Really, what more is there to say about the potential acquisition of Yahoo! by Microsoft? It’s been written about everywhere from the NYT to the Asshat (Scoble) to the TechCrunch to the Guardian.

I thought I’d summarize my perspective as a use real quick and then offer up what I think is some good analysis and some good humor.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I like Yahoo!. I like their products and pay for their products. I use their mail and search products throughout my day for work and pleasure. I use Flickr pretty regularly and recommend it as a photo sharing service to friends. I use Upcoming now and then, though to be frank, I am not that social . I prefer Y! maps over the competition and this blog is festooned with Shortcuts and MyBlogLog. When it comes to web utilities, I choose Yahoo! first.

I also like Microsoft. For the previous 4 years I worked in a very Microsoft-centric environment and saw a lot of good come out of Redmond for the enterprise and for web developers. I think Windows is a solid operating system (both desktop and server) and Office 2007 for Windows has helped to revolutionized user interfaces with it’s new ribbon. I use a Windows Mobile phone and think it’s really good… I cringe having to work through a Nokia interface.

So, there’s lots to love about a marriage of these two companies, right? Yep, that’s right, but here’s what I fear. I would hate to lose ANY of my Y! web properties in favor of an existing MS version. As a recent convert to the Mac (and I’m loving it) I would also hate to lose connection to my Yahoo! services via a tight integration between web properties and the Windows OS. Microsoft has not shown itself to be on the forefront of software development for the Mac.

Enough of my views…. go read Webware’s comparison of the companies’ web services for some solid insight.

Search: Search.yahoo.com vs. Live.com
Yahoo, founded on Internet search, has three times the search market share of Microsoft. Microsoft will kill its good-money-after-bad Web search project and move its users over to Yahoo. Winner: Yahoo.

Email: Yahoo Mail vs. Hotmail
I give the nod to the killer development team over at Yahoo, which came over in the OddPost acquisition. While most of those people are now on other Yahoo projects, the OddPost platform is slick and innovative. Microsoft could slowly move its users over. Winner: Yahoo.

Mapping: Yahoo Local Maps vs. Live Search Maps
Microsoft has the pretty bird’s eye view and a 3D map viewer plug-in (which is cool but slow on many machines). But Yahoo has a better fundamental mapping product that allows click-and-drag rerouting. Google Maps is still more useful than both. Winner: a merger, hopefully, of Microsoft’s features with Yahoo’s nicer UI.

Photo sharing. Flickr vs. Live Spaces
Even though I think Flickr is too weird for the real world and that Yahoo should not have killed its straightforward and smooth Yahoo Photos, Microsoft buries its photo site in its blogging platform, Live Spaces. It’s a nice tool but the content and the users have hewn to Flickr, due to its community-forward features like group tags and its open API. Winner: Yahoo.

Bookmarking: Delicious vs. Listas
Ever heard of Listas? Exactly. Winner: Yahoo. (Actually, Microsoft has money in Digg, but it doesn’t own it.)

And then read Merlin Mann’s hilarious Five subtle changes in the event that Microsoft acquires Yahoo!

1. your Flickr.com photos are still your own (although human faces are now obscured by selected partner company logos)
2. owing to unavoidable data corruption, all Upcoming.org events must be reinstalled monthly
3. following upgrade to Vista, clicking del.icio.us links now requires 1 GB of RAM and 40 GB drive space (per link)
4. Jerry Yang now compelled to “do that funny MC Hammer dance” whenever Ballmer’s meds start wearing off
5. folksy motto tweaked to “If You Ever Want to See That Pretty Family of Yours Again, You Damned Straight Better Fucking Yahoo!“