Oh no. Please no. I like yahoo. I don't want it turning windows-esque. If this happens they'll have to restart, and reinstall yahoo once a week. Emails will go to the wrong places, and it will start doing (and not doing) stuff all on its own.

On the other hand, I wouldn't say no to 44 billion.

If you are wondering what Microsoft will do with Zimbra, you should do a YAHOO search for "Hotmail acquisition". The First thing Microsoft did was to go to the data centers and remove the face plates from the SUN servers that were running Hotmail's infrastructure then they spent a few years and a lot of money making sure that their service is not running on anything but Microsoft products.

I doubt that buying a competitor will "make Microsoft a more open company". It is more probable that they will look for the next competitor they need to take out before Google buys them.

Also Zimbra was not an alternative to Exchange the way PostPath is. In a few years, we will look back and think of Zimbra as an innocent bystander that got killed in the cross fire.

I hope Yahoo shareholders will give Yang some time to rebuild Yahoo, this deal may not help Yahoo in the long run, Microsoft just does not yet proof that it can manage an online property well.

It means Microsoft have failed to compete their competitors.

It'll be a big news for this year 2008. If a company appears with tag "MicroYahoo" in the technology map.

Safdar Imam

Microsoft won't foster Zimbra, they will starve it of resources and try to kill it off.
It's emerging as a serious competitor to Exchange and they'll sacrifice it at the stake rather than let any upstarts challenge one of their flagship products.