Emotionally attached to Internet services

So it seems that Yahoo will not fall to the Dark Side, at least not for the moment. In these days it has been interesting to watch the reactions to Microsoft's bid for Yahoo. Especially among passionate users of some services owned by Yahoo, like Flickr [the partisans, the moderates, the attention seekers]. Suddenly everyone was talking about it, in most cases expressing their concern. Many people sounded very clear in their positions, even if I didn't hear nor read many clear reasons to be for, or against, the bid. Why is it so controversial? Is it a matter of size? MS is a huge company that would become even more huge after buying Yahoo. There is a natural opposition to massive, global companies; I guess in the same way that we are wired to reject massively powerful governments and stronger rival tribes. Specially when such conglomerates tend to pile data (our data) and control the raw materials that are building the digital age, whatever that be. But even so, what's the big deal? Yahoo is not small, neither, nor are Google and Apple (incidentally, both are companies that many people who criticise MS's bid seem to love). The revenue of the world's largest company is almost seven times bigger than Microsoft's — are we watching it even just as closely as we watch MS? Do we think that evil Microsoft is going to corrupt and pervert for the sake of destruction all beautiful creatures that sprout happy in the gardens of Yahoo? I don't think so. MS is not trying to buy Yahoo to kill it and then kick it out of its way. In other cases, MS would pay whatever is necessary to buy a small or medium company that is itching its neck, competing in a common area. But that is not the case with Yahoo. Yahoo and Google are competing against themselves in their market, while MS plays in a different arena. MS wants to buy Yahoo to use it, to learn from it, to inherit its base of users. MS is trying to enter the Internet through one of the tall doors by bribing the bouncer — its intention is not to brick the door up. My bet is that MS will not alter things too much and that it will try to avoid clashes with the established community of Yahoo users. Besides, we already saw cases of small companies being acquired by giants in which those deals didn't break the original spirit of the company but instead remained almost transparent to users (Google buying YouTube, Yahoo buying Flickr and del.icio.us, CBS buying Last.fm). Is it because we hate Microsoft software and their lack of moral principles, in particular for what regards to standards, open source and GNU/Linux? Oh, hell, yes. We don't like Microsoft's products and practices, and there are plenty of reasons for that. But hang on a minute, isn't MS just a company? And aren't they playing fair this time? So why are we that indignant about it? Shall we get indignant if MS buys Yahoo? Short answer: “No. The web is a free market too. Companies get sold, bought, liquidated and merged every day. Six Apart bought LiveJournal and then sold it to SUP Fabrik. As long as Yahoo and all its services keep honouring their ToS you should be fine. There is no base for angriness.” Long answer: “Well, sort of. Feel indignant if you please. After all, registering an account in Yahoo Mail or sharing your precious sites via del.icio.us is not like buying a bicycle. Internet services are radically different from tangible goods, and even from software. Internet services are kind of subscriptions. They evolve. They grow as your network of contacts expands and as you move more stuff in them (be it pictures, CV's, sound samples or routes on maps). Derived applications, mashups and bridges to other services and communities are already features that we take for granted. More importantly (and I think this is what, almost subconsciously, bothers most people) Internet services have styles*, and* souls*; probably much more than traditional services or products. It's not written anywhere, but you definitely expect Windows Live Spaces, MySpace and WordPress.com to progress in different directions and to do things in very different ways, even if they actually provide similar services. And that distinctive touch is usually clear from the moment the service is launched, because for web companies that provides their identity. Their style is the USP for the users who believe in that particular style. Take Flickr. Because we know how Flickr* behaves*, we assume that it is going to do things in a certain way. We assume that it will be friendly to mashups using their open API, make the most of Flash for their GUI, protect their sober design against distasteful CSS by users, keep their orientation to tags, geolocation, multiple taxonomies, etc. That is why Flickr users should feel betrayed if after an acquisition of Yahoo by MS all that good stuff turned into things like* ‘click here to export this set as a PowerPoint presentation’, ‘download ActiveX to display the notes on the photo’ and ‘it looks like you're trying to upload a landscape photo of a big zebra among green bushes. Would you like to tag the photo*“big zebra green bushes”?’”* Now, which is the right answer?