In some cases, I wish that I was …

So Long … And Thanks for All the Fish

Yahoo responded to the letter from Carl Icahn, but I think this is the lead out before the final nail goes into the coffin. Microsoft has said they’ve moved on, though? What happens if this new board of directors can’t get the software giant to bite? I think Dvorak put it best. This squad looks like a great bunch of sellouts.

If Yahoo can’t fend off Icahn, it’s game over. If Icahn does manage this take over, selling out to Microsoft might actually be the best case scenario. Can anyone spot the irony in that sentence? So, we’re looking at the possibility of Yahoo being sold to Microsoft where the clash of culture and technology is sure to eventually doom all of Yahoo’s services … or Yahoo being cut up and sold to the highest bidders … which is sure to eventually doom all of Yahoo’s services. I can’t find the win in this situation, can you? Oh right, I’m not a Yahoo shareholder … maybe I should be.

I feel really sorry for some of the more prominent members of the PHP Community who are currently employed at Yahoo. I can’t imagine that they would have any trouble finding a new home, if they decide to leave after whatever ends up happening. Maybe everything will settle down and nothing will happen, then they’ll get to just keep their jobs in peace. Who knows?

Let’s pick on CNET for a while …

How much is your soul worth?

CNET says theirs is worth 1.8 Billion.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one, yet. CNET covers a lot of technology news. CBS is a major broadcasting company. While this could mean a lot of worthwhile tech coverage could make it onto any of the CBS TV Networks, which would be very cool, the transaction still feels dirty. It feels like a mainstream media buyout of something tech enthusiasts hold dear to them. What if CBS kills CNET? CNET Networks includes the likes of CNET itself, ZDNet, and GameSpot. All of which are frequent reads of mine and plenty of people that I know. I think the best return on this acquisition would be if a lot of this content made it onto the CBS airwaves. Anybody know how likely that one is?

I just hope this one has a happy ending. More tech and gaming content on TV is something I’m looking forward to. TechTV was great. The G4 deal was a disaster. G4 was better before the TechTV buyout. I can hardly stand anything on that channel, anymore. At least we have shows like This Week in Tech, Diggnation, Systm, and a few other cool shows from Revision3.

I’m not sure I like the deal yet, but I can’t wait to see how it plays out.

Wired Technica?

I don’t know about you, but I always thought of Wired and Ars Technica as being rivals. Now, they’re practically siblings. In-laws, of course. It’s hard enough thinking of the two sites as related, at least add the “by marriage” (or massive monetary exchange, whatever) part to soften the blow a little.

I’ll go ahead and stand right up to say that I don’t like this one. I dislike Wired and pretty much everything related to the site. Never been a fan. It might have a something to do with the fact that their website is an unmanageable piece of garbage that looks like a script vomited text onto a plain background. Or the writing style that just grates on my nerves everytime I (painfully) read an article there.

I like Ars. I enjoy reading Ars. The writing style is appealing and the visual style of the site is a lot nicer and easy on the eyes. I just can’t imagine that level of sophistication being shacked up with the likes of Wired. Hopefully this one won’t change too much. If I start to see the level of quality at Ars drop off, I’m going to be highly disappointed. Slashdot has been disappointing me lately, too. With Digg getting less and less tech news (it’s all carbon copied from /., or Reddit at this point), it’s looking like I’m going to have to pick a new tech news site to keep tabs on, before too long.

I’m really hoping to see happy endings from all of these different deals. The Yahoo issue is particularly interesting to me, because of Yahoo’s use of PHP. I think we’ll see some changes at all of these various sites in the coming months.