Microsoft the underdog
At long last, we have resolution: Microsoft will not, despite the efforts of activist financier Carl Icahn, be taking over Yahoo and going toe-to-toe with mighty Google in the brave new realm of search-based Web advertising. Instead, Yahoo, the definitive Web 1.0 company, will be casting its lot with ... Google, the definitive Web 2.0 company. Microsoft, the definitive Web 0.0 company -- the pre-Web leviathan, plying the increasingly dreary straits of operating systems and software -- is out in the cold.
This drama has been playing out since the mid-'90s, when the Internet first established itself as a business environment and as a compelling counterpoint to the era of Microsoft, which thanks to its monopoly on the operating system for PCs -- the mighty MS-DOS -- had dominated the dawn of personal computing.
Google and its emerging monopoly on search-based Web advertising is the new name of the game. And now that Microsoft is almost categorically excluded from that competition, we are witnessing the final days of Web 1.0. It may look as though Yahoo has somehow saved itself by rebuffing Microsoft and teaming up with the dark lords of Mountain View. But this is not the case. Microsoft will survive. Google will dominate. Yahoo is toast.
Web 1.0, whose heyday ran from about 1994 to the tech crash in 2000, was defined by a highly idealistic set of values and summarized by the "portal" that Yahoo created. For starters, Microsoft was the enemy. Everything about its rapacious culture of profitable emulation, as opposed to plucky innovation, was to be despised. To its credit, however, Microsoft realized that it had been an utter failure at the Web 1.0 game. And now, in the uncertain realm of Web 2.0, Microsoft has in Google a legitimate challenger for dominance of the techscape.
Google has set the tone for Web 2.0, and the tone is grim and thuggish. Microsoft, when it was the enemy, was at least an easy target: so corporate, so stiff, so slow on the uptake. So guilty about its inability to get down with the cool crowd. Google could care less about being cool, as long as it stays a juggernaut. It's guilt-free. It's like the Borg, the cybernetic aliens of "Star Trek." It's been said before, but I'll say it again: Resistance is futile.
