Why Microsoft Must Have Yahoo - The Era of Infocentricity

I started out today writing about the Microsoft/Yahoo situation, but it occurred to me I can't really explain why this merger is so important to the future of mobility without a little background first. In order to do this well, here's a brief and somewhat unusual history of IT.

The early days of computing, from, say, the invention of the electronic computer in the 1930's and 1940's to close to the end of the minicomputer era (late ‘70s/early ‘80s), were in fact defined by the computer itself - this was the compu-centric era. The computer mattered. Instruction sets mattered. Assembly language mattered. And applications were mostly related to accounting, payroll, mailing lists, and other humdrum stuff that primarily dealt with the automation of clerical tasks.

With the invention of the PC, though, we were on our way to the application-centric era, where the PC itself became less important and really served as little more than a carrier for applications - primarily, Microsoft Office, Outlook, and Internet Explorer, along with a few others. Most people today (other than Mac fanatics, of course) really don't care what brand of computer they use - the PC has become a commodity. Ditto for most server functionality as well. But computing is now critical to many aspects of our lives, and access to IT resources - files, applications, and the Web - are now elements we simply cannot live without, no matter where we are.

The problem with the application-centric model is that the costs involved in provisioning a solution are simply too high. PCs cost too much, especially to own. They are too big to carry around. They are too fragile. And, most importantly, they can't possibly hold all the data we need, and, if they do, we have problems with synchronization. We need, regardless, to be on the ‘net all the time. A big drive filled with obsolete information is of little value.

And so we must move on to the next step in the evolution of IT, just getting underway at present, the info-centric era. Information and access to it matters. The computer doesn't. Applications move at least partially onto the Web, and many different applications might operate on the same data. We can use any device we want, as long as it sports a decent browser (an issue on mobile devices, but one soon to be corrected - stay tuned) and, subject to user-interface restrictions, we can do whatever we need wherever and whenever. Mobility is key to meeting our information needs, as is wireless. We've gone from the point where computers were expensive and operated on cheap commodity data to the point where computers are cheap (and can be quite thin) and deal with very valuable data indeed. Since we need access to this data anytime, anywhere, and on essentially any device, a Web-based, mobile, wireless, fundamentally infocentric strategy is required. This is the future of IT.

And this is really what the Microsoft/Google battle is really about. Sure, Web advertising and productizing users is important and already a big business, but we're talking about much more than that. Microsoft needs Yahoo to boost its Web presence and counter Google's (so far, minor) inroads into Web-based applications. Microsoft hasn't done all that well with a mobile strategy so far, and I'm certainly no fan of Yahoo's solutions to date. But while Google isn't far ahead, Microsoft must act - now. The company that gets Web services and mobility right will own IT in the future. That's why this deal is worth upwards of $40B. And it will go through.

And don't be surprised if the winner isn't either of Microsoft or Google. The era of infocentricity, after all, has just begun.

• Wireless / Mobile
• Google
• Microsoft
• mobile
• wireless
• Yahoo