The week in your words: Microsoft bid, SP1, Ebay intrigue

Stuart Turton Read more October 7, 2009

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In a week that saw Microsoft continue to cast come-hither glances at Yahoo, the Vista SP1 release go wrong, and Ebay silence its sellers, we take a look back at what our readers have made of it all.

Microsoft bid for Yahoo losing its appeal

Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo continued to dominate the news this week, as people continued to rub their eyes in disbelief at Microsoft’s $44 billion shopping spree.

Amnesia10 rather neatly laid out a few of the potential pitfalls for us.

“Ignore the cost aspect, there are many other reasons that this deal looks bad: the impact on the search market, the probable botching of the integration on Yahoo Mail, then Flickr, then the Yahoo Widget Engine. All of these are nails in the coffin of the deal. Then you add in the debt needed, and the elimination of Microsoft’s cash pile.”

Flickr friends agreed – coming out this week to protest about the proposed takeover. It was a stirring campaign, not entirely embraced by NitroFan, who took the broader view.

“I love Flickr but detest its quirky, badly designed user interface. I have been using the web daily since 1995 and I have yet to find a more poorly designed site. Just maybe a Microsoft takeover would do one thing and improve this site’s user interface. If they promise to do that they get my vote (now taking cover).”

He might be on to something. Perhaps Steve Ballmer should rethink this piles of cash approach to takeovers in favour of flowers and chocolates and whispered sweet-nothings in the ears of the Yahoo investors. Or maybe not.

Driver bugs mar launch of Vista Service Pack 1

Microsoft was also busy this week putting the finishing touches to Vista Service Pack 1. And it would have got away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky drivers, ruining the installation for a number of SP1 beta testers. Thankfully Microsoft had a solution: anybody liable to have driver issues with the Service Pack simply wouldn’t get it. Brilliant.

And yet that wasn’t the strangest part. The really odd scenario happened on the boards, where Microsoft found… support.

“It is a little unfair to blame Microsoft for the shoddy programming of other companies – although Microsoft’s coding isn’t that great either. In this instance, the official story seems to be that manufacturers of hardware have not written their drivers to conform to Microsoft’s published standards for driver creation. Whilst most of what the Service Pack will rectify are Microsoft’s problems, it seems the delay is not really Microsoft’s fault, in this instance,” says Big_D.

“Yes, it can’t really win on the driver front,” muses qpw3141. “If it insists on correctly-written drivers and testing them for functionality before certifying them it gets blamed because people can’t use current hardware. If it lets people use any old drivers then it gets blamed when they fall over. Oh well. Such is life.”

Comment: Ebay risks alienating its sellers
Microsoft may be getting it in the neck, but everyone’s blameless at Ebay, which this week banned negative comments from its sellers. Unsurprisingly, it proved a divisive issue on the boards.

“As a seller with 100% positive feedback on 140 transactions I have left negative feedback on four occasions,” reports pja_jennings reports from the front lines. “These were all when the winner of the auction failed to pay or respond to emails. Without this sanction who will warn other sellers of potential problems with this person?”

And on the other side of the debate we have qpw3141.

“Previously, a great many people did not dare to leave negative feedback for rogue sellers because these sellers would always leave retaliatory negative feedback in return. Thus you had, for example, Ebay sellers who sold nothing but pirated CDs or DVDs and yet managed to continue trading because buyers were not prepared to risk getting negged in return.”

That’s right, negged. That’s the sound of experience that is. But it’s not all doom and gloom on the Ebay battlefront, with pbryanw popping up like the forum equivalent of a Christmas football match.

“I’ve had a couple of occasions where I’ve had to give refunds to buyers, usually because they haven’t read the item description properly. In all these cases the buyer has been patient with me and have left positive feedback (which I’ve given back in return).”

“I think if you communicate well and often with the buyer then most problems can be avoided.”

And on that rare beam of sunshine, we’ll say goodbye. See you next week.