Outside the Lines

If you were to put Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the ring, you would expect the boistrous Ballmer to be left standing. With Microsoft taking its offer to Yahoo home, it's hard to tell who the real winner is in the long run. Microsoft certainly coveted Yahoo. However, if Yahoo falls on its face in coming months, Microsoft could be back...with a lower offer. Consider this a chapter closing in a longer tale, whose ending we don't precisely know.

Full coverage of Microhoo

At the close of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the tech industry experienced a massive consolidation, culminating 40 years of market and technology development, from the mainframe to client/server computing and now the Internet.

Since 2005, Oracle made more than 40 acquisitions, totaling more than $20 billion. Microsoft, IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco Systems have each made dozens of acquisitions in the same time frame.

Consolidation is a sign of the mature phase in an industry, in which the biggest players stake out more territory as a way to increase share of wallet … Read more

At 7:00 a.m. PDT I was heading for my video page on YouTube and ran into this message:

I was getting to other sites just fine, so it's safe to assume it's a Google problem. YouTube receives 10 hours of video per minute and is by far the leader in the crowded field. This provides another example of why the Internet isn't like television, which tends to have higher uptime but the content just isn't as interesting as what you can find on YouTube. Awaiting word from Google on this topic.

Update: As of … Read more

It's Friday night and still no word from the Microsoft or Yahoo bunkers. The headlines for today tell the story (see Techmeme).

The Wall Street Journal, which appears to be a conduit for the negotiations, has a story, "Microsoft, Yahoo Talks Intensify In Push to Reach a Friendly Deal," and another one, "Yahoo-Google Pact May Be Close." It doesn't seem that a Yahoo-Google mating on advertising would lead to a friendly Microsoft-Yahoo discussion this weekend. It's an interesting game of chicken, with many issues, such as regulatory approval, up in the air for … Read more

This week on the EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss the latest reports surrounding the Microsoft-Yahoo mating dance. We expect some news later Friday or early next week as to which way Microsoft is leaning--fight or flight.

I visited with IBM executives this week, and share with Larry my thoughts on IBM's focus on the mainframe and its budding relationship with Google. In addition, we discuss Sun's challenges in turning free, open-source software into profits for the company. And we talk about the upcoming JavaOne and SAP Sapphire conferences.

At a kickoff event for collaboration between IBM and the University of Southern California to explore the intersection of creative arts and science and technology, five IBM scientists offered their best guesses on how life would be different in 2050.

In keeping with the Hollywood theme, the moderator of the panel, Bill Pulleyblank, noted that the Mini Cooper automobile has more computing power than Apollo 13--the space capsule that "almost got Tom Hanks killed," he said, referring to the 1995 movie of that name.

Pulleybank led the development of IBM's Blue Gene systems, which account for 4 … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt gave a speech and chatted with IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano onstage Thursday at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference here. The two talked up their relationship, which primarily involves a joint research project. In October, Google and IBM announced a cloud computing initiative, based on Google's expertise in distributed, parallel computing and IBM's industrial enterprise management technologies, for public use by universities.

IBM is taking some of the learnings from the project and plans to operate a cloud that will allow partners to house their Web-based applications and sell them to … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Speaking at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference here, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reiterated his position that social networks are still too closed. "If it's not searchable by Google, it's not open, and open is best for the consumer," he said.

He added that "searchable by Google" means also searchable by other search engines, such as Yahoo. "People should be able to move from place to place, and their data is available everywhere," Schmidt said. "Social networks are a real phenomenon of people living their lives online, and it has … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Following renditions of "Goldfinger," "Mission Impossible" and "Star Wars" and other movie inspired themes, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano took the stage at the Nokia Theatre here to address 1,000 of the company's top business partners.

Regarding the current economic climate, Palmisano, who is also IBM's chairman and president, told his business partners, "We are going to weather the storm and come through it stronger than most. Just like IBM had to rethink its business model, you have to pick the segments of space and prioritize the opportunities. We have … Read more