Who Will Join Microsoft in the Portal Wars?

madman writes "In the light of the recent changes in the search war, like the Google/Dell partnership and eBay/Yahoo! alliance, Microsoft is facing a complicated question: Who are they going to ally with? Will they try to face the competition alone?"

The Spooks

[zenetik]

Perhaps Microsoft will join forces with AT&T and the NSA and turn its efforts toward data mining.

the Xbox model...

[YesIAmAScript]

The Xbox model was not to give a small team the freedom to create.

The hardware design was done by two guys who don't even work for MS, they work for a joint design and manufacturing company. The software was done in-house, but by a larger team. The Xbox OS is a derivative of (Windows) NT. Additionally, they spent untold dollars buying Bungie, RARE, Oddworld Inhabitants and other companies.

In other words, they largely followed the model you say sucks. They spent a lot of money on acquisitions, only one of which worked out (and even the Bungie Crew is all gone to Wideload and WildTangent now except for Jason Jones). And the kicker, they've so far lost a truckload of money.

It doesn't sound like the right model to me. If the Xbox team ever turns a profit it'll be because Sony are such boneheads, not because of the excellence of the Xbox model.