A few more things to think about while we're pondering the earth-shattering consequences of a MSFT-YHOO shotgun wedding...
- The consent decree that was extended for two (of the requested five) extra years by U.S. District Judge Coleen Kollar-Kotelly (who, interestingly enough has served as chief judge of the FISA Court, the secret tribunal that approves special warrants to spy on suspected spies) only addresses how Microsoft's operating system software interacts with its' competitors application products, and how much documentation of things like APIs and file formats Microsoft is required to publicly disclose. It doesn't cover anything like search engines, advertising, web applications, or anything that has become important since 2001. In fact, one could probably (successfully) argue that Microsoft's inability to expand successfully after winning the browser war is because in a world where the browser and open standards are king, they haven't been able to leverage their desktop market share anymore. Even their browser has been to some extent rendered an avoidable annoyance by a Mozilla Firefox, ironically the descendant of Microsoft's most famous victim, and the reason for the whole antitrust suit in the first place...Netscape Navigator.
- When Microsoft won the browser war, they shoved ActiveX down our collective throats. Not only did it turn out to be a non-starter for what could arguably be called the first generation (the beta?) of Web 2.0 (albeit a proprietary, slow version), but it turned the browser (and Word, and Outlook, and the entire Windows platform) into a security nightmare. ActiveX is the DNA of most modern worms, spiders, viruses and other things with names that evoke yucky creatures you'd rather not have on you. Of course, since ActiveX sucked so badly, a whole host of companies were able to capitalize on the relative security and openness of AJAX, Flash and what have become the various browser-independent building blocks of Web 2.0. Google has been able to capitalize on this by building good Web applications that happen to feature tiny little contextual, even helpful ads. Not by being flashy and putting their name everywhere on your mailbox, messages or applications unless you paid up (like a few of their competitors do with their respective email services), but by trying to be useful, giving you a product and letting them make a buck.
- I'll spell it out for you. Google Mail (Gmail) users don't have advertisements appended to their outgoing messages, but Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail users who don't pay a fee do.Speaking of Yahoo! mail...remember that this is an unsolicited bid. Also remember just over a year ago when Apple's iPhone was announced, the exclusive partner for iPhone's (relatively weak) push email service (which is far from BlackBerry quality, but I've said that before) was, and still is...Yahoo!
- So, does anyone think Apple is going to keep going steady with Yahoo! when they're being acquired by Microsoft, when Microsoft, after years of sad efforts to make inroads in the handheld/smartphone/music player market just to see Apple dazzle the world with iPod and iPhone would like nothing more than to throw a wrench into the works? All that talk about Apple and Google being the new rivals (thanks to Google's Android project) is over and done with. Apple will keep selling iPhone, but I'll bet that all those future iPhone (and current, since iPhone updates are made available to all) owners will soon be able to get some new functionality with Google apps pretty soon, especially with Apple releasing the iPhone SDK in the coming weeks.
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