There's been some buzz about Microsoft looking to acquire Yahoo lately, and at this point, it's more of a when than if. Google is the enemy, and the sooner Microsoft and Yahoo respond to the Internet giant's growing online presence, the better, according to Rob Enderle, president of the Enderle Group. "Both companies are struggling to compete with Google, which has become incredibly powerful in the Internet advertising space," he said. "This is a competitive response to the amount of power that Google is collecting."
I think MS isn't good in getting search enigines popular (like Live Search). They actually have to get system builders to put Live Search as the default search engine. So I'm not sure if Yahoo would get any better if MS would buy it.
Well, purchasing Yahoo would give them strength in an area where they do lack. I like Google the best, but before that, I used Yahoo. I like Yahoo mail better than G-mail too. AMD gained a big platform when they purchased ATi. They now can make chipsets in-house, which they tried before, but it was just to kick-start things and then leave that part in the hands of the likes of VIA, nVidia, SiS and ALi...and hope someone made something decent. Microsoft is doing the same thing. Google is supposed to be the most powerful brand now, and that title used to be Microsoft's. I would find it very hard to find someone who thinks Microsoft is simply going to go away without a fight. If Microsoft didn't believe they had an issue, they wouldn't be trying to reverse the situation. Yahoo isn't Google, but it's a lot better than what Microsoft has put out in the search engine world.
I personally think that Gmail is much better than hotmail. Also, Google has online office tools (text- and spreadsheet software) to edit documents that are sent to you by mail. The problem with hotmail, it shall be replaced with Live Mail (MS started with that project in The Netherlands). If you got a Live Mail account, your mailbox takes just forever to load (just as Yahoo, but twice as slow). So this can only be decided by the users. You can have a webmail service that can be used like thunderbird or outlook (dragging messages) but take long to load, or a webmail that doesn't offer dragging messages but loads very quick.
oh no, Yahoo has a lot of cool stuff, i like Yahoo answers a lot for instance, and man, i really hope Microcrap doesn't mess any of that stuff up. Knowing them, they will start charging for everything....