With all the swirling controversy about Microsoft's bid to take over Yahoo, people have failed to ask why a company as powerful and inovative as Yahoo has placed itself in a position to be bought in the first place. This is the question I hope to answer in this blog entry.

I would like to consider myself "old school" when it comes to the internet. Mainly because I started my career in web design as a 14-year-old typing all my code in Notepad (before software that allows anyone with a computer to build their own website was ever built). I also remember when Yahoo first set out as the first (real) search engine on the internet. Like most companies they started out with a couple of guys in a basement somewhere pounding out code, not knowing what they were about to launch into the world.

Years later, Yahoo still controlled the market when it came to search engines. No one had heard of Google yet and places like Alta Vista and Ask Jeeves just didn't have the same appeal Yahoo did. Yahoo worked, that's all that mattered.

Then the world changed forever. A little known start up called Google came in and didn't just come on the scene, they destroyed the scene and built their own scene on top of everyone else. Google ushered in a new way of thinking on the internet that had never been thought of before. They gave everything they had away for free. There were no ads (yet) and the ones they eventually had were not as obtrusive as most ads you see across the internet. There front page was (and still is) clean, simple and not full of useless information that most people never look at.

And that is why I believe Google will continue to pound every competition that comes up against them. They are able to build great products that are just as good or better than the leading competitors and they offer it absolutely free. I came across this conclusion today as I was assisting our Business Editor, Susie Myers, as she was trying to get her yahoo mail to automatically go to her cellphone. As I was trying to figure out how to get this to work I stumbled upon a section that said you had to pay extra just to send email from your yahoo mail account to software like Outlook, Thunderbird and cellphones.

I immediately checked Google's Gmail and you guessed it, they offer the same service absolutely free.

This is just one example of companies not embracing the current culture with their products. People today are tired of paying outrageous prices for products they will only use a handful of times. This is why, I believe, piracy on the internet is at an all time high as well. If movie companies embraced the technology that these pirates are using to spread these products out, they would cut the piracy community in half, easily.

Until big companies realize the new business model that the internet has provided us, you will continue to see companies like Yahoo bought out, movie companies tank and recording industries hurting. Business models change all the time, just because your's had worked for the past 30 years doesn't mean it's going to work for the next 30.