Another Run at Yahoo?

It looks like Microsoft is pondering another run at acquiring Yahoo! It would rank as the largest acquisition Microsoft ever has made, at about $50 billion, and observers question how easy it might be to meld the two cultures. Still, the speculation points out how important it is for Microsoft to catch up with Google in the advertising-supported business model arena. There's a clear logic, despite the difficulties. Microsoft admits it was late to "get" the Internet. It hasn't punched through to the top in the portal space. It is an also ran in search.

For those of you who follow technology industry history, you know the leaders in any era of computing have not lead the next era. The mainframe leaders did not lead during the minicomputer era and those leaders fell as the PC era took shape. The issue is who leads when the next era, for which we don't have a universally accepted name, but might be called the "network" era of computing.

History is against Microsoft and Cisco, though both are striving mightily to cross the chasm of era leadership. Cisco tells the better story, in that regard.