MS vs Yahoo et all

I am really amused every time I read another wrinkle in the Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo Saga. I am starting to think of Balmer as Biff from Back to the Future, and Yahoo as Marty's mother; the more Yahoo says "No" the harder Balmer presses to get in her panties. Fan-Freaking-Tastic, if/when this deal goes down it will be the bitterest pill Microsoft has ever swallowed. The best part is I don't believe Blamer's ego will let him step away from this; he committed the company he thinks of as his toy and regardless of the shareholder value his ham fisted approach is destroying I'm not sure he sees his own bumbling.

Deep inside I am hopping this is some skillful jockeying to get at a goal that doesn't make sense to me yet. I doubt Steve has the fineness to pull a "every buddy look right while I juke left" strategy off, but I can only hope that Gates would have stepped in by now if he wasn't. Until then I think the best analysis I have read of the whole mess so far was Engadget's Thomas Ricker

Make no mistake about it, this is corporate war and will likely end with Yahoo's best engineers working for Google.

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Miracle of Miracles PayPal was working today

I figured it had been a while since I tried to logon to PayPal to check my balance, and with no small amount of trepidation typed my credentials .... lo and behold, successful logon on the first go. Not too exciting though, what with the $.01 balance, but none the less maybe the worst of PayPals terrible service is behind me. In the months since I wrote these posts, I have vowed to not buy anything from eBay, and not pay anything using PayPal. Sad really, because as much as I want to help out Kiva.org, as long as the only option is PayPal, no dice. Around the same time I was looking at my PayPal Balance, I also thought to look and my only real funding option for that account, My Adsense account, and I had to wonder why Google would continue to support a rival company, on that has blocked their vaguely similar product Google Checkout. I am very curious to know why (other than for money) eBay doesn't want people to pay for auctions with Google Checkout?

My conclusion is that they know all to well the precarious nature of their business model, and the importance of not giving anybody a foothold in to their business model, looking no farther than PayPal for a reason why. eBay purchased PayPal in 2002, and I am very sure that they have not forgotten the 1.5 billion dollar lesson of how small ideas on the internet can quickly become 800 lb gorillas to be bought out or dealt with. I am guessing that because of the money they laid out for a company that they initially ignored eBay won't ever be caught napping again. Look at how they have a 25% stake in free, vaguely similar competitor Craigslist.org.

I suppose my point is why can't I use my Adsense dollars with Google Checkout, or at the very least as credit to buy Advertising with Google.com? My guess is that Google is finding themselves spread thin like a certain other search/portal giant. Careful Google, we have seen what happens when companies spread themselves out too far.

Tags: Google PayPal Google Checkout Yahoo Peanut Butter Convictus