What could Microsoft's and Yahoo's marriage mean for developers?
For many the marriage of this rather unlikely coupling is both disturbing and terrifying, but I actually think it will be great for both Microsoft and Yahoo should it go ahead. In this post I'll try and explore why I think that.
Something Yahoo do really well is community, they're cool something that can't (sorry guys) be said for Microsoft. The products alone that Yahoo are working with and the brands they've built up are fantastically embedded within the Web 2.0 world.
Any of you that have been following Live.com will be well aware it's struggling slightly to get both and audience and following. Why's that? The platforms are in no way inferior to other people's offerings overall, maps, hosting, authentication, device connectivity, it's all there, but the brand just isn't cool enough.
If you were asked, and answer this honestly in your head to list five cool Microsoft technologies or products, could you? I'll give it a shot at the end of this blog post (no peaking!) see if your list matches at the end.
Being cool matters.
In high school I was never one of the cool kids, in fact, if anything, I was the Ginger kid in the corner who was being picked on by the sporty Jocks (bastards...). Looking back it's easy to see what would have improved my situation, just acting a little bit differently the whole perception of me could have been changed and it's possible I would not have been chained to the school railings with a bike lock that most enjoyable of times.
The perspective with how you're viewed is very important and I think this works with the Microsoft/Yahoo coupling too. I'm very lucky to spend time in both Microsoft communities as well as communities which are inhabited by Mac and *nix users. The way in which the users from different backgrounds treat each other is very interesting to watch. The Rails guys, they're cool? The Mac users, yeah they're pretty cool too. Us Microsoft folks, okay, so we get things done, we have more desktops out there than all the others combined, but we're certainly not up there in the upper echelons of ponytail wearing, martini drinking hip young things.
On a side note, my favourite Ginger joke is as follows: "The story line of Harry Potter is so unrealistic; I mean come on, a Ginger kid with TWO friends!".
Anyway, enough about the stories my therapist and I share, back to the situation at hand.
What will Yahoo bring to Microsoft's coolness factor?
Can Yahoo instil the Microsoft developer community with coolness (let's ignore for a moment what that actually is)?
Flickr is cooler than a penguins Mother in Law, no one can say anything to the contrary. As Scoble said on Newsnight last night, Microsoft should have bought it when they had the chance. Upcoming that's a stroke of genius bathed in the warm glow of the Web 2.0 gods.
Soapbox is Microsoft's YouTube, it's MSN branded though (why won't MSN just die?).
What will the marriage do for us at a technical level?
Well, not much initially, I don't think so anyway. Yahoo as a business expose a whole range of services and systems but they don't really do that much in terms of creating tools or technologies for developers that would benefit from being closer to Microsoft.
Take a peek through the Yahoo! Developer Network, there's already a .NET Developer Centre that has fantastic C# and VB.NET support, it even covers some topics in XAML.
We (Microsoft developers) already have the fantastic ASP.NET AJAX libraries, Yahoo! brings to the table the Yahoo User Interface Library (YUI) which is a whole slew of JavaScript snippets and functionality for including in your applications. It would be great to see the effort being put into YUI and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit being merged into one, but, and this is very important, the strength of the Yahoo proposition is it's platform independence, and that must be maintained if the Yahoo produce is to remain cool.
One place that will probably be the most interesting area of merge and potentially separation is E-mail Services. Yahoo has lot's of users, as does Hotmail. They're the two largest e-mail providers as I understand it. That is a very cool combination should it happen. The combined skills of those teams, if the differences can be put apart, will be amazing and I'm sure some very cool stuff will come from it.
It's all about search, surely?
Well, actually no, it's all about advertising. Captive audiences such as search and e-mail users are the preverbal sitting ducks for advertisers which in it's self isn't much, but combine it with knowledge of personal information and that advertising can become much more closely targeted to individuals.
Mr Ballmer himself even said in his e-mail out to employees: -
"This year, online advertising is a $40 billion business. It will grow to $80 billion by 2010 and will continue to increase in the years beyond. This market provides a significant growth opportunity for Microsoft—our ability to provide the best search and online experiences for consumers, and the best ad platform for publishers and advertisers, is the key to unlocking this opportunity."
Perhaps nothing will happen at all outside of this vertical market of the two business'. It's perfectly possible that the only teams that will merge will be the Mail, Advertising, Mapping and Search teams. If that's the case, then there's nothing for the rest of us to even think about, we'll be in the same situation as we're in now. Working with a fantastic set of products and technologies (Live.com excluded) from two very fast moving companies that understand the web.
What about all the unbelievers?
As Mr Bush once said, you're either with us or you're with the terrorists*.
There have been some amazing quotes about the merger which seem to be very short sighted, but they do matter.
The following quotes were taken from the GeekUp discussion list over the last couple of days, if you want to subscribe and read the whole thread it's over here.
Some people are fearful: -
"I personally hope Yahoo doesn't get bought by Microsoft. Imagine Flickr, del.icio.us, and other Yahoo goodies owned by Microsoft!"
Others are doomsayers: -
"It's pretty nasty IMHO. What will happen to things like YUI? Flickr and everything else will suddenly be filled with vast swathes of adverts. Then MS will make it all IE-only to kill off FF and other browsers. I just wish MS would roll over and die, so that the world could get on with doing good stuff rather than nasty evil stuff."
Whilst others are thinking laterally: -
"If MS does buy Yahoo then YUI is dead in the water, Silverlight and ASP.NET Ajax will make sure of that."
And others are just pragmatic: -
"Personally I hope it's an attempt to buy some clue."
Whatever these guys think, they need to be won over. That can only come from a very clear message from the companies on what their plans are as and when they're decided. We as the community want to know what's going on at fundamental level.
All in all, I can't answer what the marriage will mean for us, it all depends on what the companies are planning, it could be fantastically different or exactly the same.
* Should any Mac or Unix users actually read this I am in no way referring to you as terrorists and am looking forward to the safe return of my family in the coming hours.
Cool Microsoft Technologies
I promised you my list, here it is, how does it compare to yours?
I can't honestly think of any more products that I genuinely enjoy using and get enthusiastic about from Microsoft at the moment.
Thanks,
Phil.