The Strategy Chronicles #1

This is the first edition of a new series of blog posts that I will try to write regularly (no hardcore promises though). I will be calling it, for the lack of better imagination and because it's 3:09 in the morning, The Strategy Chronicles, or TSC. The primary purpose of this series is to help me keep track of what's happening each week. So whether you liked it or hated it, please let me know. So, let's get started.

Microsoft makes Yahoo! investors very unhappy: At least some of the Yahoo! investors are now worried about an increased Microsoft bid to acquire Yahoo!. The primary reason being that there are several Yahoo! investors who are also Microsoft investors. Separately, several share holders are blasting Yahoo! for rejecting Microsoft's bid.

Yahoo! losing another ground: Opera has now decided to dump Yahoo! in favor of Google for its mobile browser.
- "every month, Opera Mini users browse more than 1.7 billion pages"
- most of the page views were related to search. Yahoo! has a serious relevancy problem in addition to the problem of effectively monetizing its search traffic. I can see how easy it was for Opera decision makers to ditch Yahoo! in favor of Google.
- Google has been Opera's choice for desktop browser for 7 years.

Even more troubles for Yahoo!: Remember the time when Yahoo! handed over the information about its Chinese users to the authorities? Well, that issue continues to haunt Yahoo! as yet another lawsuit was filed against the company by its Chinese dissidents. Yahoo!'s submitted evidence lead to one year imprisonment of a plaintiff.

Finally!: Meanwhile, Google has finally re-launched JotSpot as Google Sites. Exactly how that will hurt Microsoft's similar initiatives is yet to be seen, however the outlook according to the media, doesn't look so promising as far as Microsoft is concerned.

Clean console!: Consumerist reports about an incident where a passionate Xbox user lost his beloved collection of autographs and custom artwork drawn on the console by prominent members of the gaming community. Perhaps, the Microsoft employee responsible for this thought the collectible autographs were making the Xbox unit look dirty.

Bill Gates now LinkedIn!: Facebook's loss is LinkedIn's gain. Bill Gates recently quit Facebook despite Microsoft's recent investment in the social networking powerhouse, and decided to start a profile on LinkedIn. Once his profile was created, Gates then asked a question that received more than 1,000 answers. Interestingly enough the same day I noticed the featured question, Facebook changed their site's theme.

Sliding the Social way!: Slide, the media and gadget distribution powerhouse announced recently that it will create new applications to for MySpace users using MySpace Developer Platform. This could increase Slide.com's profile and reach significantly. Earlier this year, Slide announced that it raised $50 million in its latest funding round.