Microsoft, Google on a roll

InfoWorld has an exclusive today on a resolution to the Microsoft-Yahoo impasse. They report that the poison pill has limited the upside on the sale price — from MS or anyone else — so that Yahoo has conceded the inevitable.

But Sara Ruiz, an analyst at RGB-Tech, said the deal was inevitable, given Microsoft’s mediocre efforts in the Web services and online advertising markets, the rising threat posed by Google, and Yahoo’s own loss of momentum in recent years.

“This couldn’t have played out any other way,” Ruiz said. “And that’s why the final price was not much more than Microsoft’s original offer.”

Ruiz said she expects most of the Yahoo’s senior management and board to quietly exit as the Microsoft takeover plan is implemented.

“We’ll see a lot of startups helmed by former Yahoo employees next year,” she predicted. But she thought the engineering and Web development staff would be showered with incentives to stay, including the ability to choose non-Windows computers if they wanted, as rival Google allow.

Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang will be joined in Redmond by InfoWorld’s own Robert X. Cringely. The two will have three months to learn everything that Bill Gates knows before Chairman Bill completes the transition from ruthless capitalist to benevolent philanthropist.

Overall, it was quite a day for scoops by InfoWorld, with two major acquisitions by Google, updates on Mac OS XI and iPhone Enterprise Server, and the long-awaited news on IBM’s System z. The router faceoff sounded intriguing, but it would have been better with a video.