Heh...

As Yahoo waits in vain for other bidders or deal alternatives to emerge, the dissatisfaction of Microsoft investors with the Yahoo bid has reduced the value of Microsoft's offer to $29.50 a share.
Why?

• The bid is half-cash / half-stock,
• Microsoft's stock price has dropped about 10% since the offer was announced, and
• the share exchange ratio is fixed at 0.9509 Yahoo shares per Microsoft share

I noticed this trend the day the announcement was made and was surprised that no one was bringing it up.    Microsoft's stock went into an almost immediate drop and has not recovered since. 

The reason is that Wall Street still thinks Yahoo is a dog.  The Yahoo shares went up because the collective mentality was "no one in Yahoo's condition could be stupid enough to pass on this deal".  The traders were essentially just buying what they thought was a guaranteed short term profit. 

No one is looking to Yahoo for anything long term because the sad truth is that Yahoo is done.  They tried competing as a search company, it didn't work.  They tried being a media company, it didn't work.  They tried being a collection of "Web 2.0" companies, it didn't work.  They're out of "trys" at this point and their only hope...is Microsoft.

Every counter offer describes a way to survive independently but none offer the company a chance to prosper.  No one even gives that consideration anymore.  The truth is their chances are slim even as part of Microsoft.  But Microsoft has a mountain of cash and the will to go on which are two things that Yahoo is sorely lacking. 

When I last wrote about Microsoft's Feedsync I said that I couldn't see a purpose for it in a networked world.  I'd wanted to elaborate on that for a while, especially after seeing this post from Liveside.net which advises everyone to "Pay Attention to Feedsync", but just didn't have the time. 

Well, it took me the better part of two months but I finally got around to it.   Here's the (very old) quote from Liveside...

However, all of this discussion seems to boil down into a set of main themes: a) we are moving toward more cloud based computing, b) that may be a threat to Microsoft, and c) for the first time in a long time Microsoft may be facing some real competition.  So the big question is, what is Microsoft's response?  Is Microsoft an old-school software company, waiting to be disrupted and toppled?  Or do they have some tricks left up their sleeve?

The answer, or at least a big part of the answer, lies in FeedSync.  First announced in 2005 by Ray Ozzie (then called SSE), this set of RSS enhancements is going to be a backbone of one of the key concepts of Software + Services.  Microsoft is betting heavily that the desktop, and rich desktop applications, are not going away, but that the ability to synchronize content from the desktop to the cloud, and from desktop to laptop to phone, all from the cloud (or from other devices), offers advantages that pure cloud computing just can't.

For me, the question is whether Microsoft is looking forward or backwards with this.  I'll be the first to admit we may not be into the "networked world" I alluded to in my earlier feedsync post but we're getting closer by the second.  I can now get net access just about anywhere (either via WiFi or using my cell phone as a tethered modem).  Even Airplanes are beginning to offer it. 

In that context Feedsync seems very circa-2000 to me.  While Google is betting on a future where everyone just pulls one copy of a document off the server Microsoft seems to be betting people will want 12 different copies of their document spread all over the place.

(in fairness, Microsoft is clearly hedging their bets, see Office Live Workspaces)

Don't get me wrong, there are places where this might be good. 

One place is in Calendar applications which synchronize because they need constant access to their data.  Missing a reminder because the phone couldn't poll its server is obviously unacceptable.  But for almost every other application the user initiates the interaction and is aware of his/her connection status which means they can remedy a lack of connection. 

Things could still go Microsoft's way but I'm leaning against Feedsync at this point (albeit less so than before).  It still feels like Microsoft isn't solving the problem.  All those copies floating out there are essentially the same thing as sending a document via e-mail and having people cc everyone with their edits.  Microsoft has created a more efficient way to sync those documents but there are still multiple copies out there and that means there's still a problem.