Microsoft & Yahoo: The Tech Players Watch with Bemusement

A couple of quick comments on Microsoft's renewed dance with Yahoo, from tech industry leaders who have seen a lot of stuff come and go over the past couple decades.

One email from Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite, which provides software over the Internet -- a business Microsoft might dominate if it actually focused on software instead of consumer Web businesses it knows nothing about.

I, like most, have been watching the bear dance from afar.  I don't have an earth-shaking analysis on the deal.  The strategic intention of the deal (to make MSFT more competitive with Google on the ad front I assume) really doesn't impact NetSuite other than it pushes (Microsoft's) business applications focus efforts (around Great Plains and the rest of the products they've acquired) further onto the back burner, which is good for us.

In other words, NetSuite -- and probably a lot of other Microsoft software competitors -- are quite happy to see Microsoft get so distracted.

This from Philippe Kahn, long-time software entrepreneur and now head of cell software company Full Power Technologies:

What will affect everyone's future is innovation, typically the real innovation of smaller entrepreneurial companies,  and new and cool solutions. By contrast, big mergers of these types will have little effect on the future.

In other words,  Microsoft  and Yahoo are playing last year's game. They're not  creating the next cool thing.

I have to say -- I haven't talked to a single tech industry  who thinks Microsoft's pursuit of Yahoo is a truly brilliant idea.

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