Yahoo Vs Microsoft

[dazuk1972]

What is everyone's opinion on Microsoft buying Yahoo? I think it stinks. Ages ago I suspected Microsoft want to buy Yahoo and ruin it by taking away a lot of free stuff and downgrading the it where a lot of what is free will cost us.

Let's face it, when we join a Yahoo group, the disk space that we use is Yahoo's but when we join an MSN group the disk space we use is our own. This means we can join as many Yahoo groups that we want and use the group disk space that Yahoo pay for but when we run out of our own disk space at MSN and when we join another MSN group we still can't post other files unless we free some disk space where file delete from other MSN groups that might interest others or we have to buy some disk space that MSN charge a lot for. If Microsoft do buy Yahoo and they downgrade things where we have to use our own disk space for the groups again, just think how many groups will be tampered with due to destruction of many contents being deleted. Some people put their heart and soul into their groups and they can lose it. Same with GeoCities web sites and most's for people that run their businesses from a GeoCities web site.

I remember when Yahoo upgraded the e-mail accounts where we got 1GB of free disk space and MSN was still on'y giving away 2MB's. What can anyone do with 2MB's apart from test e-mails. You can't e-mail music for a start and not many photos and the account always went over quota too many times so that others couldn't e-mail you when you already had loads of e-mails to go through and Spam used to hog most of it.

Anyway what I suspected is more-or-less what was mentioned on the Yahoo news where the owner of Yahoo thinks Microsoft will put businesses out of business for a start and change things for home members the way we all don't want it. If this goes through, all Yahoo members will be stuffed.

[DrinkOrDie]

I've never had a yahoo email account but I can tell you that my hotmail is pretty sh!tty. That's why I only use it for junk. You know, when sites ask you to sign up, and they need an email addy. Or when you need an email address for anything that you know will generate junk mail. I have one or two other email addys that I use for the same purpose but they offer more storage. Heck, MS deletes all my mail if I don't sign in for 30 days. I have gone as long as a year with others, and when I come back, there's my mail.(up to the storage limit)

My opinion has always been this: MSN search is sh!t. Their email is sh!t. MS Internet Explorer is sh!t. Much of what they offer for "free" is sh!t. Google and Yahoo got them beat in that department.

If Microsoft buys Yahoo, then Yahoo will be sh!t too. I'd bet money on that.

BTW, I think this thread belongs in the "Rants" catagory 'cause now you got me going.

[admin]

I'm actually for it because I think Google's monopoly is very unhealthy if there is no competition that can stand up to them. Of course, I would prefer someone other than Microsoft, like Apple or something, but I don't think anyone other than Microsoft can successfully mount a challenge anyway.

[DrinkOrDie]

Well, Microsoft's monopoly was very unhealthy for quite some time as well. They are guilty of some really low-down dirty tricks. But then, take a look at my OS. I wouldn't have any other. I've tried everything else. Been using MS OS since DOS 4. I've tried others but the rest suck in my opinion. Now you're talking about Google. Their search engine rules. The rest suck. If you want to call that a monopoly, then go ahead.

[admin]

I guess I'm looking at things from a web designer point of view, because the Google algorithm is seriously messed up if you follow it closely. Sites go up and down in search rankings without any indication as to why, and good sites are blacklisted while bad sites are promoted. The problem with the monopoly is that everybody uses Google, so if Google messes up your site's rankings, you basically lose your business (and many people have).

And because Google's system is a closed one, where nobody knows exactly how it works (and because it's so complicated, I don't think any single person at Google knows either), it makes it that much harder to know what is going on. There is no accountability, no system that you can use to register your complaints. Despite Google's friendly outer image, it's a dictatorship in the worst possible way with how it works. With no accountability, no recourse and an over-reliance on referrals from it by websites, you can imagine the chaos if something happened to Google one day.

While you might say that Google's dominance has been generally good for users and website owners, it's the flip side of the coin and the "what if" scenarios that worry me. Many monopolies actually benefit people, but you still don't want them because if they turn bad, it can cause a lot of damage.

[cynthia]

The thing I been hating with Google the last months is that in the first rank of their lists, now very often comes up some of those 'we have hijacked some text from another page' site and included it in their highly advertise decorated page.

Yahoo still remains me of that crazy tool bar that to many programs try to install and that is (at least in the past) a pain to get rid off. Even if you selected uninstall it refused to uninstall.

[DrinkOrDie]

Many monopolies actually benefit people, but you still don't want them because if they turn bad, it can cause a lot of damage.

I see your point. Remember the Windows ME fiasco? Yikes. It's a good thing they had the NT line as a backup.

[dr_ml422]

Well I guess I'm going to have to heed to the suggestions of those who say pick and choose your battles. Thank goodness for google. I've had no problems whatsoever in regards to viruses and having to strip my pc down since I switched over. Billyboy I use right now as my os also and have to go to for certain downloads like I did for my sammy firmwares which google doesn't support. I just would like Billyboy to loosen up a bit and not be so conservative. So I try to treat it like a buffet. Take what you want and leave the rest. That said I always felt that the law was the law and that's it. Ever since AT&Ts break up years ago because of it being a monopoly we now still have monopolies. I guess the loop holes in anything allow for flexibility and our so called democracy. Funny, democracy also failed thousands of years ago during the Greco-Roman era and the Republic prevailed. Go figure.