Microsoft's interest in Yahoo

[Derek Bodner]

I'm not TOO worried about msft buying yahoo, as even msn and yahoo combined aren't nearly enough to form a monopoly, but from a technical perspective it certainly would be interesting.  For those that don't know, Yahoo is mainly powered by PHP/Apache on FreeBSD servers.  Does anyone thing Microsoft would be willing to keep it on open source technology?  Can anyone imagine how big of a technical undertaking that would be to migrate the infrastructure and code to a windows stack?

[WayOutWest]

I'm not TOO worried about msft buying yahoo, as even msn and yahoo combined aren't nearly enough to form a monopoly, but from a technical perspective it certainly would be interesting.  For those that don't know, Yahoo is mainly powered by PHP/Apache on FreeBSD servers.  Does anyone thing Microsoft would be willing to keep it on open source technology?  Can anyone imagine how big of a technical undertaking that would be to migrate the infrastructure and code to a windows stack?

You effing geek!

99.98% of the world is looking at the financial impact of this potential deal.  I've read that this deal makes little sense, much like AOL Time-Warner.  Google has 70% of the market, Yahoo is in 2nd place with 16% and MS is at 3%.  MS is saying the search engine buisnes is supposed to double to 80 billion by 2010, they are looking to make a play to position themselves to get a slice of that bigger pie.  Ironic that Yahoo is mainly responsible for Google's growth and success.

[westkoast]

I'm not TOO worried about msft buying yahoo, as even msn and yahoo combined aren't nearly enough to form a monopoly, but from a technical perspective it certainly would be interesting.  For those that don't know, Yahoo is mainly powered by PHP/Apache on FreeBSD servers.  Does anyone thing Microsoft would be willing to keep it on open source technology?  Can anyone imagine how big of a technical undertaking that would be to migrate the infrastructure and code to a windows stack?

From what I heard they won't really be changing much at Yahoo! it is suppose to operate a lot like it was before.   At least that is the rumor.  They just want to own the company so that way they have a lot more market share when it comes to online advertising.  Pretty much they can't gain on Google any other way then buying market share using that massive wallet of theirs.  To me it seems like a weak idea since Google is moving itself in other directions (advertising in the mobile arena)and MS is STILL trying to play catch up with the advertising/search market.  Looks like a desperate move to me because once again they look to be play catch up.  Too bad they couldn't have done this 5-6 years ago when the gap between Yahoo and Google was much more narrow.

Microsoft would have to pump WAYYY too much additional money to take the task on of moving them to their platform(s).  Just the man hours alone would be a huge sum.   Which is ironic considering they've spent the past couple of years bashing open source software and the whole model of it.

[Derek Bodner]

So they're going to continue using (and hence supporting) Open Source OS's, and pay SUPPORT CONTRACTS to redhat and oracle?  Doesn't that kinda hurt their patent claim FUD?

[westkoast]

So they're going to continue using (and hence supporting) Open Source OS's, and pay SUPPORT CONTRACTS to redhat and oracle?  Doesn't that kinda hurt their patent claim FUD?

LOL..it does.  Not that anyone really believed the FUD crap but as someone who is in IT you should know the man power to do that is crazy.  That's if everything went flawless.  Chances are it wouldn't.  They'd spend a portion of the year moving crap over instead of trying to use Yahoo! to leverage their market share in search.  If they spent all that time and energy to move them over they are going to be left in the dust as Google starts making a serious trek into mobile advertising.

The one thing I worry about is email/instant messaging being so controlled by one company...dont want it to turn into browser wars with different software.