Why I believe that Microsoft and Yahoo! are dying

I use the Internet everyday. The two most things I do is checking emails and searching for information. For these two purposes, Microsoft and Yahoo are completely useless for me. I don't have to tell you Google is the best. But, there is a bigger application on which Microsoft and Yahoo! is dying, the social networking. Microsoft and Yahoo! can't make their services sticky to users by integrating their services. And, they can't follow the trends, like iPhone or Ajax.

Stickiness 

When I say social networking, I mean everything between me and friends in the cyber space, photos, videos, status, instant messages, blogs, etc. You may say, well, Microsoft and Yahoo! have them all. Right, the problem is that they didn't integrate them well.

Google integrates all these services very well. An instant messenger has no difference with an email. Thus, the chat log is an email. If I am offline and my friend send me a message, it will become an email for me. If my friend is lazy, they can leave me a voice message, even through telephone via Google Voice, and it will become an MP3 file in my Gmail. I just need to click the "Play" button inside my email.

My Gmail contacts are my contacts for everything, my Google Docs, my Google Talk, etc. I don't have to maintain different contact lists for different purposes.

For Facebook, everything is also integrated. I can share everything with my friends on Facebook. You must have seen "Share on Facebook" button on many news websites. They can stalk my life pretty well in Facebook.

One thing drives me crazy is that in Microsoft and Yahoo!, every service they provide is discrete. My instant messaging contacts are not the same as my Email contacts. The message people send me on their social website is not part of my email.

The trend: iPhone and Ajax

In the iPhone/iPod Touch era, I haven't heard any Microsoft or Yahoo! iPhone/iPod Touch application (let's call it iApp) or anyone using such an iApp. I use my iPod Touch as a portable Internet terminal. Google and Facebook have free iApps then I use their services.

Another trend is the Ajax technology. Very apparently, Microsoft and Yahoo! 's Ajax has many bugs, including the incompatibility with some browsers - I seriously mean Firefox, Chrome or Safari. And their Ajax sometimes fails on my browsers - maybe even the simple login at Microsoft Hotmail. The real Ajax program is like Google and Facebook's user interface, fast, small and neat.

So, they are dying. And don't worry. Just let them die - I have no stock share on them.