Mathew Ingram writes (in response to PBS-Cringe's post)...
Robert X. Cringely, the pseudonymous tech guru who writes a column for PBS, gives us the benefit of his decades of wisdom on the whole Microsoft and Yahoo front in a post entitled The Men Behind The Curtain. Not only does he give us the benefit of his wisdom, in fact, but he spends the first part of the column telling us how he’s going to give us the benefit of his wisdom, and how we should all be damn glad about it.
...
But the big revelation… wait for it… is that Yahoo has been scared ever since it bought Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com for $5.7-billion. So first of all, we’re supposed to believe that a deal the company did almost 10 years ago has kept it from achieving greatness, and second of all we’re supposed to be grateful to Bob for having the wisdom and the insight that it takes to deliver that kind of fascinating tidbit.
I disagree with PBS-Cringe (aka Robert X. Cringely aka Mark Stephens) quite a bit but I think the beauty of his take is his past popularity and how his perceptions (and obviously his contact list) are affected by that. He may not be right but he represents what a certain group of people (generally the old school Valley types) think. That's where the value in his piece is.
He understands the motivation behind one unique piece on the game board even if he doesn't understand the game as a whole.
Do I think Yahoo makes decisions based on a mistake made by a management team that essentially hasn't been around since 1999 (according to the 1999 and 2007 proxy statements)? No, I don't. But if you look a little harder you'll see the real gem in his post.
It shows how the people he represents are still in the 1999 mind set and how much of an influence that era still holds on them. That, in my opinion, is valuable insight.
On that note, I'm outta here. I'll be gone on vacation and banned from all things computer for a little while. I have set up some pre-written posts which should be appearing in my place though. Hopefully that will tide everyone over until I can indulge my obsession by unleashing an endless stream of SimpleDb based posts on you get back