maps

Google buyout: GoogleMaps begins supporting all of our crazy Wisconsin addresses (like: W67N250 Evergreen Blvd), like YahooMaps already does.
Microsoft buyout: ?

Yelp

Google Buyout: Yelp results are put into searches (ie: restaurant 53212) and are added onto GoogleMaps, they improve the service adding hours of operation, pricing ($=$5, $$=$10 ...), etc
Microsoft Buyout: adds paid advertisements before the actual results

YahooNext

Google buyout: Google offers it's employees gold plated laptops to keep their little worker bee noses to the grindstone to pump out some amazing apps.
Microsoft buyout: Microsoft begins to understand the word "innovation" and gets some impressive projects to add to their directory of boringitude, Microsoft Live Ideas (with such amazing apps as a Calendaring system! You guys made Outlook, hello?!)