Both Yahoo! and Microsoft ‘feel’ kind of lifeless. Perhaps a merger would reinvigorate them.

Though I do wonder, what is wrong with Microsoft? I was once a vehement supporter and now am not. But, I think there has been a general trend away from Microsoft and I may just be a sheep following the hateful memes and vibrations.

Google is also staggering just a droplet. Their blogging service is childish and their AdSense is finally experiencing rivalry.

It is difficult to say what is the flagship of the entire technological community: what is the guiding star, even if it guides not at all, and is only narrowly defined and utilized. Perhaps, it is still the iPhone.

This market (and branding) is all about how you and your brand is perceived and not about what you really are. Remember “beleaguered” Apple in the dark years(90s)? They were a rather healthy company all the time. They did make money. They were innovative and made computers that still were just as good if not even better than what most of the market had to offer, yet Apple was beleaguered.

And ever since they started selling MP3 players they have a future again. It’s the perceived image of a brand that makes the brand, and this almost broke Apple’s neck a few years ago. This time it looks like it might just as easily break Microsoft’s.

Now with a chair tossing dancing monkey as the figurehead of Microsoft they’re heading straight into oblivion. Just give them a few more years.

I bet most of those 380 million users that log into Live services have no idea about this new branding campaign. I think it can be safely assumed that those users think they’re, like you suggested, logging into Hotmail, or using Microsoft Search Engine when they search for “Google”.