My Live 2.0 and Recent Rumor on Microsoft/Yahoo Deal

This is the hottest news on Friday evening my time (GMT+10). Every hours my RSS reader (Google Reader, if you must know) flagging recent development on rumors of this potentially the biggest Internet deal of the year, if not the decade. Microsoft and Yahoo are the old players in the Internet world - well, Yahoo may be even older. I still remember that I am still using Netscape Navigator and using Yahoo to search information from the web. That is before Microsoft took over the Internet browsing game with Internet Explorer.
I can't remember whether I had Yahoo account back then - as far as I remember, I just used it for searching websites - which mostly US content and I saw it growing eventually. I got the feeling that people in Yahoo were adding the content manually non-stop back then. And it grew globally with the introduction of Yahoo locals. It was not as sophisticated as how Google started the expansion, but it really was a big milestone in Internet by going to a main site called portal. I did, back then, put Yahoo as my home page. I should admit, I grew up with Yahoo.
I don't use Yahoo as much now, especially since Google grew. Google gave me a good impression first time I used it by how simple it was, with uncluttered design, and how the results just popped up in seconds and what a result - more than Yahoo could provide at that time. Google got it right with straight give the result. Some people still stick with Yahoo as they provide news clips that related to your local before you do the search, but Google is a favorite for people who wants quick answer. And I am the latter one.
Enough about Google for now - will come back to that later.
Just right before I was 'leaving' Yahoo, I joined Yahoo Groups of my university batch. It worked with my office email and Yahoo mail is not popular, if not introduced yet. My personal email back then was ibm.com (now att.com) and msn.com (registered when I bought Windows 95). My first web mail was Hotmail, and still using it today for MSN chatting. I had my Yahoo account when I needed free personal account with pop mail capability - for my phone. This was way before Blackberry. Yes, I am always ahead of time in technology adoption. But that was as far as I used Yahoo services, other than Yahoo Messenger.
By that time, I also started to 'leave' Microsoft by switching to Linux. I kept my hotmail account and Yahoo account for GAIM (a multi-client chatting tool), and I used myrealbox (from Novell) for my email. That was the time that I was completely non-dependent on MSN/Yahoo services (other than the accounts). No, I lied. I still use my Yahoo account for my phone email. I started to use Google as my main search tool, as it is the main page of Mozilla browsers.

Then came Mac OS X. I heard the buzz that they based on Open BSD (Darwin) and it had beautiful user interface. I was in the state of enjoying my Linux setup - which was not as pretty as Windows, but I had the security and convenience I want. I am not a hardcore gamer so I am easy to pleased, not. So I switched to Mac, again - I used to use Apple ][, first Macintosh, and LC][. And how surprised, happy and excited I was that I could bring my Linux lifestyle in Mac OS X - in style.

And everybody remember when Google introduced GMail, with said unlimited storage starting from 2GB. That blew my mind as at that point my Hotmail was 2GB and my Yahoo was 1GB. And it came with Google's simplistic design and awesome search capability. And it was very fast. I arranged an invitation from a friend who bought an invitation from eBay (for USD1) as it was invitation only that time. And I fell in love once I logged in to GMail. It is my main email tool since then.
After that, my life had turned 2.0 gradually. I started using Writely (now Google Docs after Google bought it) and Google Spreadsheets. I use GCal and sync it to my iCal - and sending reminder to my phone via SMS. My phone can run Opera and I can access my GMail anywhere within network. I plan my projects using Central Desktop, my personal finance using Wesabe and I also had become a social networking junkie. I store my snaps on my flickr and Picasa Web. I read RSS feeds using Google Reader religiously, and share interesting articles to family and friends, and to my blogs.
Just recently I turned back to Yahoo. That is when I had enough having my flickr page kept on reminding me to change my ID to Yahoo ID. I still feel a bit cheated now as I still see the 'oldskool' login page in flickr. But I had merged my flickr account to my Yahoo account. Then I started trying Yahoo's newest service, MyWeb 2.0 - a web bookmarking tool and alpha, a search tool from Yahoo similar to that of Google, with added features. I like the simple design and much nicer than what I expected, so I started using it. But it is not as critical as how I depended to Google services. I've sold myself to Google, in a way. If someone knows the most about me, it's Google.
So I completely understand how Microsoft and Yahoo were worried with how Google has grown today. And they do need to do something about it. I may not be a common people that uses web services that extensive, but how I was personally dependent to most of Google's service showed that Google had done something right that lured me into their trap instead of Microsoft's or Yahoo's. And this is keep on growing. Most of my friends are using GMail and they started to use GCal. My family friends - not a power user of Internet - were thinking of checking GMail as soon as I told them my GMail address. They said that their friends starting to use GMail as well.
So what is my point? My point is Microsoft and Yahoo should do something, they should be worried. Either by combining forces, one acquires another, or do something else separately. My friend said to me that Google had become too big, it almost like Microsoft. I am afraid he could be right. In the mean time, I will still using Google services until something better comes up.