Will I/everyone be working for MS some day ?

Microsoft Announces Offer to Acquire Fast Search & Transfer: Companies’ combined expertise, technology will help businesses capitalize on the power of enterprise search.

I quite like FAST from whatever I've seen of them. Yahoo had bought the vertical search engine earlier, and they've been growing a lot recently. Ms gobbling them up too will be sad. Unless, of course, Yahoo, FAST etc manage to change MS enough to make it work and behave like a more lightweight, smaller company.

Maybe MS will just breakup into smaller, faster orgs and finally start competing and innovating at the same rate once these acquisitions come through. Hmmm, some scope for optimism here!

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Questions. Answers. Zook!

[ Edit: Drat - got the title of the post wrong earlier ]

Yahoo - options

Some questions, ideas. [ Hopefully Y! will survive the MS attempt. Small chance but it ain't over. ]

• Who says only search is monetizable? Mail. Messenger. Groups. Who's the king ? Focus on making something off those - don't keep repeating whats already been said - "but search is where the money is". Thats true only cause big G said it first. Make the advertising *compelling*
• Why is Groups such a separate silo ? Its the most powerful resource Yahoo has. Way before "social networking" became the huge phrase it is now there was useful relevant stuff happening on Groups - and I even know of brands who try an engage active groups for informal surveys etc.
• Why is there no flickr/groups integration? Flickr has loyalists, and Groups id verrry sticky
• Adopt Pidgin. Don't give up on the numerous non Windoze users. They're loyal if you are.
• Maps - do it different. Especially in the emerging markets. India/China - there's a story waiting to happen to integrate with real life - offline+online combinations.
  
• Mobile - G! has NOT figured it out yet. Search, or maps, or local, or anything.
  
• Search - work in stealth on something totally different. The current generation is a naive version 1 - and 3 years hence can be a very different market. Outsource the current search to G!

This is work in progress. Will add more. Ideas welcome.

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Yahoos Welcome! [ Microsoft's potential Yahoo takeover ]

You've probably heard about this from N different sources by now.

Read this for context, too. Its a good analysis - integration-story wise and what it may mean to the developers and the hiring scene!

First up - all Yahoos who may not want to identify with the Redmond Giant are welcome at Ziva :D There's plenty of exciting work, both tech - IR, monetization, scaling up - and in building the brand both in the consumer and monetization space.

I cannot fathom how two pretty-much-the-opposite-of-each-other places will merge. Maybe MS should just keep Yahoo alive as a totally separate workplace, brand and just help out with corporate sales, and - well - does MS understand anything at all in the internet space ? OTOH, there's tons from Yahoo they could use inside MS - and use the Yahoo brand for pushing what they (might have) wanted to do with Live/Office online. But its a very huge expense for that alone.

I would love to believe Yahoo could have clawed its way back in terms of marketshare and profitability - but this might merely stem from some romanticism and wistfulness as part of my ex-Yahoo self. Microsoft was also part of the "other" for the longest time at Yahoo, so its even more painful.

Again, for all Yahoos who feel this pain and would rather find another place to relive the challenges, tech, possibility that the legend of Y once represented, you're welcome.

careers -AT- zivasoftware.com Mention "Ex-Yahoo" in the subject for an immediate read :)