Microsoft Failed the Captcha Test
Category Open Source
Big media missed the Microsoft-Yahoo plot twist, hidden as a few frames of subliminal messages in a Disney animation. Why should you care? Because Forrester Research did not misread the events: see Charlene Li's "What's next for Microsoft and Yahoo!"for the best analysis I've found of why Steve Ballmer balked.
Of course, just having Microsoft walk away doesn't mean that the opportunity has completely vanished, but it doesn't look good for a MicroHoo union. This courtship between Microsoft and Yahoo never matched the tempest and drama of, say, Oracle and Peoplesoft. The game of acquisition played out, just as predicted by analysts and pundits. "Protacted," "enevitable," and "proxy fight" were the primary media descriptors.
Microsoft desired Yahoo's advertising base and the Yahoo mail accounts. It made financial sense and Yahoo's stock rose, allowing Yahoo to counter with a higher price. And, just when the deadlines, and the heated rhetoric was still thick in the air, Ballmer panned the deal.I think the perfect metaphor for the spoiled attempt is a captcha. After all, Yahoo was among the very first to use a captcha in an attempt to ferret out the real people from automated systems. A captcha, in review, is one of those goofy puzzle boxes of malformed letters and images that a person must decipher in order to process a web site request. "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."
What's it mean that Microsoft decided against a proxy-fight ? It means that Microsoft (1) didn't really want Yahoo for just the advertising base and e-mail accounts. Winning a proxy-fight would not have diminished their value. However, (2) the intellectual property and culture of Yahoo, with its portfolio of open source (e.g., Zimbra, YUI) would have been difficult to aggregate without Yahoo's willingness to integrate with Microsoft.
To my eye, the captcha that blocked Microsoft's access to Yahoo would have spelled out "open source," which Microsoft has yet to accommodate.
Big media missed the Microsoft-Yahoo plot twist, hidden as a few frames of subliminal messages in a Disney animation. Why should you care? Because Forrester Research did not misread the events: see Charlene Li's "What's next for Microsoft and Yahoo!"for the best analysis I've found of why Steve Ballmer balked.
Of course, just having Microsoft walk away doesn't mean that the opportunity has completely vanished, but it doesn't look good for a MicroHoo union. This courtship between Microsoft and Yahoo never matched the tempest and drama of, say, Oracle and Peoplesoft. The game of acquisition played out, just as predicted by analysts and pundits. "Protacted," "enevitable," and "proxy fight" were the primary media descriptors.
Microsoft desired Yahoo's advertising base and the Yahoo mail accounts. It made financial sense and Yahoo's stock rose, allowing Yahoo to counter with a higher price. And, just when the deadlines, and the heated rhetoric was still thick in the air, Ballmer panned the deal.I think the perfect metaphor for the spoiled attempt is a captcha. After all, Yahoo was among the very first to use a captcha in an attempt to ferret out the real people from automated systems. A captcha, in review, is one of those goofy puzzle boxes of malformed letters and images that a person must decipher in order to process a web site request. "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."
What's it mean that Microsoft decided against a proxy-fight ? It means that Microsoft (1) didn't really want Yahoo for just the advertising base and e-mail accounts. Winning a proxy-fight would not have diminished their value. However, (2) the intellectual property and culture of Yahoo, with its portfolio of open source (e.g., Zimbra, YUI) would have been difficult to aggregate without Yahoo's willingness to integrate with Microsoft.
To my eye, the captcha that blocked Microsoft's access to Yahoo would have spelled out "open source," which Microsoft has yet to accommodate.
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Comments
Posted by http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=6cf1ca9c055a1287e95d7dab010f84d0 At 11:16:21 AM On 07/16/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 07:33:33 AM On 05/07/2008 | - Website - |