If you rewind the clock to April, Silicon Alley Insider praised Yang’s handling of the Microsoft negotiations, saying that “Yahoo Playing This Brilliantly“.   Now, Silicon Valley Insider claims that Yahoo Management “blew the deal“.

Alright - just because you did some things well doesn’t mean that you will succeed, and obviously Yahoo didn’t get the deal done (is that success?).  But what is clear is that no matter what Yang did, Silicon Alley Insider intended to roast him for it.

Scoble writes this week about how Microsoft’s plan to challenge Google is to use it’s 320 million “anti-Google weapons” - in other words, the 320 million users of MSN services.  When did users become weapons?

Due to anti-trust arrangements, of course, Microsoft can’t easily “leverage” it’s Windows users or its Office users.  However, MSN users are fair game because Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly there.

But all of this gets to a meta point - doesn’t it suck to be used as a pawn for Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, or anyone?

Unfortunately, this is an arms race which only gets worse as desperation mounts.  Users don’t want the installation of one product to reconfigure their preferences for another.  However, this is exactly what  Microsoft does today - install *any* MSN product,  and if you aren’t careful, it switches all your search settings to Microsoft’s search.  In the future, if they get more desperate, I’m certain they’ll stop bothering to ask, and instead claim it is a requirement as part of the “terms of service”.

This is wrong; and every company is guilty of it.  I do believe the more desperate companies are generally the aggressors.   Once started, however, it becomes an arms race where each company must respond before the other company uninstalls them!  This is wrong. 

I want a 3rd party utility that doesn’t pimp its wares on me but which knows about the arms race for media players, default browser, default search, etc etc and neutralizes these marketing tactics which think of me as a “weapon” against the competition.

Putting my prediction out long before the rest of the media will (they want the drama!).

Obama’s going to win big in November - he’ll amass at least 64% of the popular vote.

I just discovered the Google Chart API.  If you’ve ever built an application that needed to generate charts, you may have spent a lot of developer resources on it.  The Chart API is pretty awesome - charts for free….

If you were Barack Obama, and you decided you wanted Clinton to be your VP, who would you pick?

Working under the veil of “shareholder crusader”, Carl Icahn is currently on course to single-handedly destroy two tech giants and leave a third as an unwanted monopoly.

As you can tell, I’m not too happy with Icahn today.   This is a man who does not understand the search or advertising businesses at all.  As part of his smear campaign against Yang yesterday, Icahn was a babbling idiot as he discussed why Microsoft should buy Yahoo.  Basically he reiterated the same ignorant mantra - “the only way that Microsoft can compete with Google is to have Yahoo”.   There is no basis for this, and a whole lot of indicators that it is just untrue.  Most notable is that the only search market share shrinking more rapidly than Microsoft’s is Yahoo’s.

Icahn is a great businessman.  He can spot a company that could be sold for a short-term dollar.  But, he doesn’t know how to build products and never has.  Icahn’s history shows that he has NEVER built a product.  How is it that he knows anything about building a competing search engine to Google?   Where does he get these claims?   In fact, much more knowledgeable industry experts believe he is 100% wrong.

Icahn is not working in the interest of Yahoo shareholders.  Icahn just wants to make a buck.  Remember, he can sell yahoo for $26, make $1/share, and put $50 million back in his pocket.  He’d then blame Yang and Yahoo for having not sold for more.  Well, he knew that Yang had rejected the Microsoft deal before he invested!  At this point, his complaining about Yang or the Yahoo poison pill is pure posturing for him to make money.  (Has he talked to Yahoo employees?  Maybe he doesn’t know that they only reason they didn’t quit already was *because* of that retention plan?)

Unfortunately, Icahn may have already ruined Yahoo’s chances for short-term recovery.  If he is successful, he will also ruin Microsoft’s.  If the acquisition goes through, the most likely outcome is this:  Yahoo and Microsoft will both lose search marketshare during the 1yr transition.  Google will emerge as the unquestionable and unwanted monopoly.  Consumer choice in search will drop to dangerously few choices.  Advertisers will have no online choices.  Microsoft shareholders will be left having paid $40B to acquire an asset which was only worth $20B.  Nice.

I hope Microsoft comes out with a public statement, “we won’t purchase Yahoo at any price”.  This would clearly tell the industry, Microsoft employees and Yahoo employees to stop being distracted by Carl Icahn’s selfish antics.  Instead, we could all get back to work so that Microsoft/Yahoo could figure out how to gain market share against Google, and in the end, have 3 healthy, strong companies in the search/advertising markets.  Nobody wants a monopoly - not even Google.  Don’t let Icahn create one.

Don’t believe a word Icahn says.  He doesn’t know how to build companies or products.  He only knows how to make money while dismantling them.

I thought it was rare for candidates to win without the popular vote.  However, we are seeing it twice within 8 years:  Obama is going to win the nomination without holding the majority of votes.  Fortunately, this is the nomination, and not the election.  But there is so much Obama fanfare here in Silicon Valley that I don’t hear anyone complaining.  Regardless of who you voted for - doesn’t this bother you?  Maybe you think Michigan voters don’t deserve to vote?

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/barack_obama_spends_2_8_million_on_google

I would never give money to a politician unless it was a good investment.  For individuals, it’s not.  But hey, want to see which of your friends are suckers?  You can even get their addresses and go T-P their houses.

Today Microsoft launched Live Search Cashback!  This service is really a merging of their Jellyfish service (Microsoft bought Jellyfish some time ago) with Live Search.  Microsoft says it’s going to help change the game against Google.

I first used Jellyfish back in October, 2007.  I thought the service was pretty nice.  They have a whole “community shopping” service, which I am not interested in, but from visiting their site, you can clearly see via the live “shopping smackdowns” that there are lots of people that do.  I guess their competition is probably the Home Shopping Channel and such.  Clearly shopping as entertainment is a very valid business.

The reason I signed up at Jellyfish was because we were buying some chairs online, and I found that the seller had an affiliate program through Jellyfish to give us 15% off.  15% off the $450 was over $50, so it was worth it.

Overall, affiliate rebates are just like mail-in rebates.  You never know when or if you’ll get paid.  So be careful.

Here is roughly what happens:

1.  You make a purchase.  You can’t go directly to the merchant’s site; you need to make sure you follow the links from the affiliate you are expecting the rebate from.

2. At that point, you’ll pay full price, and you’ll get the product delivered to you.

3. The seller has an agreement with the affiliate (Microsoft) that it will pay the affiliate every 90-120 days.  They do this to avoid paying rebates on items which could be returned, and also because nobody likes to pay bills promptly.

4. Finally, Microsoft can credit your account; since they’ve automated the process, I expect this is probably pretty quick - within 1-3 business days from Microsoft receiving the money.

5. Of course, Jellyfish/Microsoft know that it’s been 3-4 months since your purchase and there is a decent chance you’ll forget altogether.  So they won’t tell you the money is there.  You need to check your account, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have a balance to cash out.

If you haven’t used affiliate cash back programs before, you probably should now that Microsoft is fully in the game.  Most affiliate programs to date have not passed all the money back to you, the consumer.  However, Microsoft’s program does - they are passing 100% of the affiliate check back to you.  How does Microsoft get paid?  Well, technically they don’t - if you claim your money.  However, if you forget to pick up your check, well, they got paid anyway, didn’t they?

Overall, I think Jellyfish/Cashback is pretty cool and I will use it.  Over the long haul, however, I don’t expect affiliate programs will ever offer the best prices.  Management of affiliate programs is expensive, and as more companies make their own online efforts efficient, the cheapest prices will be direct from the manufacturer  (absent subsidies from Microsoft, that is :-).