Microsoft and Yahoo: Big for the future of cloud computing

Posted by: Stephen Baker on February 01

Both Yahoo and Microsoft are building server farms on the Columbia River (and elsewhere) to try to keep up with Google in cloud computing. Just staying in this game requires cap investments at a minimum of $2 billion per year. Microsoft can afford it; Yahoo can’t.

And together? If this deal goes through, how these two companies will integrate their clouds is a big question, and a significant challenge. They’re different architectures and run on different software. This means that while Google races ahead, pouring billions into new server farms and sticking with its tried-and-true architecture, Microsoft will face a giant tech integration challenge.

One key question: Yahoo carries out much of the development of an open-source cloud platform, Hadoop, which is based on Google’s proprietary MapReduce. Hadoop’s founder, Doug Cutting, is a Yahoo employee, and told me in December that the development relied too much on Yahoo’s core team. Will Microsoft adopt this cloud open-source standard—a flavor of Google? Or will the software giant perhaps try to smother Hadoop in its crib? It’s also a question for other open-source initiatives at Yahoo, as noted by commenters in Jeremy’s blog.

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