Why the Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal Sucks

I blogged about why I thought that the Microsoft and Yahootalks were not going to yield anything useful last year and was satisfied that they stopped wasting time trying to buy each other out of financial trouble. Now it has been widely reported that Microsoft has gained access to Yahoo in a search partnership deal. This is somewhat better but again, the executives have not listened to the public.

1. This Yahoo-Microsoft deal still sucks for several reasons. One being that Microsoft Ad Center is the ad display engine being used in the partnership and not Yahoo’s Panama. Neither have the depth or ease of use of AdWords. Anyone who has ever placed any pay per click search ads in their life would choose Panama over Microsoft Ad Center as the system to use. Maybe MAC makes more money but there are too many limits on bids, keyword availability and restrictions on running your ads to make it widely accepted.

2. The recent Netflix prize showed how much collaboration benefits organizations rather than competition. The revenue share partnership deal usually shares no information about technology or business strategy at all between companies. Its a you win, I loose, I’ll just pay you for handling this for me-approach to solving a problem, that doesn’t work in the long term.

The Netflix prize was recently awarded when a group of individual competitors and small teams banded together to use all their ideas in combination to finally get above the 10% improvement mark in matching/suggestion technology and submit their top result. In the last day before the time was up, another group of researchers banded together and topped the previous best submission also by combining all their ideas together at once.

Then in the last 12 hours the first team did come back with another submission just slightly better,  to win,  but the overall idea/lesson is still the same. If you really want to improve on consumer products and experience with really complex technical problems like search and suggestions, you have to collaborate rather than compete.

Yahoo and Microsoft would do a whole lot better against Google if they got the Bing folks together with the Yahoo search folks and started collaborating on this daily via videocam rather than doing an affiliate marketing type deal. This deal is evidence that Microsoft is being run by the lowest common denominator these days (and loosing a lot of money that way) and Yahoo’s CEO won’t be around long. She has made a decision that helps her contain and cut costs of running her company in the short term and that decision has sacrificed the long term marketability of her product.

In fact Yahoo was a search company primarily. People only used email, Yahoo news and other functions like Yahoo Answers because of the search engine they knew. If you take that away you don’t have an identity as a company. And they will lose a lot more search market share and preference by outsourcing to Bing even if they get paid a little bit more profitably in the next 2 quarters. This is pretty much the death of Yahoo. It is really sad.

I am glad Microsoft didn’t buy Yahoo

Am I the only one who thought that Microsoft and Yahoo didn’t have the first thing in common? Microsoft is still deeply rooted in the OS/Software/Desktop culture, biz model and products. Yahoo is all about the web and always has been. They aren’t winning the battle of the web right now but they are certainly better at it than MSN. (yeesh) Yahoo handles classifieds, news, advertising sale and products as well as their home page better than Microsoft and MSN. And Microsoft wanted to own them and tell Yahoo what to do? Stupid.

Its odd to think that there are incompatible sets of engineers, technology and visionaries, but these to were never destined to be together.  It almost seemed like a hair-brained distraction tactic to keep everyone’s eyes away from something else. What else could Microsoft be trying to do with this kind of deal? And buying up companies that are better at something than you are is such an old school tactic. Why not be affiliates? Lisence their ad network? Become associates so you can foster some kind of working relationship and trust first before you go in for the kill and it will be taken as a lot less hostile.

I just think this whole thing was bungled and made no sense from the beginning. And I don’t even know anything internally about it. I don’t work for nor know anyone who works for these companies. This is just my feeling based on the news reports on the internet and radio.

It does make me worried about the future of Microsoft in a world where they are so off base and desperate like this and no one really has any affinity for them anymore. That said, I am typing this in IE but on a free blog platform and on a chinese computer. Things sure have changed in the past 10 years.

Getting a good deal on a new computer

It’s always tought deciding which computer to buy and knowing what a good price is for the options you want. The last time I got a new computer I ended up shopping around for a while and then getting one built for me. I have noticed though that you can get a pretty good computer at a lot less than what I paid a year and a half ago. They can be really reasonable despite all the options. Discount computers are a lot more likley to be available also because the holidays are coming up. If you are looking to buy one soon you should subscribe to some email newsletters from the stores you might buy from. Many places send out email alerts about discounts to members before letting the general public know. Some places even have RSS feeds available that update with new offers throughout the day. This also helps you spot a good deal before anyone else. And lastly there are usually some local newspaper inserts that have discount coupons for some additional discounts from time to time. It’s good to keep your eye out for those as well. All these strategies should get you a good deal on your next computer.

The U.S. Mortgage & Lender Mess

The mortgage and lending crash just keeps getting worse. I don’t know which is worse, the people not reading the contracts they sign and not understanding the terms involved with a baloon payment or adjustable rate or the banks and financial companies offering such bad manipulative terms. It seems like no one really did any research before buying these properties and now they are all foreclosing. I was just reading that the number of forclosures has doubled in the past 12 months for the month of September year over year. Yikces! And they say this isn’t the last of it. How many people are going to be loosing their homes and foreclosed on at Christmas and over the holidays? This is such a disaster for this country as a whole and a little embarassing to the rest of the world. Here we are suposedly the most wealthy nation in the world and people are loosing their homes. It’s sad and it’s the result of people not doing adequate research and getting bad mortgage advice from predatory lenders. Do yourself a favor and stay renting until you have 20% to put down as a down payment on a home and then do your research and go with a lender who has lent to a friend who has not had any problems with their mortgage and has had it for more than 5 years.

AT&T (ATT) Sucks, and here’s why…

I have been a cell phone customer of AT&T (ATT) since the last time it was AT&T Wireless.  bought my first Nokia cell phone in 1999 from them and have been loyal and stayed with them through many name changes and buyouts (Cingular). What makes them suck though, isn’t that their plans cost too much, or that they lock you into 2 year contracts that I don’t like (and renew them without your consent) or that they have crappy customer service. Those things are pretty consistent from all cell phone companies, and no one has any control over it.

What specifically sucks about AT&T wireless is that if you choose to not have web access on your phone you get a pay per use rate. Even if you don’t want any access at all, and specifically request (as I have) to have all web and internet access turned off on your phone. So despite my asking to have the internet access turned off 3 times and being assured that it was, three times, my phone still automatically dials up to check the network for texts (they bundle the internet and text network together on purpose so you can’t have one without the other for revenue purposes) constantly and charges me nine cents each time. Depending on how often my phone is off during a month this amounts to $30-$75.00 in extra “pay per use” charges per month. WHICH IS FUCKING INSANE!! They have been doing this to me for 7 months now and I AM PISSED OFF!!! I can’t get out of the contract, nor can I get them to turn the service off after repeated calls to their call center customer service center. So, I have to have my battery out of my phone when I’m not using it now to avoid these illegal and unauthorized charges. Which means I am basically without a cell phone despite paying them $75.00 per month for my phone plan. (which for 3 phones is the cheapest plan they have, although it’s way way overpriced)

These cell phone companies are rolling in cash to the tune of being able to burn billions on re-branding campaigns every three months and it’s because they abuse the customers like you and me who can’t really afford to not have a phone, and have to pay whatever is in the contract because you can’t afford to get out of that either. They are evil mother fuckers and as soon as I can get out of this contract I’m gone and I will never use their service again.

Updates:

Yet more proof that AT&T Sucks, they are being sued for false advertising…

And more court troubles for AT&T for lying about their coverage… (bad marketers)

And they let the government snoop on you without a warrant…

And now their DSL Sucks too!