Hi to all,

There is a piece of the puzzle in regards to the potential buyout of Yahoo! by Microsoft that no one seems to be talking about beside me. So, I am here to rally the troops to spread the word high and low and possibly even report to the DOJ Antitrust division. What am I talking about? Well...

Late last year, Yahoo bought Zimbra Collaboration Suite. This caught my attention because we use it at the college where I work and I was immediately afraid this was the end of the line for the first real competitor to Microsoft Exchange Server that we had found that we could afford (the free OSS edition at the time). I was also confused as to why Yahoo! would have made such a purchase. It was common knowledge by then that they were floundering financially after CEO scandals. They had just finished the beta of their new AJAXy webmail interface, so there was no reason they would need the technology either. It just didn't add up.

Fast forward a few weeks and the rumors started to escalate that Microsoft wanted to buy Yahoo!. I did the math. If Microsoft bought Yahoo!, they would be the new owners of one of their only viable competitors to Exchange, and Zimbra would be killed off before the ink was even dry. I had hoped they were only rumors for this very reason, but the news this week made me sick to my stomach. I'm sure it makes Apple just as sick since they are either resellers or get some kind of commision for selling Zimbra because they promote it for Apple-based businesses and schools. In fact we bought the Network Edition of Zimbra at an amzing per-seat cost thanks to some pulled strings by our Apple sales rep, and are in the prep stages to upgrade from the OSS Edition.

The conspiracy theorist in me makes me wonder if the Yahoo! buyout wasn't already a done deal behind the scenes a long time ago and perhaps Microsoft gave Yahoo! the money to buy Zimbra so that they could put on this facade of reluctance months later before finalizing the deal. Crafty way to kill off competition. You and I both know this would be in line with Microsoft's usual way of doing business. They tend not to be very good actors, though, so I'm hoping if this was all delayed for the purpose of taking down Zimbra in the deal that it will come to light before it is too late.

Zimbra still has the OSS edition, so you know we will be keeping an up-to-date copy of the OSS edition installer on our servers in case this does all go down. As far as I know, there is nothing Microsoft could do to prevent the OSS edition from being used and further developed by the community as long as we get it before Microsoft pulls it from the servers.

Anyway... no one else has mentioned this yet as far as I can tell, so I am spreading the word. This needs to be scrutinized very closely before it is given an okay and we may be the only voices who can save Zimbra from becoming another victim to Microsoft's predatory practices. Spread the word!

Peace