
Microsoft looking to buy Yahoo again - fufulabs
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/microsoft-signs-a-nondisclosure-agreement-with-yahoo/?smid=tw-nytimesbusiness&seid=auto
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cowpewter
I just hope that however any of this falls out, Flickr survives and starts to
see some attention. I really, really like Flickr (pay for it even) and don't
want to see it die. I actively dislike the competitors in the social photo
uploading space (cannot stand Picassa's UI, and Facebook is, well Facebook.
Photos are not the primary function there). Flickr suits my needs just
perfectly.

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timerickson
Have you tried 500px.com?

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cowpewter
No, this is the first I've heard of it. I'll take a look over the weekend.
First glance it actually looks a little more...artist-geared? than what I use
Flickr for. I'm not even close to a professional or advanced amateur
photographer. My Flickr feed is a mishmash of things taken with my phone, my
point 'n shoot, some photos I've put effort into and some that I've not.

I like the community on Flickr (there are a lot of other people in the asian
ball-jointed doll hobby there, and probably a good 75%+ of my photos are of my
dolls), and the ease of just uploading handfuls of photos at a time and
grabbing the BBCode to post them on forums without having to host the images
myself.

I like that I can feel like I can throw anything up on my Flickr stream, and
then selectively share the ones I think are good with related groups, and not
have to overly curate what I upload to only my "best" shots.

The only thing I really feel I'm missing from Flickr is more advanced
permissions. The 'guest pass' thing never seems to quite work for me when I
want to share a photo only with specific people. I usually wind up marking the
photo private and sending the person a direct image link.

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boyter
Off-topic but can you post your Flickr link. I'm curious to know what a "Asian
ball-jointed doll" actually is.

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cowpewter
ABJDs are highly customizable dolls, generally made from hand-cast
polyurethane resin, and, as their name implies, usually from companies based
in Japan, S Korea, or China, and poseable thanks to their ball-joint and
elastic construction.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/cowpewter/> It's basically all dolls, cats,
occasional garden photos and random sketches.

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misterbwong
Anyone trying to meaningfully compete with Google will need to both buy and
build their way into contention. MS has the money to do both but so far the
build side of the equation has been a bit lacking.

Don't get me wrong-MS has some very (technically) cool products and projects
out there (WP7, win8, Xbox to name a few) , but none of them are giving them
the halo that Google (or Apple) has. It will take years of marketing and
[m/b]illions of dollars to move them out of the funk that they've built up for
themselves over the years. American car makers faced similar marketing
challenges in the late 90's-00's and are only recently turning heads again.

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Tossrock
I'm not sure it's really possible to meaningfully compete with Google, at
least in the US search market. They're synonymous with search, as evidenced by
the neologism "just google it". As much as Microsoft wishes it, no one
actually says "just Bing it" if they aren't being paid to do so. The amount of
mindshare Google has at this point seems insurmountable, no matter how many
technically impressive tricks Microsoft can cook up.

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ChrisLTD
As long as there continues to be very little cost for switching from Google,
they will always be vulnerable to a competitor who does search significantly
better, mindshare or not.

The good thing for Google is that no one is providing a compelling case for
switching. Bing and Google look like the same product and return similar
results. So why should anyone switch?

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jzawodn
I really hope (for Yahoo's sake) this happens. About half a year before I
left, Yahoo turned down the offer from Microsoft that was in the $30/share
range. I couldn't believe it.

[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-01cor...](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-01corpnewspr.mspx)

Yahoo was bleeding then and has been bleeding ever since, still trying to be
too many things to too many people--none of them well.

Hopefully MSFT can clean house, invest where it's needed, and put things on
track.

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ChrisLTD
_"[Yahoo is] still trying to be too many things to too many people--none of
them well."_

And the things they did do well (Flickr, Delicious) have been abandoned or
left to rot.

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int3rnaut
The fall of the iconic SF Yahoo billboard seems to have done some major
foreshadowing-- it really does look like it's an end of an era for Yahoo.

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pjzedalis
Everyone is missing the point. If Microsoft buys Yahoo they now control three
very large IM networks: Windows Live (MSN), Yahoo, and Skype.

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medinism
Agreed with this comments. but I am not sure what is that worth. is not like
people spend a lot of time on any of those networks, ie not monetizable, and
amount of utility they provide vs. FB is diminishing

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pjzedalis
Remember that Microsoft has part ownership of Facebook and Skype video chat is
integrated into Facebook.

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bane
At this point I wish it'd go through so somebody could put Yahoo out of its
misery.

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nkassis
I hope the YUI team can find a new home (and some other good teams like them)
at least before that happens. Maybe google could buy the whole team ?

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heyrhett
Yahoo really needs to enlist Shpigler the Shark this time:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=650U4-9CPew>

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clobber
Since 2009, Microsoft has lost $5.5 billion on Bing and is losing $1 billion
every quarter.

How is this even possible and how is buying Yahoo going to plug the holes?
Bing search is horrible and their adcenter product is even worse.

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boyter
I'll agree with the adcenter, but Bing itself is a perfectly fine search
engine. I consider it a drop in replacement for Google these days.

Yes i'm sure someone is now scrambling to find some edge case where Google is
better, but you can do the same thing with Bing, and frankly all search
engines have issues somewhere. I use a few search engines which have their own
index such as DDG, Gigablast and Blekko.

I really find it amazing that people aren't cheering on some competition in
the space. If Bing folded we would only have 3 players with their own index
(that im aware of).

Purely subjective but I find Bings results page much clearer then Googles
these days.

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clobber
Agree with you on the results pages. I've found that Google's become much more
cluttered since the "instant results" redesign and add in of the Google+ and
preview buttons. I feel like the page even seems clunkier.

Regarding quality of results though, wasn't Google accusing Bing of directly
copying search results somehow?

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boyter
That was a red herring. It was the Bing toolbar watching what users were
clicking on. So it picked up Google's results, but also everything else people
were clicking on. I wouldn't be surprised to find that Chrome does the same
thing.

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wavephorm
Microsoft doesn't have enough money to buy a better reputation. I'm not sure
how buying Yahoo helps at all.

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gcb
So, they want to buy Yahoo just because they can't hire sales people?

yeah, makes a lot of sense.

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ahi
Last I checked their adCenter required Windows and threw up a complaint about
nonstandards compliant browsers (like Chrome). They are completely lost.

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tomwalsham
adCenter blocks non-IE browsers, but ludicrously doesn't actually use any
proprietary MSIE code - a simple user-agent spoof gets it working 100% in
Firefox.

