Skip to content

The BIG Reason

Music, opinions, and portfolio of Mark Eagleton, musician and web developer in Northern CA.

Microsoft: Scourge of the Internet

Microsoft will purchase Yahoo. It hasn't happened yet, but the bid is now officially on the table, and it will happen. My previous experiences with unsolicited takeovers have shown me that they are usually best measured in terms of when—not if. 

Microsoft will purchase Yahoo. It hasn't happened yet, but the bid is now officially on the table, and it will happen. My previous experiences with unsolicited takeovers have shown me that they are usually best measured in terms of when—not if.

As a Mac person, I don't hate Microsoft. They are nearly irrelevant to me. I don't use any of their products outside of those required for testing website layouts, and playing video games.

As a web developer, and general internet fan, I completely detest Microsoft. Obviously, my biggest gripe with them, and to most of the other people in my industry, is Internet Explorer. The particulars of which, I shouldn't have to mention again here.

But it goes deeper than that. In every other place they touch the web, they epitomize inferiority. Their .NET platform is a nightmare to work with. Their IIS web server, MSSQL server, and Windows OS are turds in comparison with most of the web platform options on the market. Even if this weren't the case, .NET applications can only be developed on the Windows platform, which make them a non-starter for me.

I like the versatility of open source solutions. So does Yahoo. Many of their services are built on the LAMP platform that I very much love to work in, myself. Their successes with the platform have helped me make the case for using it on some very high profile projects.

I have to wonder if Microsoft will migrate Yahoo's services to the .NET platform. They did it with Hotmail after all. And that was a huge nightmare. Taking away some of the most shining examples of how viable, relevant, and elegant open source tools can be for web services would be tragic. I like Flickr. I'd really hate to see them mess it up.

[Update] Corrected some rage grammar.