Since everyone's got an opinion about the takeover of yahoo by Microsoft, I thought I'd add my 2 cents worth in this $44 billion bid as well.
I'm one of the few who think Microsoft deserves every bit they've got because they've earned it by making sure they are besides agents of change also extremely good at the business they're in. Just imagine what the world would be like if there wasn't any Windows or Office. Would it have forced others to work this hard in making all the new operating systems and improving the user experience?
So keeping this in view I'm glad that Yahoo and MS are going to be one, however I'm also a big advocator of free and open source software and Yahoo has done a lot in that space and Microsoft hasn't been as open with its code base for most software they've put out.
The other problem is that Yahoo has done some really good stuff with certain companies they own, flickr being one major one and I just don't like the thought of flickr being owned by Microsoft. Maybe it'll be good and it'll become more open then again it might not and we might have to deal with Microsoft thinking they can make something better by using their products.
If Microsoft uses Yahoo as a pool of great programmers and set of great applications that they're going to support two thumbs up but one is left with the feeling that they won't be un-interfering parents.
