David Lazarus over at the LA Times wrote a piece on the failed buyout of Yahoo by Microsoft.
The piece was fascinating because David polled high schoolers at Loyola High School (Los Angeles) on the deal. Specifically, the students said that Microsoft (and Google) was, indeed, cooler than Yahoo.
Hold on a sec! Microsoft > Yahoo???
Why?
In a word…Xbox. Yes, their platform, along with the Xbox-only mega game, Halo, is what propels a so-called “evil” corporation into a cool corporation.
Some of the students also mentioned that that there’s nothing wrong with being profitable…meaning, just because a multi-billion dollar corporation is profitable isn’t, in and of itself, wrong.
That’s hot.
Also, they didn’t have problems with some advertising, but just didn’t want website properties to be overloaded with them. Interesting.
Anyway, the problem with Yahoo is that there’s not much resonating with these students. They don’t use Yahoo for search…they use Google.
I don’t really use Google. In fact, I consistently prefer Yahoo because of the depth of content (Finance and Movies as examples). I use Yahoo search because of the convenience. I actively use Gmail, though, but I have an old Yahoo email account.
My point, is that I wonder what other teenagers would say about Microsoft > Yahoo.
Anyway, check out the article. It’s pretty interesting.