Just a few comments on goings-on at the web BigCos in the last week.
- Microsoft and Yahoo obviously top the bill. I still think that Microhoo will happen. As Mashable Adam put it, there simply does not appear to be another way for Yahoo to create as much value for shareholders as by simply accepting Microsoft’s bid. That most of the board is tellng Jerry Yang the same thing makes the deal more likely.
- Amazon’s S3 outage, as Om remarked, shows that a lot of work needs to be done before we can completely rely on the cloud. It’s more of a reflection on the cloud in general than on S3 in particular: Amazon knows uptime as well as pretty much anyone.
- Google has started testing video ads on some search pages. When I first read this (at NYT BITS) I thought it was a terrible move. But I can see the logic of Marissa Mayer’s explanation. “Now that Google’s main search results pages include more images, video links and other elements, it is more appropriate… to have corresponding advertising formats.”