Last May I was thinking that this was the end game, and now it appears as though I might not be to far from the mark. Microsoft has exceeded my expectations in the cloud since last May when I first thought about what value could be gained if all four giants merged and a new double strength war for user’s hearts, minds, keyboard strokes and money began. Scoble doesn’t understand yet the power of a rich client and a rich cloud. Scoble, people don’t throw 41 billion at something unless they understand and believe that it is a solution to something. Not that I even understand, I have learned the dangers of hubris. (Slowly) The WSJ even thinks Microsoft stands no chance I guess.
Microsoft
You are proposing a value proposition to the many shareholders of Yahoo! as we speak. You are talking to government officials, the one most important thing you are not doing is talking to your customers and possible future customers. You need to make promises for an open future. When you reward customers with value, especially free value, they reward you, they talk good things about you, they like your products when they suck even.
When existing value that is provided by the marketplace is taken away from consumers, your brand name suffers. You can not make your products "valuable" by sucking up the competition any longer. The marketplace in the 90’s was guided by your forward thinking but we are a smarter, more diverse crowd of technologists these days and many of us are futurists, we are rooting that the future is a good one and that the average Joe’s benefit is at the center of every product.
What you need is to have a conversation with your customers, letting them know that you will start supporting open source products. Not sudo-source, stupid source, sloppy source, or legacy-source, open source. I’m not saying throw your cash cows in the fire but experiment with your overlap that this purchase creates. Don’t throw all your eggs and chickens in the same basket. Think of all of those implications. I’ve realized many of them. Many of them require you opening up and letting a the competition have a shot. Your largest gain is the human capital that comes with Yahoo as I said when I first thought about this merger almost a year ago. Those in the valley are some of the smartest in the world. They are all thinking about the customers more and less about the competition.
I mean paint and Flikr combined is unstoppable in the Market. (Just kidding) There is a definite plus side to all of this you know people. First of all it will actually really get Apple fired up about moving the OS space even further forward, it will get the Linux crowed roaring because it further distinguishes Linux as an OS that mirrors consumer needs, and not marketplace power plays. What’s missing isn’t what Robert Scoble is talking about, he’s a smart guy but he has it all wrong. Maybe your mantra could be do the right thing. Stimulate the marketplace, not destroy. Making your products work together best is no longer the best solution because you now are in a position to make the market more pleased than even Google has. Karma is true. Competition is good, complement the competition, don’t call them names, respect them verbally and treat them like good people which they are and when you are all done kick their ass on merit alone.
Build your brand back up, it’s your only chance at long term success.
Google:
Give Steve a call, .Mac still sucks.
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GeekSpeaker 