Dennis Byron (Research 2.0)

Yahoo + Adobe: It's a Vision Thing

Great analysis, Victor, especially countering the Professor with the idea that 500 Fortune 500 customers are better than a couple of billion consumers. How 20th century of him.

But I have a few issues that might change your overall thinking (in reverse order to where they appear in your article):
1. Aunt Sue and all do object to advertising on TV--thank god for Tivo
2. In addition to Microsoft Works, which is basically sold bundled by OEMs, Aunt Sue can get a pretty full "3-device" Office 2007 Home and Student(Word/Powerpoin... and something called OneNote) for $50 "per device." One of the devices doesn't even have to belong to a student or a teacher, which was the XP deal. So one for Sue, one for Uncle Jim's computer and one for someone else. Believe me, it's well worth not having advertising popups and overlays and " click here if you don't want to wait 45 seconds."
3. Online applications have a major flaw. 40 years ago when I started we called it computing. Somewhere along the line it became offline computing. After a short hiatus, it made a comeback as disconnected computing. It's still important.

Overall great analysis. Microsoft should buy both Adobe and Yahoo.

-- Dennis

Microsoft's Last Big Beat: Internet Domination or Death

At Research 2.0, we agree with your conclusion that Microsoft understands the information technology market situation well and is acting agressively to take advantage. I even go further and believe that Microsoft is uniquely positioned--because of its combination of enterprise and consumer computing experience--to stay well ahead of Oracle, SAP, IBM and Google in the enterprise category. Apple is a real threat on the consumer side and Yahoo will get Microsoft where it needs to get to respond on the consumer side faster than building something from scratch.

I caution you on your underlying assumption about Linux being developed "at almost no cost" however. IBM, Intel, Novell, HP, Fujitsu, EMC, Oracle, Sun, Motorola, and all the other sponsors of the Linux Foundation (LF) as well as many that work on Linux without belonging to the Foundation have spent billions on maintaining and updating the Linux kernel both in cash and in-kind contributions to the development effort.

If "low-cost Linux" is at all key to your conclusion, be careful. In fact, I believe relatively soon, Microsoft will become--along with Google--one of the largest users of Linux, thanking the LF profusely as it makes that transition.