If Microsoft Bought Yahoo and Google Bought Ebay...

This is what is going on in this picture.

Yahoo shareholders: *seductive* "Lets pretend we are interested in being bought."

Ebay: *indignant* "The next one to screw with me and my Paypal gets the bullet!"

Google: *Hungry gurgling* "Which one first?"

Bill Gates: *frantic* "I'll pay anything to make Microsoft competitive! $40 Billion? you got it!"

Skype: "Getting money out of my users is like drinking out of a salt lick."

Ok. Not really. But there are some interesting potential corporate combinations coming up.

A buyout of Yahoo by Microsoft would be a massive blow to Google and help consolidate Microsoft's tentative position in the search industry. Not to mention giving Microsoft access to the Yahoo faithful.

But if Google got it's paws on Ebay that would give it impressive control of a very loyal user base and a fantastic payment system.

Then if someone could figure a way to turn Skype into a cash cow to fund these ventures...

Microsoft doesn't exactly have a great track record of making huge waves with aquired companies. In fact, I have wondered just what kind of acquisition it would take to put Microsoft ahead at something other then operating systems.

Yahoo Says "Nuts to you Microsoft!"

Do you think Yahoo is worth $31 a share?

That would be:

1.34 billion times 31 = forty-one billion five hundred forty million

That is 41,540,000,000 Dollars.

Would you pay $41 Billion dollars for Yahoo? That would most likely be quite a bargain. At least that is what Yahoo is saying, who is currently trading at $28, up from $19 on January 31st, 2008.

Microsoft offered Yahoo $31 a share for the company. A memo was issued to Yahoo employees that no decision had been made at this point.

It is completely likely that Yahoo doesn't care if they are bought out and they simply want to jack up the offer price by getting Google and Microsoft into a bidding war. It seems far more likely that a final price would be around $45 per share. If Google does get into bidding war expect a sharp increase in prices.

This is probably a great opportunity for a short term trade. Of course, with all short term trades, trade on your own wisdom, not on mine.

Android To Control Your Phone

Google has finally made progress into the mobile world. And not in a way you might think. While the gPhone remains humorously speculative an Android is going to town in your smart phone.

Essentially Google has made a way for crazy open source programs to do their best with modern smart phones. Doing what Google does best, encouraging innovation.

Android is an OS for phones that want to lack "proprietary obstacles." Meaning, if it can be programed then it can go on your phone. An early version of the developer SDK will be available on November 12th, 2007 and you can expect heavy development to ensue immediately.

Android was not Google's idea incidentally. The experience and resources that went into building the OS came from a company named Android acquired by Google in it's early 22 month growth stage. I suppose Google saw something it liked. Maybe an open door into the mobile market? The company was on the cutting edge of cellular development and carried a heavy and disproportionate load of industry experience.

This specific case of the ever encroaching Google Mass absorbing a related tech company and then producing a product designed from the purchased knowledge is what we can expect to see in the future. Google doesn't just buy a company on a whim without having a plan for it. Neither does it buy the 700 Mhz spectrum without a plan for it....

Android offers expandability, customoblity, and the word "free", to the cellular industry. It's up to them to accept. Judging from Google's HUGE user base it won't take long for more companies to jump on the open source bandwagon.

What do other companies have to say?

Well, Microsoft says "It really sounds that they are getting a whole bunch of people together to build a phone and that's something we've been doing for five years," said Scott Horn, from Microsoft's Windows Mobile marketing team. (Did Microsoft release an open source phone OS yet? Did I miss that or is that still coming after 5 stinking years?)

A bit defensive.

"If Google was not involved the industry would have just yawned and rolled over," said John Forsyth of Symbian.

"We don't see this as a threat." Nokia stated bluntly.

Well that's all good and fine but there is something these companies are missing. Google IS involved. Symbian was right to say that it's Google's involvement in Android that makes this a big deal. But that doesn't change the fact that because Google is involved we can expect to see some exciting changes in the phone business.

A Personal Review Of Google-411

Whenever one hears of a speech recognition algorithm that supposedly can understand all speech without prior training you can usually just shake your head and walk away. Not this time. Google has produced an amazing product once again. Here are my experiences.

The speech recognition algorithm kicks some serious audio butt. If that is possible. As I used Goog-411 to locate nearby stores such as Costco, the moutain bike dealer, and the theater address I was amazed that not once did the "operator" aske me to repeat my query. Every time it was spot on. Even on difficult words such as "Coeur d'Alene". I bet you don't even know how to pronounce that.

The speech recognition system is merely a way for phone users to interact with data that Google has already mined from the internet. If the business is not listed on the internet you can kiss your connection hopes goodbye.

I suspect that Google has integrated Goog-411 right into it's infrastructure. Meaning a computer receives your request for data, then that computer queries (searches) the internet listings for that item, filters out non-businesses, and responds with the best results. You can choose to have that info spoken to you, connect you, or have it text messaged to you. That is all somewhat easy to deduce. But that shows us some interesting possibilities in the form of Google's potential dive into the mobile market.

If information on the business can be texted to you then why not a map to it if you have a gadget phone? Why not paid advertising from related query results? Why not paid rankings for businesses? If Google is looking for money from the mobile market (which they certainly are) then advertising is where it's going to at. I think that because advertising is one area that Google as embarrassed it's competitors.

The number that you dial from could reveal:

• Geographic locations of the called numbers
• Names of persons called
• Names of businesses called
• Names of organizations called
• Types of business called
• Types of organizations called

This can all build enough information to target ads to the user. Now whether these ads are audio, text, images is still up in the air.

By the way the Goog-411 number is just that: 1-800-goog-411.

Or for the layman, it's: 1-800-466-4411

Make Google Save You Money

The Internet is a great place to find deals on just about anything. There are also a lot of surveys and freebies just waiting for you take them. iGoogle is a great way to do that!

All you have to do is set up free Google account. If you have one already you are one step ahead.

After you get your account set up go to www.google.com/ig. This is the iGoogle page. There will probably already be the defualt content on the site. You can choose to add another page to the iGoogle also. I have three pages. One page for online deals. One for keeping track of my favorite forums. And one for monitoring the stock market.

iGoogle get it's content from the rss feeds you specify. Click the "add content" button near the top right and go to town. Add the URLs of the sites you want to monitor. This will work with any site that has rss feeds enabled. Some great site for finding online deals are:

Slickdeals.org
Absurdly Cool Freebies
Woot!
Tech Bargains
XP Bargains
Digital Deal

That is only a summary of all the deal sites there are in the expanse of the interweb. If you have a favorite be sure to share it. If we get enough submissions I will make a comprehensive deal list.

Google 411

Google has released a new service called Google 411. It's great. All you have to do is dial the toll free number and respond to the voice prompts. What you say is analyzed by some kick butt voice recognition algorithm to find out where you live and what you want. When you find what you want via the numerical menu you say that number to be connected with that business.

So far Google 411 is just for finding businesses. Having a white page directory accessible by phone is probably not far off though.

Here is the Accompanying video Google released.

More Space For GMail... How Long Can This Last?

GMail has upgraded their email client GMail for basic users. The service currently now offers a staggering 3.1 GB of storage for the free version which increases minutely every second. Premier Edition suckers get a whopping 25GB slab of platter up from a measly 10GB.

Google persists in giving consumers what they want for free. Paid advertising keeps Google in the good graces of accounting but for how long. Can a company continue to produce free apps and just live off the advertising?

Read the Google Blog post on GMail here.