{"id":2428,"date":"2008-05-19T10:06:02","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T14:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=2428"},"modified":"2008-05-19T10:06:02","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T14:06:02","slug":"is-a-microhoobook-in-your-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/05\/19\/is-a-microhoobook-in-your-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a MicroHooBook in your future?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sounds like Microsoft is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/newsOne\/idUSN1539081620080519\">looking at buying<\/a> just Yahoo&#8217;s search business, rather than the whole thing. And John Furrier, ex of Podtech, says that he&#8217;s hearing rumours Microsoft may make a two-stage attempt to cure its lack of Web savvy by first acquiring Yahoo&#8217;s search business and then <a href=\"http:\/\/furrier.org\/2008\/05\/19\/silicon-valley-rumor-microsoft-to-buy-yahoo-search-and-then-facebook\/\">bolting on<\/a> Facebook for $20-billion or so. Scoble says he&#8217;s been hearing the same kinds of rumours &#8212; and that his fear is Microsoft will try to keep Facebook <a href=\"http:\/\/scobleizer.com\/2008\/05\/19\/why-microsoft-will-buy-facebook-and-keep-it-closed\/\">walled off from<\/a> the rest of the Internet. I wouldn&#8217;t put something like that past the Beast of Redmond, but I think if they do it will ultimately fail.<\/p>\n<p>As Alexander van Elsas points out <a href=\"http:\/\/vanelsas.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/19\/microsoft-and-facebook-will-never-succeed-in-locking-down-part-of-the-web\/\">in his post<\/a>, people don&#8217;t like walled gardens, or at least not for long. If nothing else, America Online proved that. In the early stages of a market the walled garden makes sense, and people are happy to enter into it because it has all kinds of benefits they can&#8217;t get elsewhere. Eventually, however, it starts to seem more and more like a Soviet-style &#8220;managed economy,&#8221; and less like something people might actually want, and they start to move elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>You can see some of that already happening with the launch of Google&#8217;s OpenSocial and Google Connect, and Facebook&#8217;s Friend Connect and so on &#8212; being open has become <a href=\"http:\/\/discussionleader.hbsp.com\/haque\/2008\/05\/can_microsoft_microsoft_the_we.html\">a competitive advantage<\/a>, and even Microsoft has to have realized that by now. In any case, Jason Kaneshiro says there&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.webomatica.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/19\/microsoft-yahoo-facebook-its-a-great-time-to-be-a-mac-user\/\">an easy response<\/a> if someone like MicroHooBook tries to keep things walled off: just stop using their products. Meanwhile, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to insist that the site <a href=\"http:\/\/kara.allthingsd.com\/20080519\/facebook-not-selling-well-not-yet-and-ipo-try-2010-or-later\/\">plans to remain<\/a> independent.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sounds like Microsoft is looking at buying just Yahoo&#8217;s search business, rather than the whole thing. And John Furrier, ex of Podtech, says that he&#8217;s hearing rumours Microsoft may make a two-stage attempt to cure its lack of Web savvy by first acquiring Yahoo&#8217;s search business and then bolting on Facebook for $20-billion or so. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/05\/19\/is-a-microhoobook-in-your-future\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is a MicroHooBook in your future?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}