The tragic thing here is that in any other set of circumstances, the creation and sale of a 45 billion dollar company in the span of 13 years would be a wildly amazing and legendary American business success story. The fact that in this case the whole transaction smacks of failure is a testament to how insanely high the expectations and opportunity for Yahoo were — that Yahoo should be sitting where Google is now. It’s just mind-blowing when you think about it.

Yahoo! News : Google News
Delicious : Google Bookmark Sharing? (at least, I thought Google had something similar)
Flickr : Picasa
Yahoo! Search : Google Search
Yahoo! Mail : GMail

There are so many more examples…I think combining each service, or ditching one for the other, would really make Google and more diverse and and interesting company. Yahoo! could then be regulated as a brand name, just as Pixar is still a recognized name even while being owned by Disney.

Thanks for the Flickr alternatives…if the Microsoft deal goes through, I might just nuke my whole Flickr account and go back to using iPhoto exclusively. That, and re-import my Delicious bookmarks into Safari. The internet will be a much more boring place, as these sites suffer a massive exodus from their most prolific users…what good are Flickr’s APIs if there are no more compelling pictures being uploaded?

Besides Flickr and Delicious though, there’s nothing that Yahoo! owns that I’d actually use myself anymore, which probably says something (and I started using both before Yahoo! acquired each).

As for integration – you probably know more about this since you worked there – but I guess Yahoo! back end is run on open source stuff, one wonders if MSFT would make them port everything over to Microsoft equivalents. That sounds like a bitch…

Yeah I don’t think Google can buy Yahoo! either which is why this partnership seems like an interesting work-around. But the key question is why would Google do this – it’d be like they’re buying Yahoo! out of pity. They can just do nothing and let Yahoo! fade away or let MSFT blow tons of money on Yahoo!. Either way, like you say, they’ll just keep pulling ahead.

And I definitely share your sentimental feelings. I still remember “back in the day” (which was only 10 years ago) when I moved to SV and Yahoo! was $100 a share – like the Google of 1998

Having worked at Yahoo (98-02), I’m not particularly happy about this flameout. This will be one of those legendary textbook cases in the future — how the market leader “lost” the web. But it seems to me that, were I a shareholder or even a non-founding executive, the MSFT terms look really attractive.

The rumors of a FOX counter-offer are intriguing. And of course, Ebay-Yahoo (a combo that almost came to pass back in the late 90s on no less then 2 occasions) is also still in play.

There’s no way Google could acquire Yahoo. I think the anti-trust issues would be too high of a hurdle to overcome (in the areas of search and advertising). I do think the idea of a Google partnership is really interesting, though that seems like more of a win for Google than Yahoo. Again, if I’m a shareholder, a Google ad-deal for Yahoo might signal increased operating efficiencies and short/mid-term optimization of profits (when coupled with major layoffs, corporate restructuring and stragetic refocusing), but it doesn’t really do much for me wrt long-term valuation given the short-term option offered up by Ballmer & Co.

I do feel sorry for the founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo. I’m sure this isn’t the way they wanted to play things out. And I’m sure they’re probably pissed about the misfires and missed opportunities. Of course, financially they’re all fine

Integration of these two operations will be a huge headache. So many overlapping web properties. How that gets sorted out is anyone’s guess. But you can imagine that Google must be loving this. It’s exactly the type of competitive distraction that will give them extra time to gobble up more market share and extend that almost insurmountable lead.

I’d rather go back to building my own photo album, for example…I hope open source web galleries have improved in the past couple of years.

And, of course, as a geek it’s disheartening to see Yahoo! die in the worst possible way. A slow death at Microsoft. I hope Google is considering doing something – even a smaller bid from Google would be better for Yahoo! as a whole than a larger bid from Microsoft.