There’s not much of an incentive to using single-network chat clients these days. Why restrict yourself to one service or run multiple clients in a cavalcade of memory-hogging when you can use a multi-network client like Pidgin or Trillian? Questions like these, while not necessarily the bane of a given service’s existence (the number people who will use AIM 6 on purpose is a staggering number to us geeks,) are questions that, if answered, could result in a considerable boost in use of that client. Of course, one of the most cost-effective methods of attracting new users is to add eye candy. This is precisely what Yahoo! has chosen to do in a version of Yahoo! Messenger exclusively for Windows Vista. Using Windows Presentation Foundation, they’ve loaded it up with all the fancy effects, from drop shadows to transparency. Though this is only a preview, it serves as a good preview of the interface and that’s what’s important (to me, Mr. Superficial.)

The buddy list is actually somewhat barren; most of the features of the current client haven’t been replicated in the new one. The three buttons on beneath the avatar are, from left to right: add contact, contact detail slider, color changer, and buddy list search. The arrow next to the window controls opens the main menu, which contains every command not in another area of the UI. The status menu is below the user’s name and allows custom statuses to be typed in. Custom statuses will be added to…
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Today BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl published a lengthy open letter to Steve Ballmer, urging him to borrow a trick from Steve Jobs’ playbook and guide Microsoft down a more focused path (i.e. software and software only).

Quoth Hesseldahl:

So who has focus? That other Steve. You know, the turtle-necked guy in California who keeps annoying you by selling iPods and computers that typically don’t run on Windows. You could learn a lot from him. Focus saved his company from oblivion.

Hesseldahl also highlights a litany of tech mega-mergers (Lucent-Ascend, AOL-Time Warner, Compaq-Digital, etc...) to highlight how such large undertakings often lead to failure.

It’s a very good read, and I agree completely. Microsoft is a jack of all trades, and outside of their software business (and some success with gaming), they haven’t shown mastery in any of the markets they’ve jumped into. Web services? They’re a distant third. Digital media players? They’re a distant second. Microsoft has become a reactive company, trying to jump onto the latest tech trend or product segment without much success. I agree that Microsoft needs to re-focus on their strengths, and when they expand into new markets, they need to be proactive, not merely reactive. They need to innovate instead of merely developing a product to simply respond to Apple or Google or whoever their competition may be. The Yahoo merger would do nothing to improve Microsoft in this regard.

PC World posted a short advance review of Windows Vista Service Pack 1’s performance on their web site today. Their verdict? Service Pack 1 improves Vista’s performance in some areas such as copying files, but is slightly slower in others. In her tests, article author Melissa Perenson notes a 9% performance improvement in her file copy test (copying 1.9 GB from a flash drive to the PC’s hard drive). Startup and shut down times are mostly unchanged in SP 1, but had very slight improvements (hin her tests, Perenson noted a slight 3-second improvement in startup times and a 1-second improvement in shut down time). Meanwhile, archiving five 500 MB files in a ZIP archive took slightly longer under SP 1.

Perenson notes that “based on my informal tests conducted in the first hours of having Vista Service Pack 1 in hand, it’s hard to draw any hard and fast conclusions.” Needless to say, more tests are on the way.

Windows Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing on Monday, and will be available for download in March. Okay, let’s stop right there for just a second. Why is it, that despite Vista’s relatively poor reputation, Microsoft decided in their infinite wisdom to keep SP 1 out of the hands of users for another month? If it’s ready, it’s ready. get it out to the people. Come on, guys.

Maybe they need to redesign the box?¹

At any rate, Deep Thought will hopefully have something to say about SP 1, uh, whenever…
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What can you do with $44.6 billion?¹

You can fill the California state budget deficit three times over.

You can buy 7.8 Steve Jobses (according to his 2007 net worth).

You can buy nearly 111.8 million iPhones (before tax).

Or you can buy a struggling dot-com pioneer.

If you’ve been following the news lately, you already know which option Microsoft chose. Me? I would have chosen the iPhones.

So what do I think of the Microsoft-Yahoo buyout proposal? This could get very messy very quickly.

Dollars and cents

In buying Yahoo, Microsoft would burn through just about all of their cash on hand. While any large buyout or merger carries the risk of failure, Yahoo’s failing fortunes as of late makes me question the logic behind this move. According to their latest earnings report, Microsoft’s Online Services Business division is still losing money, and the losses have actually deepened over the same period last year.

So Microsoft’s online services are struggling. Yahoo is struggling. I’m confused. How is taking on a company with similar problems is going to help Microsoft?

Platforms

How is Microsoft going to incorporate a company based on open-source solutions into the fold? After all, the rest of the company runs Windows and Windows-based servers. The only way I see Microsoft making this work is if they take a hands-off approach and let Yahoo be. Let it be! 

Competition against itself

How will Microsoft deal with the fact that, once again, the company would be competing against itself?…
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Wow, who saw this coming?

MSNBC reports that Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion takeover bid for its search rival Yahoo! Inc. Now why would Microsoft want to do something like that? To take on Google, of course!

Yahoo has been struggling as of late. Granted, both Yahoo and Microsoft are well behind Google in the search engine market; MSNBC reports that Google’s market share is in the neighborhood of 60%, while Yahoo and Microsoft have a combined 33% share.

Some questions naturally arise from this buyout proposal. Will regulators allow Microsoft to buy Yahoo without without messy antitrust issues? What will happen to MSN and Windows Live Search? Will this really do Microsoft any good in the end? And what about other Yahoo properties such as Flickr? Is Microsoft overpaying?

Me? I’d be surprised--nay, shocked!--if this deal goes through without Microsoft being forced to give up quite a bit. That is, if this deal goes through at all. Time wil tell. I’m sure we’ll have more to say about this proposed buyout in the coming days.

As of this writing, Google’s share price is down nearly 8%, Microsoft is down over 6%, and Yahoo is up nearly 86%.