Microsoft/Yahoo = AOL/Time Warner

Is Microsoft's bid for Yahoo a surprise? No. Any idiot could have seen this one coming 11 months ago.

Will the deal be consummated? Probably, but nobody knows for sure.

Will Microsoft/Yahoo be a better competitor against Google? No. It would only benefit Google.

Let me tell you a story. I bought a new laptop in December. I didn't want to upgrade to Vista, but there was not one single laptop on the market that came with XP.

Microsoft Office would have cost me more than the laptop itself, so I'm trying desperately not to buy it. That is very hard.

Microsoft Write is incompatible with Microsoft Word. I tried sending an article I wrote in MS Write to an editor at one of the publications I work for. He couldn't open it. So I copied the article into a Google Doc and invited him to share it. He managed to export it as a Word document.

What does it say about Microsoft that, in this day of mass communications and online collaboration, I have to go through Google to translate a document from one Microsoft product to another? Microsoft is still stuck in the 1990s.

Microsoft is used to telling its customers what to do, and punishing them if they don't play along. The only reason I can possibly conceive of for the Write/Word incompatibility is that Microsoft has designed Write to be purposely flawed in order to force me to upgrade. It's punishing me for trying to use Write.

That's old school thinking. In a world of complicated technology, every company should be doing everything it can to make things easier for customers. There is a near infinite universe of fascinating programs on the internet, and a walled garden is simply going to be broken down by the sheer force of the new world outside that wall.

Yahoo doesn't really get it, either. It does everything it can to keep you inside the Yahoo garden, and desperately throws annoying ads at you in the hope that you'll click on one, ignoring the fact that it decreases the quality of the experience for its users.

Combine those two companies, and you have a disaster.

Google isn't perfect, either. It has not made Google Docs compatible enough. When I export as Word, for example, it comes out with manual line breaks rather than as paragraph returns, so does not recognize individual paragraphs. I have to do a search and replace to get the paragraph returns.

Google should have had this fixed by now. If the company can figure out how to make every application it has compatible with everything from Yahoo and Microsoft , it will become the de facto stadard, the universal translator that gives us compatibility where it is woefully lacking.

This is Google's opportunity to really take over.

Unfortunately, there's a decent chance that will also destroy Google. But by then, there will another competitor to come along and take the reins.

Comments

[Walter Lounsbery]

Wow, kudos to you for stubbornly using a word processing program that's over 13 years old. It's a wonder you got it to run at all. I understand that Word also does not import Commodore 64 word processor files.

Now really, you did not have to go through the torture of Google Docs to translate a file. Say it isn't so!

I have to call BS on that little issue of finding new computers with Windows XP. They are still available from back alley dealers like Dell.

Not that these things have anything to do with the article subject: the Microsoft Yahoo buyout and Google. I suspect that the Google lawyer that protested the buyout in his well-publicized blog was just doing that for jollies. He just had "a few questions." Yeah, Google would benefit from stronger competition...or maybe just Google's customers.

Whatever happens, this buyout is typical of how competition happens at the enterprise level. Perhaps the upstart Google will have some influence on matters, but it already looks like a naive and childish attitude about others in "their playground." Just grow up already.

[Richard Brandt]

Sure, Dell will offer XP, but I refuse to buy a Dell because quality has dropped so much. I could not find one laptop that offered XP. If you can suggest a good free word processor that will communicate with Word, I'm all for it.

Despite Google's flaws, it's infinitely better than either Yahoo or Microsoft.

[Dimitry Korolkov]

Hi Richard,

Regarding "free word processor that will communicate with Word":

Just take a look at http://www.openoffice.org/

Best,
Dimitry

[Franchise Whale]

Great stuff! Thanks for sharing, one fresh
idea and you can change the world, keep
up the great work.